One of my longer-term projects was building out a 3D NFT collection for the Solana-based project, FRAKT. FRAKT was a lending platform on Solana that allowed users to take out loans of Solana against the value of the NFTs they owned as collateral. They were very intereted in the style of art I was creating at the time so I joined them to create a collection of armored gnome characters for their flagship collection.
Role:
Character Artist
Industry:
NFT Collection
Duration:
23 weeks
Challenges
Brand Identity: The biggest challenge was taking FRAKT's originally very techy and sleek and combining it with the fanatical and fun "Gnomies" collection that they acquired.
Hair: This was the first time I had ever worked with using hair particle systems in Blender so it was a challenge to learn how to balance render performance and shaping the beards.
Traits: Taking my style of robotic armor and implementing it with gnomes was no small task. i had to find a way to blend sci-fi and fantasy into a comprehensive NFT collection with multiple trait types.
My Approach
Discovery Phase
Client Consultation: Conducted extensive discussions with Aura Vault to understand their musical direction, target audience, and specific requirements.
Competitive Analysis: Studied competitor websites and best practices in music band websites to identify key features and design elements.
Design and Development
Modeling: For modeling the base gnome I used a combination of Gravity Sketch VR and Unreal Engine's Metahuman. I modeled a face of the gnome in VR and then took that mesh and ran it through Metahuman's "Mesh to Metahuman" feature that turned my basic face into a fully textured and realistic human. For the traits I used Gravity Sketch again and utilized the "volume" tool to design these complex suits of armor that are very gestural and geometric.
Texturing: For the texturing of the models I utilized blender to create procedural materials that would look both worn and realistic for these battle-hardened gnomes.
Rendering: For the renders i had to be careful using Blender's hair feature because it took a lot of processing power to render out all the individual strands of hair. I wound up taking advantage of GPU rendering to speed this process up.
Conclusion
Overall I am happy with how these characters turned out. They blended elements of sci-fi and fantasy into one cohesive character that each told their own story. I would love to revisit something like this with all of the knowledge I have now after working in the 3D world.
