Being born in the 90s, I had the privilege of seeing these titles develop and in a way “growing up” with them, and that had a huge impact on me and my own artwork for sure. My core inspiration definitely lies in the fantasy realm, especially from IPs like World of Warcraft, League of Legends, Darksiders, Battle Chasers, and Lord of the Rings. What I can say is that I always try to channel all my favorite things and influences into the art I create, if that makes any sense. I can’t really tell or put into words what my “art style” is, nor do I know if I actually have one. I did this for about 3 years until I landed my first in-house job working for Jagex’s Runescape as a Character Artist. So pretty much as I was stepping into the industry working as a freelance 3D artist, I was also learning.
![baking in marmoset toolbag 3 with super high poly character baking in marmoset toolbag 3 with super high poly character](https://fiverr-res.cloudinary.com/videos/t_main1,q_auto,f_auto/rf9ov4olkcb4z7vwky3w/3d-character-model-commissions-vrchat-option.png)
Most people these days would probably go to the Game Art program to study 3D, but there wasn’t such a thing back in Portugal, so I just pushed very hard to land small freelance gigs, and with that, I just kept investing in online classes and industry events such as THU. My 3D learning route was quite bumpy I would say. I always loved creating and imagining stories for characters, so with 3D character models being the final “medium” in a game or animated feature that you get to experience and interact with, following the path of Character Art just felt like the right thing to me.
![baking in marmoset toolbag 3 with super high poly character baking in marmoset toolbag 3 with super high poly character](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qG2aEhntYQc/UJBDBW4uTyI/AAAAAAAABm0/P6_SloZk1fs/s1600/HolyMan2.png)
From there, I remember just spending countless hours over at CGSociety and ZBrushCentral, completely baffled at the quality of the artworks there and wondering how I could reach such a level myself. My teacher was super inspiring and he made such a big effort to show us the previous students' portfolios and just good art overall. I studied at the University of Fine Arts of Lisbon, and during our last year, we had this very generalist Digital Arts class where I was introduced to ZBrush. I started getting into 3D art in my last year of university.