Benjamin Lucas shows how he worked on intricate low poly stylized environments.

Pirate Tower by benlucas59 on Sketchfab

Introduction

Hi everyone, my name is Ben Lucas, I am a French 3D Artist, currently full-time freelancer specialized in environments and fxs for video games. I’ve been working for video games companies since 2001, which makes me quite an old man in this young industry! Before becoming independent I worked as senior artist on almost 30 projects, like Obscure, Obscure II, Alone in the Dark, Final Exam and last year’s Epistory: typing Chronicles.

I started working on PS2 projects so I’ve seen this industry evolve a lot, now most of my projects involves smartphones and VR, using such great tools as Unity or Substance. The 3D artist job becomes year passing more interesting and rewarding than ever.

The Girl who found pearls on the beach by benlucas59 on Sketchfab

Low poly projects

When I find time for a personal project, my main concern is to enjoy it and learn new things. So, I put the focus first on a cool image composition, and then the technics or visual style that I want to learn with it. It’s actually working on a motivating concept art, strictly tied to a will of going out of my comfort zone!

When I’m the art director on commercial projects it’s obviously different. I try first to come with an idea, like a “what if” question. For Epistory: typing chronicles, for example it was simply: “what if everything was paper crafted, from environments to monsters? In a world like that, how elements could appear, move and interact between them?”. It gives me the global logic of the world art, which will be the base of all the art direction answers of the project.