NA – BigRock project
Pre-Columbian art has always fascinated me with its symbols, colors, and totemic elements.
When it came to finding inspiration for a project in Adobe Substance Painter during my research for references, I came across a wonderful piece by Nick Sinclair (whose credits you can find above).
Artists are often told, but not only artists, that one of the best exercises for learning is copying. Literally!
At the same time, I think it’s important to give proper credit to the original creator of the project. This work is simply an exercise I did during my studies to learn this software better, which definitely put me to the test. Nevertheless, I’m very happy with the result. I hope you like it!
While searching for references, I focused on finding images that would allow me to get more perspective and show the texture details in the best possible way.
The main challenge was to use only Adobe Substance Painter and no other software to achieve the result. No modelling, no Photoshop tricks. The biggest difficulty was therefore that I could not achieve the necessary volume, except by using tricks with height maps and colours.
Also during the research phase, while refining my thoughts, I delved into the symbolism of pre-Columbian civilisations. In fact, the part that engaged me the most was researching the symbols on the crown around the volume of the head. These symbols derive from the Sacred Calendar of the Aztec culture and represent the months of the year.
Much of the work was done by hand: decoration, engraving, application of colour. For the face, I used a stencil to map the height of the grooves, then adjusted the blend between the layers to get the final result.
For the moss on the base, I worked with the alpha channel and filters, trying to obtain a random and natural effect that would highlight the typical organic growth of plants.
Some pictures of the process
During the research phase, I concentrated on materials similar to clay or sand to achieve a rustic and granular effect. This effect was applied uniformly to the coloured parts by using masks and manually engraving details using a graphic tablet and pen. The process is illustrated in the images below.
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