“It was the really loud, cheesy and retro look that hooked me in” – this 3D artist updated a retro Japanese sci-fi classic

Gabriel Lebel Bernier is a look dev artist and 3D generalist from Montreal, Canada. His series ‘Yuriko’ is inspired by a character from the Japanese Ultraman film and TV franchiser. Gabriel used a range of software including Maya, Arnold, Substance 3D Painter, ZBrush and XGen. Here we find out more about the process.

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Gabriel says: As with most of my projects, I got inspired while doomscrolling through the internet. There’s always a moment when an image or idea stands out from the noise.

For this one, it was an old picture of Yuriko Oka from the Japanese sci-fi series Return of Ultraman. It was the really loud, cheesy and retro look that hooked me in. I loved everything about it.

The hardest part was finding good references. As the show first aired in 1971, most images I found were very low-resolution and had a lot of compression, leaving them either desaturated or oversaturated. I tried to use some free AI tools to upscale and restore the references, but I didn’t get anything out of it aside from spam mail, so I had to fill in a lot of the gaps.

Huge thanks goes to Lukas Kutschera, who gave me a lot of constructive feedback while working on this project.

Check out Gabriel’s ArtStation.

This content originally appeared in 3D World magazine.