The Hobbit artist portfolio sets a shining example

Ben Mauro is one of these rare artists that are leading the new trend of game artists. Not only do his unique designs stand out from the pack, but also his approach to the job embraces a wide range of tools and techniques, and show us a glimpse of where the game art industry is heading to.

From sketching, to modelling, rendering and photo compositing, Ben embraces all the genres to achieve a vision. Now, more than ever, game artists have to be flexible and adapt to the needs of the production, and Ben’s portfolio shows us a brilliant example of the new set of skills needed by today’s artists.

By going back and forth from ZBrush sculpts to Photoshop paintovers, Ben can explore shapes with lot of freedom and in the same time stay strongly anchored in reality.

His works have a sense of practicality and are grounded designs, but yet they still always feel open to any other possible iterations that is something that could be hardly achieved in another way. I’m a big fan.

Words: Pascal Blanché

Pascal Blanché is one of the most popular digital artists working to day. He's currently an art director at video game giant Ubisoft. This article originally appeared in 3D World issue 181.