Milton Dias

Hey everyone! My name is Milton Dias, I’m 25 and live in Santa Bárbara d’Oeste, São Paulo, Brasil. Like many children, I spent my childhood watching and drawing my favorite characters from Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon and Disney shows and this had a great influence on my artistic career as an adult.

I discovered 3D in 2008 when a high school friend showed me 3D Studio Max, but it was only after I finished college that I decided to dedicate myself to becoming a professional in this area. I've created some courses and workshops that were a great excuse for me to continue learning and developing myself. Currently, I'm a Freelance 3D Artist working for both national and international agencies and studios. In the near future, I plan to migrate to the entertainment industry and hope to work on animated short and long films.

As anyone in this industry knows, it's always hard to find time to work on personal projects while working with customer deadlines, as they are short and we frequently spend nights working on them. However, even with these time limitations, I decided to do “The Journey” after I discovered the amazing work from the French illustrator Samuel Smith who inspired me very much.

Every time I'm about to start a personal project, I tend to do something different than what I'm used to because it gives me an opportunity to evolve both technically and artistically; at the same time, I learn more about time management and improvement of workflow. For this work, the goal was to create a cartoon scene, but with a more realistic finishing, especially on the lightning. I also wanted the finished scene to transmit the feeling of loneliness that the character is facing.

The whole project was made using 3ds Max, Mudbox, ZBrush, V-Ray and Photoshop. As always, I start with a sketch from the main element of the scene and then put it in the scene to do the blocking and lightning of the scenario. This allows me to understand the proportions more easily and also to see how everything will look when finished. The character’s hair was made with the native “Hair and Fur” feature from 3ds Max and the combing was done with splines which helped a lot.

If you want to know more about my other projects and get in touch, feel free to access my portfolio which also contains links for all my social media pages. And last but not least, thanks AREA for the opportunity!