Alex Borre
My name is Alex Borre, and I am a 3D artist from Chicago.
I’ve been working in the industry for about 5 years now and I have worked on AAA game titles, VR/AR experiences, and even pinball machines.
As an artist, my main focus is on improving my character art and learning new skills and software in order to create the best work possible. My career has taken me to a number of different studios and each of them has given me great new skill sets and experiences. I look forward to building on what I’ve learned and continuing to share my work with the iClone world.
Q: Could you tell us about your background and your work? When and how did you start working on 3D design?
As far back as I can remember I’ve had a passion for two things: video games and art. I grew up in a suburb of Chicago where there was not much for a kid to do besides playing video games and watching cartoons. One of my favorite games to play was Warcraft 3, which had a great map editor that allowed me to use my own textures on the in-game models. I would spend days trying to customize characters to make my childhood dreams into digital realities. From there 3D modeling became a hobby, and I eventually decided I wanted it to become my career.
After high school, I attended a media arts college in Chicago, and from there I was fortunate enough to be able to find work in the industry. I had the great pleasure to work at Netherrealm Studios where I made some great friends and gained valuable experience working on some awesome titles such as Injustice: Gods Among Us, and Mortal Kombat X.
I’ve been working professionally for about 5 years now and I am still constantly inspired by the great work that is regularly coming out of the art community. Now I spend a lot of my time working on personal projects and freelancing, I aim to continuously improve my work and see what types of fun things I can create!
Q: Please tell us how you starting your content business, and why you choose Reallusion, iClone and Character Creator.
My work on the Post Apocalyptic outfit pack was my first time creating content in this particular method by using my own brand. I came across iClone and Character Creator during Reallusion’s 2016 3D Character Design Contest. I was intrigued by the contest and the software so I decided I would work on an entry for the contest. I really enjoyed using iClone to quickly get my character model animating. I especially liked playing around with the soft-cloth simulation to get some nice secondary motions on my character. I ended up with a prize-winning submission, hurray!
Shortly after, I was contacted by Reallusion about the opportunity to create a content pack for Character Creator. To me this seemed like a great way to practice new techniques of asset creation and get more familiar with the software. I was very pleased with how well my assets translated into Character Creator! I was able to maintain my usual workflow for generating game assets and quickly import them for use in CC.
Q: Besides our tools, what other software do you use? Any samples of your work?
I primarily use Maya, ZBrush, Photoshop, Marvelous Designer, Substance Painter, and Marmoset Toolbag for my models. My basic workflow generally involves beginning in Maya for blocking out a mesh and making sure size and scale is right, then moving on to ZBrush for high resolution details.
For cloth assets I will usually create them in Marvelous Designer prior to bringing into ZBrush. This is the newest addition to my workflow and this Apocalypse Combo content pack was a great opportunity to get a lot of practice in working with it!
I’ll use Maya to create the game-resolution mesh from there and then work on my textures and materials inside Substance Painter. Then, at the end I use Photoshop for finalizing textures. I also enjoy using Maya for animation, and occasionally will get sucked into the world of 2D animation where I use a great piece of software called Spine.
There’s so much great software now to help with each little task needed in modeling that it’s hard to name them all! A lot of the time the software I’m using depends on my task, and I’m never opposed to learning something new if it’s available to me.
Q: We are all very happy to see you grow. What else can the community expect from you in the near future?
Well, that depends! One of the things I love about the 3D art industry is that there are many avenues to explore. I’ll be continuing with my own personal work and continuing to upload works as often as I can. I work freelance regularly and generally take on whatever projects come my way if they sound interesting. I enjoy the content creation business and I may do more in the future if the opportunity presents itself and people like my work!
As a professional I am more of a 3D generalist, but I want to try to push my work towards primarily doing characters. I’d love to someday work in a major game studio and learn from a whole bunch of artists who are better than I am 😊.
Animation is also a growing interest of mine and lately I’ve been pushing my skills in that department too, so maybe in the future I’ll put together some fun character animation videos. I guess the short answer is: I don’t know exactly what’s next, but you can definitely expect more character art!
Also, don’t forget to visit my assets at the Reallusion Content Store.
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To see more of Alex’s work, please visit >>
Reallusion Content Store: https://www.reallusion.com/contentstore/featureddeveloper/profile/#!/ABorreArt/iClone
ArtStation: https://alexborre.artstation.com/