Meet Mat

The theme I went with is a traffic light. I found a great inspiration for this guy from another creator who choose to make him a walk light. Aged him up a bit, gave him a bit of wear and tear. My idea was that of a New York traffic light in particular. Hence all the stickers and graffiti, along of course with the cigarette and gum ridden sidewalk. 

For tools, most of the materials are pre-builts from substance painter. Rust, yellow paint and metal are the foundations and then it was all about masking and painting. I hand painted a lot of the rust using a black mask and then slapped a generator onto it to make it look dirty and smudged. The stickers and graffiti are just simple fill layers that have been resized to fit where they are intended to go. The main body of the traffic light is three fill layers. One is the darker green background, the next the bright green light, and then finally the pattern that is laid over the light. 

A big problem I ran into was that I was relying way to much are generators to lay out my materials. My solution was the discovery of masking. I began making paint layers and painting over certain parts of the mesh. I then used a mask with a generator to reveal or hide the details I wanted. I also realized I need to find a way to make him appear sun damaged. I achieved this by using a lighter color of paint and blending that with the top portion of his head.