Recreating Marvel's Cyclops As Stylized Hand-Painted 3D Character

Daniil "Split" Voskressenski3D Character ArtistInterviewed byAmber Rutherford28 October 2026

Daniil "Split" Voskressensky shared a breakdown of his first deep dive into Blender's shaders, modifiers, and render setup to create a fully hand-painted, comic-style 3D model of Cyclops.

Introduction

Hello, my name is Daniil "Split" Voskressensky, and I'm a 3D Character Artist with about 6 years of experience. I'm currently working at Airborn Studios, creating characters and weapons for Overwatch 2. My journey into 3D started with a deep love for Blizzard games. I took online courses focused on stylized character creation, then built my personal portfolio, which eventually led to my first professional role.

Since then, I've had the opportunity to contribute to projects like Fortnite, Overwatch 2, and several others still under NDA. It brings me immense joy to create stylized characters and constantly set new challenges for myself.

Since my last article on 80 Level, I've had the chance to share several personal projects, including another Overwatch character skin, as well as a few personal PBR projects. Today, I'd like to walk you through my experience creating a fully hand-painted character model for the first time in my career, sharing my workflow, the challenges I faced, and what I learned along the way.

References

The project started when I came across the work of an amazing artist, Hicham Habchi, on ArtStation. I saw one of his comic-style illustrations, created as a comic book cover, and immediately thought it would be a really cool idea to recreate something similar in 3D.

I'd been wanting to experiment with shaders in Blender for a long time and get more familiar with the software, so this felt like the perfect opportunity to explore something new. My goal was to create a fully hand-painted 3D character that could be animated, with the camera moving around it to create a strong first-impression effect. I wanted the character to look like a 2D drawing at first glance, only to come to life as the camera started moving and reveal that it was actually a 3D model.

For references, I mainly looked at Hicham Habchi's work, which served as my primary source of inspiration throughout the project. I also took some inspiration from Marvel Rivals, but most of my research focused on artists who specialize in comic book cover illustrations. I wanted to understand how they approach shapes, colors, lighting, and exaggerated forms, and then explore how I could translate that visual language into a 3D character while preserving the energy and feel of a hand-drawn illustration.

I was aiming for that little "wow" moment when the viewer realizes what they're looking at. Since I had never attempted anything like this before, the idea of stepping outside my comfort zone and exploring a completely new workflow was what made the project so exciting to me.

Modeling

My workflow started with sculpting the character in ZBrush. Since this was a hand-painted project rather than a traditional PBR character, I approached the sculpt a little differently. I knew that some minor imperfections could be covered by the painted details, so the model didn't necessarily need the same level of polish as a typical PBR asset. However, I still focused on sculpting the forms as accurately as possible to match the original concept, ensuring that the proportions and shapes would translate well into the final result without major discrepancies. 

Texturing

Since this project was focused on creating a stylized character for a final render and animation rather than a production-ready game asset, I decided to keep the workflow relatively simple and skip retopology and UV mapping altogether. This allowed me to focus entirely on sculpting, hand-painting, and achieving the final look I had envisioned.

One of the biggest challenges was capturing the original comic book style as accurately as possible. I wanted to preserve the feeling of a hand-drawn illustration, which meant paying close attention to every little detail. I had to be patient and methodical, carefully reproducing each brushstroke, tiny line, dot, shadow, and highlight. It took quite some time, as I often had to zoom in closely and work on very small details to make sure everything looked right and contributed to the overall comic book aesthetic.

At the same time, I found this process incredibly interesting because it allowed me to analyze the artist's style and visual language much more closely. By carefully studying and reproducing every detail, I began to understand better what makes his characters so expressive and visually striking, and how he uses shapes, shadows, and highlights to give them so much personality. I think this experience will also help me approach my future projects with a better understanding of stylized art and character design.

The whole process was surprisingly fun, too. At some point, I started joking on my streams that it felt like I was doing a children's coloring book, except in 3D. And honestly, that was pretty much how it felt! I was essentially filling in shapes and following the lines of the original illustration, just on a 3D model instead of a piece of paper. Despite how meticulous and time-consuming it could be, I really enjoyed this part of the process. It was a completely different experience from my usual workflow, and finding that balance between precision, experimentation, and having fun with the project made it especially memorable.

Blender Workflow

Since this was a fully hand-painted character, my lighting and rendering setup was quite different from a traditional 3D scene. I didn't use any light sources at all, as the goal was to showcase the base color texture exactly as it was painted. Instead, I used an Emission shader so the colors and painted shadows would remain visible in the final render without being affected by external lighting.

For the environment, I created a cylinder around the character and applied a texture featuring yellow smoke, inspired by the original concept. I also added floating rocks and stylized blue energy effects to make the scene more dynamic and communicate the idea of the character charging up and firing a shot. Interestingly, I modeled the energy effects and the small graphic strokes as actual floating geometry rather than relying entirely on particles or post-processing. I also wanted the strokes surrounding the character to feel energetic rather than static, so I animated their movement using the Graph Editor and Noise modifiers, creating a subtle shaking effect that helped reinforce the comic book aesthetic.

The most challenging part of the entire rendering process was definitely creating the laser beam. I spent a lot of time figuring out how to make it appear at exactly the right moment, how to animate the shot, and, most importantly, how to keep it stylized rather than making it look like a realistic laser. I wanted the character's visor to heat up before firing, building anticipation before the actual shot

Eventually, I came up with a relatively simple solution: the laser was essentially a triangular plane with a texture applied to it. At the moment of firing, the plane scaled outward from the visor, while the texture moved rapidly up and down along the Y-axis, creating the impression that the beam was pulsing with energy. However, getting the details right took much longer than I expected. I had to figure out how to soften the otherwise perfectly straight edges of the triangular plane and animate that softness so the beam felt alive rather than static. I also needed to animate its transparency so that, at certain moments, the character's hair would remain visible through the beam instead of being completely obscured.

I should mention that I don't have a background in VFX, and I don't really have many friends or colleagues who specialize in this field either. So, in a way, I had to learn the basics of creating visual effects from scratch, using a fairly simple, experimental approach. I spent a lot of time searching for tutorials, asking questions, experimenting with different techniques, and reaching out to friends who could occasionally point me in the right direction. Everyone shared a little piece of advice here and there, and by gradually combining those ideas with my own experiments, I eventually managed to achieve the result I was looking for. It was a very hands-on learning process, and figuring things out step by step was a big part of the experience.

I spent a considerable amount of time experimenting with shader nodes and animation setups to achieve the result I wanted. ChatGPT was a huge help during this stage, guiding me through which nodes to use and how to connect them. Without that assistance, figuring everything out would probably have been much more difficult.

Another effect that took a surprising amount of time was the transition during the charging sequence. I wanted the image to gradually turn black and white for a brief moment before the character fired, with the desaturation spreading outward in a circular shape from the visor toward the edges of the screen. At the same time, the visor had to remain colored and illuminated, while the rest of the character became darker just before the shot. Although the effect itself lasts only about a second, getting it to work exactly as I envisioned required quite a bit of experimentation. I created it manually in Blender's Compositor Editor using nodes rather than relying on the rendering process itself to produce the effect.

Figuring out how to control the circular transition, preserve the visor's color, and animate the overall darkening was a challenge in its own right. It was a good reminder that even a very short visual effect can require a surprising amount of work behind the scenes.

Another important element was the black outline around the character, which helped reinforce the comic book aesthetic. I created it using a Solidify modifier, essentially inverting the normals and expanding the geometry slightly to produce a black silhouette around the model. I also experimented with the outline on the character's hair, animating it with modifiers such as Noise to create a subtle pulsing effect that made the entire character feel more alive.

For the floating rocks, tutorials by Leslie van den Broeck on 80 Level were particularly helpful. His explanations of modifiers such as Wave gave me a much better understanding of how to create procedural motion and make the rocks levitate in a natural but stylized way.

Finally, my friend Nadi Kulikova helped me with the character's rigging and animation. By that point, I was getting a little tired after spending so much time learning Blender and figuring out the technical side of the project. She was also interested in practicing rigging and animation, so it worked out perfectly for both of us. Her help allowed me to focus on the remaining details and bring the project together into the final animated result.

Conclusion

I can't say exactly how long the entire project took, but I can confidently say that most of my time went into learning Blender. I practically had to start from scratch, figuring out where everything was, how the different tools worked, and how to use all the buttons, modifiers, and settings to achieve the results I wanted.

I really enjoyed the hand-painting process itself. As I mentioned earlier, it felt like working on a coloring book, and with every element I finished painting, I became more and more excited about how well the effect was working. It was fascinating to see how something that looked like a 2D illustration could actually exist as a 3D model, with the illusion only becoming apparent when the camera started moving. That was probably one of the most rewarding parts of the entire experience.

The most challenging aspect, however, was figuring out how to create the shaders and animate all the different elements in a way that would preserve the feeling of a comic book coming to life. I had to experiment a lot, research different techniques, and learn things I had never worked with before. But that was also what made the project so valuable to me. 

I would definitely recommend checking out Leslie van den Broeck's tutorials on 80 Level, as well as his portrait creation videos on YouTube. He spends a lot of time explaining different Blender techniques and demonstrating how to use modifiers, which was incredibly helpful for me throughout this project.

Thank you all for reading, and don't be afraid to step outside your comfort zone and try something completely new. You never know what you might discover along the way!

Daniil "Split" Voskressenski, 3D Character Artist

Interview conducted by Amber Rutherford

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