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Meet the Artist: Yan

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Background

I always wondered, how much of “it” is given, and how much can be achieved through hard work and critical thinking. “It” in my perspective is skill, others might define it as talent, luck or both. I will say this much, the answer isn’t simple, but it isn’t magic either. My name is Yan, also known through my Youtube channel by YanSculpts.

I am a graduate here in France from a 3D animation management school. I won’t dive too deep on the university I attended but basically it is more of “how to manage a team” than “how to become an artist”. We did have some introductory classes on 3DS Max, and probably a week or 2 of ZBrush and a week of Maya that I believe I missed… I hope the teacher of that class doesn’t read this.

Blender is a program I started learning because I had a classmate who was… how shall I put this… very passionate about it? I have to say, glad he was, I really enjoy using it compared to the other programs like 3DS Max, less crashing. No seriously though, Blender is a powerful tool made by passionate people, but I am sure you already know that.

I believe I started with a subscription at CGCookie for the Introduction to Blender which got me started, followed other tutorials over there and on YouTube. Now I mostly learn by moving parameters left and right, the hard way I guess.

Work

I did two internships during my studies, the first one was mostly Adobe and video stuff, the second was a mix of some 3D and VFX. After I graduated I decided to do my own thing, which is how YanSculpts came about.

It started as a way to follow my own path, a way to make a living from my own work and a way that allows me to have the freedom of pursuing art at my own pace. It still is, but now it is much more than that. Before I knew it, I found my audience, or they found me, real people watching my videos! By continuously interacting with everyone in the comment section of the videos, it hit me! I cannot describe the feeling, but helping others is very gratifying to the point that it becomes an addiction.

I did some freelancing at first, including some work for 3D Magazine - I think it was a tutorial on a character - and I was an art editor at BlenderNation for a brief moment. Hi Bart! I was also asked to give some Blender classes at my university on some occasions, apparently they added it to their curriculum since the program started getting traction in the industry. Anyways, freelancing is something I don’t do anymore, but who knows, I sometimes make exceptions like I did for the university.

Now I am focused on both my art and the channel. To give some context, on the channel I post videos that aim to give art advice, inspire my audience to pursue their own art and path in life, some other stuff in between and the occasional tutorial here and there. The channel evolved a lot since the beginning so who knows how the content will evolve in the future, but I hope I will be able to reach a bigger audience and help more people whilst I continue pursuing my own passion.

Examples on Some of the Types of Content I Make

Timelapse Videos w/Music

The main purpose of these videos is to hopefully inspire artists to get creating, kind of like how I get inspired to draw when I see some of my favorite artists sketching videos, such as Ahmed Aldoori for his sketchbook works and Sinix for his plaintsplorations. It also serves to show my process of creating the characters, which potentially has a lot of information one can learn from. Moreover, I put a lot of thought into which type of music goes with which character time-lapse videos. I think setting the right mood helps with the inspiration as well.

Timelapse Videos w/Commentary

I occasionally do time-lapse videos with commentary instead of music, this one is to focus more on explaining the technique rather than the inspiration side of things.

Fanart Content

I also do Fanart, characters like Spider-Man from Spider-Verse or Akali from K/DA. It helps both celebrate my inner fan in a character concept made by someone else and serves in reaching a new audience who might be interested in learning art:

Art Advice

I do videos on art advice in general, topics can range from general tips to covering more specific subjects. Here are some examples:

Moreover I do tutorials, usually on character stuff like sculpting, creating hair, tricks and tips, etc.

I also sometimes cover wider subjects like an introduction to Blender 2.8 for 3D Beginners:

And finally the occasional videos in which the subjects vary. They tend to be less serious than the previous topics, but can be fun and entertaining which is important! Things like challenges or just rambling:

Favorite Projects

Warning, things are about to get cheesy. I would say that I have one big project in life, that is to live true to myself. All of what I explained earlier on following my own path, becoming a better artist and helping others, is part of that big project. So in a way, I am proud that even though I had and still have many obstacles in the way of achieving this project/goal in life, I keep pushing through. So yeah, cheesy, I warned you.

Inspiration

Anything and everything. It can be from an art piece, an artist, a person, sound/music, a situation, a feeling, an emotion, a movie, tv shows, a book, you name it.

Tools

  • Softwares for the channel’s videos: Blender, Adobe
  • Actual Tools: You know, the basic stuff. Computer, what comes with it, a graphics tablet, especially for sculpting and digital painting.
  • Non Digital Tools: Paper and pen/pencil, drawing contributes to my work in many different ways from improving my work in general to creating designs, etc.

Book Recommendations

What is your goal? What do you want to achieve? What do you want to learn? Figure these things out, google books on the subject and read the reviews.

I prefer giving you that advice rather than pointing you to a specific book. The books I read tailor towards what I want to learn. For example, when I wanted to become a character artist, I did research on what it takes to learn how to draw and sculpt. Art fundamentals is a big one for all of that, so I did research on what that implied. That led me to anatomy, perspective, composition, light and color, etc. So I chose the subjects I wanted to focus on first and looked for books on those.

Thanks for inviting me to Meet The Artist, hope the read was somewhat helpful!

About the Author

Yan, 3D Artist

 

 

About the Author

Abby Crawford

I've been a part of the BlenderNation team since 2018, producing Behind the Scenes and Meet the Artist features that highlight Blender artists and their work.

2 Comments

  1. Rombout Versluijs on

    Awesome read Yan! Great story on how you start and are progressing. Did i get it right that you have been using Blender for not that long, since you started college? Did you use any other software or didnt you do 3d at all?

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