Who is your role model in 3D ?

If I had the time to follow other artists then I wouldn't ever have the time to make my own stuff lol I don't think I could name any I don't know in person haha

There are some cracking 3D Artists out there well worth your time to check out, for the sort of work I do the 3D artist from the 3D CGI community that inspires me the most is probably Fractal Sponge (AKA Ansel Hsiao), check out his work over on Artstation or his own website, he does some absolutely stunning work on Star Wars Imperial Dreadnoughts and other Imperial capital ships, and various other starships and vehicles from that franchise. The level of detail he achieves is just mind boggling. His work is so good you'll see it appearing in various Star Wars books as illustrations, his work features heavily in the Star Wars Guide to Warfare book, but also, in what must be the ultimate compliment to an artist working on Star Wars related material, his work has even appeared in Star Wars Art of books, where ILM concept artists have used his ISD model to help visualise scenes for the movies through their concept art. A compliment for sure, but then also an issue of plagiarism to some extent, but obviously these are murky waters when that company owns the IP of the designs you're doing.

Another great 3D Artist who similarly dabbles in that galaxy far, far away, is EC Henry. He has a slightly different take, in that his little niche is to take barely glimpsed ships from the original trilogy of movies, so craft that appeared in the distance in massive fleet sequences and the like, and he would do his research and get the best reference he could find, and then extrapolate what these ships might look like if they were fully realised detailed models, and then he comes up with a full backstory for them and gives them a tangible history, and gives these forgotten unloved ships their time to shine. These are really great, and it is well worth hunting down his videos on these on Youtube. He also does some cracking Star Trek based design work too, so if you lean more towards the Trek than the Wars? He's still got you covered.

Talking of EC Henry he has a frequent partner in crime in the artist Angelos Karderinis. When Henry designs his cool ships he turns to Angelos to render them with a gorgeous cinematic style that really does his models justice and just elevates them to a level that just knocks them right outta the park, and makes it look like they've just jumped straight out of the movie. In addition to his awesome render work he does some great interior work for EC Henry which helps to flesh out his exterior designs for these spacecraft. So Angelos might for example design custom hangar bays for these new ship designs, or whatever is required to breathe even more life and realism into the designs. It really is a great partnership that has resulted in some epic work.

Last on this list is a good friend of mine that I had the pleasure of working with way back when, Paul (Wiz) Johnson. He has done some just phenomenal photoreal 3D work that has to be seen to be believed. He specialises in doing Astromech Droids, and I challenge you to look at one of his renders without doing a double take thinking that it must be a behind the scenes photo from the set or something. So meticulous is his attention to detail, right down the the imperfections in the construction of the droid prop used in the movie, he gets it all in there, and the results are sublime. He's the R2 Droid Builders' club artist of choice, and he often does some great renders for them that they'll print on a big backdrop behind their stalls or exhibition areas, so the images are practically life size, and they still look great and packed with detail. So if you've seen the Droid Builders Club at a convention? It's quite likely you'll have seen his work too. He also does some great environment work, and has done the lower set piece of the Jawa Sandcrawler as seen in Star Wars, as well as Imperial corridors and hangars as well as the Tantive IV (Rebel Blockade Runner's) corridors, some great work.

If we shy away from specifically 3D CGI Artists, then there are a number of great artists who I'd consider influences, mainly these are concept artists, so the likes of Ralph McQuarrie, the father of the Star Wars visual style, then there's Syd Mead, too many iconic sci-fi films owe their look to his designs, among them Alien and Aliens and Blade Runner, also going back to that Alien thing, you've got to throw H.R. Giger in there for his disturbing and instantly iconic nightmare vision for the Alien. Doug Chiang's another great artist, responsible for a great deal of the design look of the Star Wars Prequels and The Mandalorian. And I guess I'll leave it there, but there are so many other great artists out there whose work you should definitely check out for inspiration in the fields of 3D CGI and beyond.