Details
Intro
Why This 3D Concept Art Class Belongs in Your Technical Tool-Kit
This course is built like a production studio in miniature: you start with a client-style brief and drive it all the way to a polished illustration that would pass an art-director’s desk. Across 30+ chapters, you’ll walk the same end-to-end pipeline used at film, game, and VFX houses—from procedural terrain generation and geometry-node wizardry in Blender to shader testing, kit-bash asset creation, and final paint-over in Photoshop. Each section drills a specific, job-ready skill: layout-blocking that keeps the poly budget sane, lens and composition theory that sells narrative, modular set modelling for efficient iteration, and physically-based lighting setups that match real-world cinematography.
You won’t just “see” techniques—you’ll build a reproducible workflow that plugs straight into daily client work.By the finish line you will have mastered a cross-disciplinary toolkit: sculpted displacement landscapes, architected hero structures at correct scale, rigged vehicles and armies with reusable node groups, and wrapped everything in lighting, fog, and atmospheric passes optimised for rapid look-dev. Just as crucial, you’ll learn *why* each technical choice matters—how camera focal length shifts viewer psychology, how narrative beats dictate prop detail density, and how proceduralism slashes iteration time without killing art direction. If you want a curriculum that upgrades your Blender chops *and* teaches the production-level thinking studios pay for, this class is the most direct, technically rigorous path you’ll find.
Class Perks
Special Gift from Josu Solano
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3D Working Files- Multiple 3D files created during the course, to study further at your own speed
- Alterable files that could facilitate as foundation -
High Resolution Final Illustration & Renders- High-resolution final images for all artworks created in the course
- Helpful reference guides for future projects and portfolio -
Geometry Node Tools Created in Through the Class- Geo nodes systems that are ready to use to save you time in the future
- Nodes are complicated in itself; here is the perfect pack. -
Bonus Video- Bonus video featuring another part of the scene, solving another design
- Alternative workflows for you, that you can align it with your flow. -
Final PSD- Fully layered PSD file created for the final illustration
- In production-ready quality, providing insightful progress in the layers itself, transparently.
Expert Concept Artist Josu Solano's Portfolio
Why Take This Class?
Enter Josu Solano’s studio and you step into a workshop where craft meets reverie: light is chiselled like marble, geometry blooms into myth, and every kit-bashed prop carries the scent of a half-remembered legend. The course opens with a client brief, yet quickly turns that brief into a living pulse—guiding you to let lens length nudge emotion, to let a shard of rim-light breathe hope into ruin, to fold procedural terrains into landscapes that feel ancient and inevitable. Fast exploratory sketches flow into disciplined iterations, so the first electric sketch never loses its charge even as it’s refined to studio-ready precision.
By the final paint-over you’re not merely pushing pixels; you’re conducting atmosphere, colour, and narrative like a quiet symphony—each note chosen for its emotional octave and its production value alike. You’ll test rival lighting moods, interrogate shape language for cliché, and discover the motifs that brand your portfolio with a signature no art director can miss. If you seek a path that merges poetic world-building with the rigour of a production pipeline—where imagination sings but every decision still passes a VFX checkpoint—this class is your doorway.
9 Class Exercises
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Create an original brief for yourself to follow in class -
Create a reference board for the project -
Round of initial sketches of your idea for the shot
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Paintovers of 3d tests to present ideas -
Create terrain for your scene and blocking main elements -
Model the assets that compose your scene
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Finish the area defined as the set for construction -
Render possible lighting and camera scenarios -
Finish the illustration of the chosen composition
Final Product Example
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Character Files-3D files, reusable and customizable -
Prop Files- 3D Utilizable in their own ways -
Environment Files- Utilizable in different ways, in your characters -
Full Cinematic Keyframe- Studio ready quality keyframes
*The image above is a sample for better understanding.
Instructor
Concept Artist
Josu Solano
Hi, this is Josu Solano, a concept artist and illustrator working primarily on film/tv doing design work and the illustration world, mostly Magic The Gathering. During my professional career I have worked on a lots of different things: started on video games doing concept art work, then illustration for publishing, worked on a couple of feature animated movies for kids, jumped into live-action film work, worked for theme parks for a while, illustrated a novel and even worked for a bit on comics but lately is being mostly film/tv concept art and illustrations for Magic The Gathering.
I have also been a teacher for 4 years in various schools teaching digital painting, color and light, design, etc. It's been a fun career so far and I am happy to put some of my knowledge onto this class and share it with you.
Concept Artist,
Josu Solano
[Current]
Ilustrator for Magic The Gathering
Concept Artist for film/TV & videogames
[Previous]
Concept artist on Voltron for Amazon Studios
Concept artist on Alien: Earth for Disney
Concept artist for Wizards of the Coast
Concept artist on Constellation for Apple+
Concept artist for Netflix
Vis dev artist for The Thinklab
Illustrator for Disney Publishing/Imagineering
Concept artist for Nuare Studio
Concept artist for Volta Studio
Professor on various schools/universities across Barcelona
Projects & Awards
Instagram
Highlights
Class Highlights
Potential of 3D Tools for Concept Illustration
We will explore the potential of Blender, one of the most powerful 3D softwares in the current market, and how it can help us achieve what we need for our images. We will model assets, create shaders, scatter details from architecture to an army, and we will look at developing a plethora of elements.
Workflows that Help You Achieve Even the Most Complex Scenes
We will not only look into individual tools and workflows but streamline what works best for each element, without loosing sight of the obejctive of the image. These techniques will come in handy in every situation you may come across in the future as they will help you be effcient and fast while keeping quality high.
Presenting Your Work in the Best Light
Find out how you can tell a story appropriately with the proper camera, lighting and how to present it all in a final image that is powerful and cinematic but also solves the problems of a production, which is why it's created in the first place.
Class Details
You'll Learn
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How to Define a Brief or Follow OneSet a story that will drive the whole exercise by becoming a brief to follow as if it were a real case. -
Figuring Out the Best Workflows for the TaskExploring Blender techniques and 2D sketching to develop our ideas and setting a path to success. -
Blocking Out the Scene and Planning the Steps AheadBlocking out all the elements of our scene to have a sense of scale, layout, composition and knowing what comes ahead.
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Developing the Elements that Compose Our SceneModel assets, setting up shaders, without relying on too many softwares or pre-made assets that may not follow our direction. -
Exploring the Best Way to Present Our StoryExplore the potential of our scene setting up cameras, lighting senarios and using the power oif atmosphere to best showcase our work. -
Executing the Final IllustrationPutting the final touches on our image, making sure we check all the boxes the brief needed while presenting the work as a striking a cinematic illustration.
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Interview with
3D Concept Artist, Josu Solano
Question.01
Why did you choose this specific topic?
The main idea for the class was making it relatable to real client work, cases I have come across, not necessarely in subject matter per se, but the type of work, the things that need to be taken care off and how to take care of them. Specifically relating it to a film task that could have both VFX and real world set aspects to the image, and on top of that a case where there is a lot of elements. How to handle big scenes like this and figure out ways of keeping them manageable in a timely manner and still resolving the problems the client has is what I am focusing on this class.
Question.02
What makes your class different from other classes?
I suppose that making it as much of a specific case scenario that could happen on a film production, that feels like it could be driven by some script with real needs by a director, a production designer, a VFX supervisor, etc. That's what will make the things said and workflows used more valuable I believe. But then again you could use whaetver you learn for every other work case you may come across, I use this knowledge everyday for every job, not just that one case scenario.
Question.03
What do you think is the most important trait(s) to success in your industry?
I think the most important traits in this industry are first fundamentals, those will follow you anywhere and never let you down, they will help you get across the simplest sketch, to the most complex image, to giving feedback as an art director, no matter how much the industry evolves. And it will evolve, so my second trait would be resiliance and the will to put the work, regardless if you are entering the industry or comfortable in it, it changes all the time and quite quickly so you have to stay on top of things. Last but not least you have to be easy to work with, most projects are group effort and as such you have to be able to deal with peole, social skills, communication, follow feedback, stay in the conversation, push towards the goal...making an effort so that people want to work with you.
Required Programs
This course will use Blender, Photoshop.
Please purchase and install these program(s) for an optimized chapter experience.
*These programs and/or materials will not be provided with the chapter.
