Fern - Frieren: Beyond Journey's End (3D Hand-painted)

Inspired by the official art book and my obsession with the show, I channeled everything I’ve learned into this project. My goal was to create a watercolor feel, honoring the style of Tsukasa Abe, trying to take it directly from the pages and translate it into 3D.

Everything was sculpted in ZBrush, modeled in Maya, hand-painted in Substance Painter, and rendered in Arnold. During the process, I actually did some tests with a more realistic approach for the hair—you can see in the breakdown shots below how much it changed to reach this final stylized look!

This project took a while because I decided to document the entire journey in my Patreon, you can see some of the images in the artstation post.
👉 Full breakdown & tutorials available on my Patreon (Link in Bio). 🖌️(Note: Content is primarily in Spanish, but the main videos include English subtitles).

The shader used for this render is an upgraded version of the "Zuko Shader" I created a while ago. I've tweaked and improved it significantly for this specific NPR (Non-Photorealistic Rendering) look, and I will be releasing this new version very soon.

I’m considering doing a full breakdown for Fern, though the workflow shares some DNA with my Zuko and Ellie projects. If you’d like to see a deep dive into how I adapted those techniques for this specific watercolor look, let me know in the comments!

Thanksss!