So, this is Mat the Cowboy! I had originally wanted to do Mat the Astronaut but I feel like there wasn't enough color variation for this project, so I pivoted last minute to a cowboy. I ultimately think that this turned out WAY better than the Astronaut would have.
I wanted it to feel like an old hand painted sculpture from someone's grandpa from back in the day. I really wanted to push the grime, peeling paint, and I really wanted to try to convey that this is an old toy. I wanted to include a little note burned in the wood from "Grandpa". I also wanted to move away from my perfectionism when it comes to 3D modeling and texturing, so I think all of the imperfections just pushed the story that someone's grandpa painted it and maybe his hands were a little shakey.
Techniques
I started off using the Wood Beech Vein smart material on the base. I thought the wood looked kind of old and the pattern of the wood was close to what I was looking for. I then started messing around with the color of the base. I chose the color of the wood I wanted and then I added the MatFX Peeling Paint filter and I messed around with the settings until I was happy with it. I added a reddish color on top because I wanted to look like the wood was slightly dyed from the paint being on it for all of these years. Finally, I added a dark red grunge texture on the base so it looked grimy and dirty. I did pretty much the same thing for the rest of the mesh.
For the body, I painted on the boots, jeans, vest, belt, shirt, and buttons. All of those lines on the shirt were hand painted on. I then added a black outline and of course added a grunge texture and the peeling paint filter and messed around with the settings. I wanted to mess around with the dynamic brushes, so I added a piece of tape around the arm to show that it was broken at some point.
For the head, I drew on a little roblox-esque face and hair, and then I added the grunge texture and peeling paint filter.
