CGSociety has a nice writeup on Martina Johansson’s “Fairy Girl” model and rendering, showing her prowess with a whole collection of tools ranging from modeling to painting.
I tried a lot of different styles for the wings. For example I tried give her big butterfly wings but quickly realized that I wanted the wings to be much smaller and with less details to put more focus on the girl. This is in fact something I think we 3D artists can learn from painters. Not everything needs to be given details just because it’s hard or impressive. Give parts of less importance fewer details and vice versa. At least for still images. I made the basemesh in Modo. I then transferred that into ZBrush where I started the actual sculpting. I used Photoshop for the textures and Modo for lighting and render.
