I started building about three years ago, making pretty mediocre builds at first (flat walls, blinding color pallets) before I took a look at some freemodels and slightly modified them to get better and better. After that, I became confident enough to create my own builds. Here are a few main tips I learned on the way:
- Look at flat walls that lack detail. Add things like pillars, structural support, or textures to that area to break up the blandness.
- Pick a good color pallet that suits your build (no one likes to see bright neon on solid black)
- Try not to use blocky shapes all the time - mix it up with some angels and curves.
I outline these tips in full detail + more in my guide, here. While it is geared towards sci-fi builds, all of the tips explained in the guide can be applied to other areas of building and design.
Other resources that helped me learn is looking at videos surrounding design theory and how to execute your build correctly, like this one. This video in particular really helped me step up my building game.
The rest of it was really just experimentation and a long time thinking about what exactly I wanted to do - a good driver was looking at something I made and thinking “That’s not good enough” which really pushed my skills to the limit.
Here’s an example of where I started:
To modifying free models:
Refining my skills:
And finally, today:
