THIS GUIDE HAS BEEN CREATED TO HELP YOU TO BECOME A BETTER ARTIST (or at least close to)

and I'm NOT claiming that I'm the best artist in the world by any means but I've seen worse and I created this guide to pull them up to my point or even higher. I wish you all good things.

Use HWM models
and Viewmodel models for hands.

That's it.


Courtesy of TurnTwister

I've seen many people that just don't even add lights to their scenes
and I can't stop telling you that Lights Are Important! Just adding a few lights can make your scenes or projects A LOT better.

But.. not like this.



Let's talk about basic lighting setups

BUT I KNOW ABOUT TREE POINS LIGHTING!

Three points lighting is a lighting setup usually and mainly used on portrait studios and most of the time just doesn't fit in with your project but it is acceptable.
Let me tell you, there are no perfect lighting setup. It's all based on your scenes, characters, and the mood of the project. For example, If I WERE to use an outdoor sunlight setup on a dark map, it wouldn't work obviously.


god-like lighting tutorial by XieLonely

Posing is another factor that MAKES or BREAKS your project.

For example, if you have a scene with god like lighting but the posing is just so damn off the viewers are just going to consider it as a bad poster. so, it's very important.

Here are some tips for your posing:
- Move all possible bones. (don't if don't have to)
- Think just as if you were the character, if you were experiencing it, what would you do and recreate that.
- Make it obvious about the mood/pose. (you can exaggerate it if it wasn't obvious enough)

Let's talk about sequences.

What are sequences? Sequences are pre-made poses by valve which are often used in-game or in shorts.
It's OKAY to use sequences but there's a way to make it more OKAY which is.. optimizing it.
You don't want your poster to look like a screenshot that came out straight outta the game.
So, use it wisely.

Common grain mistake!

Please do this:


Please read before rendering!
Think more than twice before rendering then ask yourself "Is this okay?" if the answer is "Yes, I am okay with it" just press render and you'll get a work with that much effort put in. But if the anwser "I think I can do better", hit Save and close SFM and work on it tomorrow. Trust me, it's gonna be better.
Repeat till you get a god-like result.

This is gonna be a long a*s section.

Editing is essential in your project.
I've seen many good sfm renders but you can make it 1,000 times better by just editing.

You can even edit your images on browsers. Just google it.
There are many good presets there that you can apple to your images BUT choose wisely. If you were to apply a windy cold blue-ish preset on your desert project, chances are it's gonna look bad.
Now, let's talk about manually editing your poster.
There are many programs that you can use to edit your poster, my preference is Photoshop.
It has a lot of abilities to enhance your poster. Literally it can do EVERYTHING. plus if you combine it with some plugins, GUCCI.

Magic Bullet Looks.
I'm just gonna call it MBL from now on because.. yeah
What is MBL? It's a plugin which you can install or add on to your Photoshop, Premiere pretty much every program that it's willing to.
I use MBL on ALL of my projects (after I've known it ofc)

Here are some examples:

Before:

After:

examples by Cpt.Sourcebird

MBL is very very underrated but that doesn't mean that you don't need skill to use it though.

It's one of those things that makes or breaks your project. Gonna tell you just that.

Here's a quick GIF of me editing one of my posters:


Download MBL:


Adding texts to your posters.

Adding texts can be cool but do it wisely.
and DON'T do these:

- Techno Fonts (WHY?)

- Purple/Red/Green/Blue/Pink/Yellow Colored Text.

Now this is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ important section.

Overpricing.
I've seen beginners set their price up to KEYS just for some pixels and don't let me tell you what beginner's pixels combined together look like.
If they find another artist that does better than you with lower prices, obviously they're gonna choose them.

You SHOULD start by making posters for FREE. Even I've done that for my first 20-30 posters.
and just gradually increase your price rate to 3 ref, 5 ref, 10 ref.
Ok, here's the point.

You do art because you LIKE it not because you WANT money.

Let me tell you, if you make art just for those keys you're just gonna rush it and it's not gonna come out good. Have some time with it. That's why you should start off by doing them for free.
You get experience, you get friends, you get a portfolio, you don't hurt anybody's wallet, you get to know what it's like being an sfm artist.

and when you get bigger, your works improve in quality you can start setting price rate for your work so you don't get overflowed with requests plus, you can earn money by just doing the thing you like. How cool is that?

Just to let you see and believe that I've done it too, here is my first work and I'm not even going to pick my "proudly present" artwork to show-off you can just go on my profile :)


My first SFM artwork.

One of the best ways of getting better is to Surround yourself with people that are better than you but choose wisely.
Here are some people that you should look up to with their breath-taking works.


"Utopia" by Shtopor[heavy-shtopor.deviantart.com]

"Interesting Story" by Leonses[leonses-vlad.deviantart.com]


"Luke Skywalker" by XieLonely[xielonely.deviantart.com]


"Open Season" by BreadBlack[breadblack.deviantart.com]


"You didn't see that coming" by Sync.[sync-7.deviantart.com]

All credits goes to the original artists. Click on their names to visit their DeviantArt profiles.

Another way of surrounding yourself with better people is getting in communities such as Discord servers, Deviant art, ext.

Here is a good and active discord server talking about sfm.

Source Plaza[discord.gg]

You can see famous people there too!

First thing first, Thank you for reading my guide on becoming a better SFM artist.

Here are some of the most important things that I've had included in this guide just to clear things up.


- Use HWM/Viewmodel models.

- Use lighting wisely.

- Don't shine a harsh light straight to your model faces.

- Move all of the bones on a model.

- Edit your posters based on the environment.

- Look up to people better than you.

- Get involved in communities.

Thank you for reading this guide.

I'm sorry If I said something wrong or did something wrong or offended you in any means, I didn't mean to.

I wish you all the best!

Thank you!

-Arno