World-building is a time-consuming and rewarding challenge, and the most important thing to make worlds come alive is the clutter of objects and characters that occupy it.

When I first started working with Blender, I really wanted to work in visual development. But it’s truly daunting to start off blank. Over the years, I’ve been able to a set of background props and characters that I use in almost every big project I undertake. Using my own objects in my projects gives me a very rewarding sense of originality, plus it helps improve my spatial and visualization skills. Plus most ready-to-download props don’t come rigged, so the nightmare of figuring that out almost always makes original designs worth it.