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Patrick Byers
Selected work

Ongoing · Independent · Personal work

Prop studies

Props with no shipped title attached. A bridge, a pillar, a table, a pendant, a skeleton — modeled, shaded, then placed in a scene to see how they sit.

Role
Prop designer
Platforms
Personal / study
Focus
Props · Environment
Prop studies key art

The problem

Personal work doesn’t come with a design brief. I use these studies to practice modeling, shading, and placing an object until it feels like it belongs in a world.

The loop

  1. Model
  2. Shade
  3. Place

What I owned

  • Wooden bridge: studio mesh and in-world lighting passes
  • Marble pillar and night grove dressing
  • Altar table, cloth, and emblem
  • Pendant sculpt
  • Ankylosaur skeleton study, multiple views

Stills

The bridge at night — same mesh as the daylight hero, a different sky.
The bridge at night — same mesh as the daylight hero, a different sky.
Bridge studio — wood, moss in the joints, copper vine in the rail.
Bridge studio — wood, moss in the joints, copper vine in the rail.
Marble pillar — wear in the stone, a figure in the relief.
Marble pillar — wear in the stone, a figure in the relief.
Altar table and cloth — the knot sitting on the grain.
Altar table and cloth — the knot sitting on the grain.
Pendant sculpt — relief, silhouette, and a bail that would hang.
Pendant sculpt — relief, silhouette, and a bail that would hang.
Skeletal study from the side.
Skeletal study from the side.
Skeletal study from above — checking that the plates still track as one animal.
Skeletal study from above — checking that the plates still track as one animal.

Process

  1. 01

    Isolate it

    Studio grey first. If the rail, the cloth, or the skull still reads on a blank field, I trust it more once it goes into a scene.

  2. 02

    Give it a place

    The bridge goes over water. The pillars walk you to a tree. Lighting is how I find out whether the prop feels built for a space, not just a screenshot.

  3. 03

    Check the other side

    The skeleton got a side, a top, and a belly so the plates track as one animal from more than one angle.

Outcome

A small independent shelf of objects I can keep working on between titles.