Avengers Infinity War: Stormbreaker

For Infinity War, I modeled, sculpted, and textured Stormbreaker, based on the concept art by Ryan Meinerding. Since a lot of what I sculpt and model goes to practical effects in addition to VFX, I wanted the texturing to actually be sculpted into the model for 3D printing. In the film, the axe is poured and cast very quickly, so I thought having the texture reveal rapid cooling patterns across the surface would be a nice addition. Ryan rendered this model in KeyShot, which was my first exposure to the program about 5 years ago. Since then, I’ve become very comfortable with it and use it for base renders for most of my work before going into Photoshop. Stormbreaker remains one of the coolest props I’ve sculpted, to-date!