I’m Yelena, a 3D Character Artist with a big passion for bringing stylized characters to life. I love combining my background in 2D art, animation, and traditional fine arts to create expressive, story driven designs. I graduated as Valedictorian from Full Sail University, earned several awards along the way, and I’ve continued to grow my skills in professional pipelines while always learning, experimenting, and finding new ways to push my work further. I specialize in stylized characters and am proficient in texturing, UV unwrapping, and retopology. I take pride in communicating clearly with developers and riggers to make sure everything flows smoothly in production. Right now, I’m working at Sty1e Studios INC. and freelancing on the side, where I collaborate with teams, support animators, and adapt quickly to new workflows and tools. I focus on creating clean, game ready characters, staying organized, and keeping the process enjoyable. Whether I’m modeling, polishing details, or helping an idea take shape from a sketch, I love contributing to projects that spark creativity and bring people together.…

Yelena

I’m Yelena, a 3D Character Artist with a big passion for bringing stylized characters to life. I love combining my background in 2D art, animation, and traditional fine arts to create expressive, story driven designs. I graduated as Valedictorian from Full Sail University, earned several awards along the way, and I’ve continued to grow my skills in professional pipelines while always learning, experimenting, and finding new ways to push my work further. I specialize in stylized characters and am proficient in texturing, UV unwrapping, and retopology. I take pride in communicating clearly with developers and riggers to make sure everything flows smoothly in production. Right now, I’m working at Sty1e Studios INC. and freelancing on the side, where I collaborate with teams, support animators, and adapt quickly to new workflows and tools. I focus on creating clean, game ready characters, staying organized, and keeping the process enjoyable. Whether I’m modeling, polishing details, or helping an idea take shape from a sketch, I love contributing to projects that spark creativity and bring people together.…

Available to hire

I’m Yelena, a 3D Character Artist with a big passion for bringing stylized characters to life. I love combining my background in 2D art, animation, and traditional fine arts to create expressive, story driven designs. I graduated as Valedictorian from Full Sail University, earned several awards along the way, and I’ve continued to grow my skills in professional pipelines while always learning, experimenting, and finding new ways to push my work further.

I specialize in stylized characters and am proficient in texturing, UV unwrapping, and retopology. I take pride in communicating clearly with developers and riggers to make sure everything flows smoothly in production. Right now, I’m working at Sty1e Studios INC. and freelancing on the side, where I collaborate with teams, support animators, and adapt quickly to new workflows and tools. I focus on creating clean, game ready characters, staying organized, and keeping the process enjoyable. Whether I’m modeling, polishing details, or helping an idea take shape from a sketch, I love contributing to projects that spark creativity and bring people together.

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Language

English
Fluent
Russian
Fluent

Work Experience

Character Artist and Animation Artist at Style Studios
January 31, 2025 - November 14, 2025
Animated game cycles for quadrupeds and humanoid characters. Sculpted, retopologized, UVed the character in Blender, and textured characters in Substance Painter.
Character Artist Intern at Full Sail University
August 1, 2025 - August 1, 2025
Modeled in ZBrush, retopologized in Maya Autodesk, and textured characters in Substance Painter. Cooperated alongside technical artists to develop rigged models for Full Sail students to use for animation.
Character and Animation Artist at Global Game Jam Team Rubber Ducky
December 31, 2024 - December 31, 2024
Designed, 3D modeled in ZBrush, and textured characters using PBR workflow. Created all idle and cycle animations for all models in Maya Autodesk.

Education

Bachelor of Science in Game Art (B.S.) at Full Sail University
January 11, 2030 - May 1, 2015
Diploma in Fine Arts at Serov Art School, Moscow
January 11, 2030 - May 1, 2022

Qualifications

7 Full Sail Course Director's Awards
August 28, 2023 - May 9, 2025

Industry Experience

Gaming, Other
    uniE621 CHUN LI
    My first project done fully in Blender, aside from Texturing. I went full in to learn Blender in just 2 weeks. I started with a base mesh I made from scratch to refine my knowledge in sculpting before getting to the full modeling part. I can't wait for this to be properly rigged. I can see people giving her SO much personality and attitude in their animations. Concept art by: JIN YI…
    uniE621 Golem Critter
    The workflow for this little guy was quite different from the characters I've worked on before. I picked up a lot of new tools and techniques that helped me optimize and save time without sacrificing quality. One of the highlights of this project was diving deeper into Blender’s rendering system. I especially enjoyed creating a custom shader for a thin outline—it was a fun challenge. A few years back, I dabbled in coding as a hobby, so the logic behind shader creation really clicked with me and got me hooked. This piece will be later rigged for students to use for their demo reels. Additionally, this project was in collaboration with Hecmarie Rodriguez, her Golem Critter is linked below as well. Concept art by: Kirill Svetlakov…
    uniE621 The Headless Maid. ZugZug Challenge
    First Project where it was me creating the Concept art, the Model, The Texture, The Rig, and The Animation. I have been struggling a lot with Animation with my previous characters because I wasn't familiar with Rigging and just used Auto Riggers. However, I decided to buy a coarse online for Blender Rigging and was able to successfully make my first Rig and Animate with ease my Headless Maid! The hardest part of this project was creating the stylized effect. I decided to settle for a design with little additional Props, because I knew I wanted to push my knowledge in Blender Shader Creation and Rigging. I am incredibly happy and thankful to everyone who provided me with feedback, it elevated my work by a mile! This project was a very big and scary journey. I had a lot of ambitious ideas that I wasn't sure I knew how to execute. After a few tries of remodeling and a LOT of googling, I created this model. Thank you Zugzug for this cool and amazing opportunity and space to share and learn 3D art!…
    uniE608 Hellfire Skeleton
    I've been recently working on this awesome Hellfire Skeleton concept. I severely underestimated how hard this project would be, due to having such a loose sketch as my main reference. So far this has been the longest I've ever spent in ZBrush on a project. However, I can confidently say that this improved my sculpting by a mile. Additionally I made special effects - fire, smoke, and glare. It was hard to figure out the very base, because there isn't a simple tutorial for keying 2d Animation like this online. However, after I figured it out, it was super easy to get it drawn and animated. concept art by Baldi Konijn animator 3Dmodel 3Dart…