Today we’d like to introduce you to Alessandro Baldasseroni.
Hi Alessandro, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I was born and raised in Milano, Italy, and from a young age, I had a keen interest in all things visual, such as anime, comics, movies, and collectibles. Growing up during the boom of computer science and the internet in Italy, combined with my passion for video games, led me to pursue a career in programming. After completing my diploma, I became particularly interested in mathematics and pursued it further at the university.
As a student, I was admittedly lazy and unmotivated, and I couldn’t avoid mandatory military service. Upon returning, I decided to leave university and started working as an “autocad operator” at a cabling company in Milan. By pure chance, a coworker introduced me to 3D Studio Max, and I became fascinated by the possibilities of creating 3D illustrations. This intersection of science and art quickly became my passion, and before long, I had a rudimentary online portfolio.
I applied to Milestone, a video game developer in Milan, and was hired as a 3D generalist. This was my breakthrough moment in the entertainment industry. What fascinated me most about 3D was the ability to tell stories and narratives with characters. Thus, I began creating more and more of them in 3D, either replicating reality or emulating iconic characters from comics, movies, or anime.
My online portfolio was noticed by American animation studios, and I began doing freelance character work for Blur, based in Los Angeles. This work was taxing as I had to deliver solid work after my regular day at Milestone, but I loved it so much that I dreamt of having a full-time job like that. My dream came true when Blur asked me to relocate to the US and work full-time for them. Thus, in 2007, I moved to LA and began working for Blur as a character artist.
As a character artist at Blur, my role was to create 3D characters for cinematics, commercials, and films. I eventually became the lead character artist but found myself more interested in the craft than in team management. After 8 and a half years at Blur, I moved to Riot Games to work in their cinematic department. I stayed at Riot for about 3 years before moving to The Mill LA as a creature modeler, where I worked on commercials. Finally, in 2019, I accepted a full-time position at Nvidia as a principal character artist. I have been working remotely since then and have found it to be the most pleasant balance between work and personal life I ever had.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Regarding my work and profession, I can confidently assert that my experience has been relatively smooth. I have acquired a substantial amount of knowledge, and as someone who has always enjoyed playing with 3D design as a hobby, transitioning into a professional capacity was not particularly arduous. Although it certainly demanded a significant investment of time, the passion that I felt for the craft made the long hours and countless hours of overtime that I worked without compensation tolerable.
As a non-native resident, I had to adapt to the work ethic in the United States, which I found comparatively more manageable than the one of my home country of Italy. The work environment there has always been considerably less regulated and less professional, which presented its own set of challenges. However, the most significant obstacle that I have encountered has been integrating culturally into American society. As an immigrant, one cannot be fully prepared for the struggles associated with cultural differences; they can only be experienced and adapted to as best as possible. I have had to decide what aspects of my Italian upbringing to retain while determining what to let go of in order to fit better into my new country.
Even after acquiring the American citizenship, I cannot truthfully say that I feel entirely integrated into US culture, The United States is a fantastic country, offering almost limitless resources and professional opportunities. However, when it comes to the quality of life, I still find myself too attached to my Italian roots. As a result, I am unsure whether or not I will ultimately choose to retire here.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Although I can tackle fairly decently a wide variety of 3d assets (props, vehicles) I specialize in 3d characters. These characters can be used in animation for game cinematics/trailers, commercials, as digital doubles/creatures/toon characters in films and also can be 3d printed to create molds for collectibles. In my eight years at Blur, I worked on hero characters for several triple-A game cinematics which includes titles like Halo, Assassin Creed, Batman Arkham, Star Wars: The old Republic, League of Legends, Resident Evil, Mass Effect and many more. Also had the chance to work on assets for films like Thor: the dark world, The amazing spiderman and Deadpool. My work at The Mill features models for Nike, Geico and other commercials, while at Riot I worked on a wide variety of high-resolution heroes from the League of Legends universe. I also had the chance to sculpt digitally a bunch of heroes from comics and anime intellectual properties for well-known studios like Prime1 and Sideshow Collectibles. In regard to 3d printing, I worked on projects that included hero characters from Fist of the North Star, Berserk, GI JOE and DC.
It`s really hard for the to tell what I’m most proud of cause I always tried to treat each task as a chance to improve something based on new knowledge or simply to improve the craft. Strangely enough tho I was insanely proud of an illustration I did in 3d for a Warhammer campaign. I’m a big fan of that franchise and I was commissioned for that piece I put so much extra time cause I wanted to make it as best as I could. The illustration ended up being used as a front-page material for the launch campaign of their new Sigmarite character and a few years later it won the first place at of the Gemmel Award for fantasy. I have fun making illustrations but I’ve never done that for a living, so that made me particularly proud 🙂
I`m not sure if there`s anything that really sets me apart from others, there are so many talented character artists out there. What I can tell you is that attention to forms first and details after has always been my modus operandi. In a job like ours it`s all about the execution (the translation in 3d of a 2d idea), cause most of the time the concept comes in the form of a photographic reference or a piece of concept art, so if I really have to point something that sets me apart from the average is a “good execution”, an execution that leaves a very narrow margin for notes, or an execution that embellishes and improves the rough idea of the concept. Hope this makes sense 😉
What are your plans for the future?
Currently, I appreciate the balance between my work and personal life. If I were to consider future plans, I might envision a scenario where I can create my own designs and 3D print them as part of a business venture. However, this idea is still in its early stages of development in my mind.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://alessandrobaldasseroni.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alessandrobaldasseroni/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alex.balda.52
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alessandro-baldasseroni-685a5a/
- Other: https://www.artstation.com/baldasseroni
