One day, I found myself doom-scrolling on Instagram, trying to figure out how to create a good portfolio piece showing off my Substance Designer skills. In case you don't know, Substance Designer counts as an industry-standard in the gaming industry for creating procedural textures. Procedural implies you build a robust system that let's you generate hundreds or more variations of the same thing. In my case I knew I wanted to do a series of digital fabrics that would work as a cohesive collection. Yet I knew I didn't have enough time to do it all.

This is when suddenly, on my feed, a Reels by Senk Design showed up. I decided to reach out and ask her in good old German directness, and she agreed to work on something together. I was quite excited when she got back to me a few weeks later, showing me her mood board and ideas. We soon started working collectively on a board and sharing more detailed ideas. During a meeting around the same time, I called the collection Sea Breeze, and we just stuck with it.

A short while later, she sent me her first pattern drawing: two cute sardines captured in a checkered set of duo-colored stripes. As some of you can imagine, I loved the original color combo, but eventually, we exchanged it for a new palette that hit the aesthetics of the Sea Breeze capsule collection much better.

You might consider this pattern translation an easy feat in Substance Designer when, in fact, it really isn't. The masking is a bit of a tricky one and I am about to record a tutorial on it that I will share here as well under the paid subscription tier. But for those of you with some insights here is a sneak peek to replicate from my board if you want to give something similar a try:

See you guys soon for more behind-the-scenes info!