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Spring Sale highlight: Protofactor on the art of Asset Store publishing

April 15, 2020 in Games | 4 min. read
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Find your new favorite assets during the Spring Sale, happening now at the Asset Store. Get 50% off over 500 tools, complete project packs, 3D art, and more, including some of our most popular assets. Meet one of the Asset Store’s most popular publishers, Protofactor, to see just how much hard work and skill goes into creating amazing, time-saving, AAA-quality art assets.

 

Go to the Spring Sale

 

“Since I was a kid, I’ve always loved stuffed animals, figurines from tabletop games, action figures, animals, monsters and dinosaurs,” says Rodolphe Langlois, the lead 3D artist and CEO of Protofactor, Inc., a small 3D studio and Asset Store publisher. “There is an infinite combination of forms to combine and manipulate in order to create new interesting organic figures. It’s a lot of fun, and developers always need original content to put in their games. I’ll still be here in 30 years creating new designs.”

“Once in a while, I walk in some place like Best Buy or Target and see that there’s a game playing on a screen with some of our assets, or a toy/app combo is using some of our designs on their packaging,” Langlois continues. “It’s always a fun surprise!”

Protofactor creates stunning, finely detailed 3D characters inspired by fantasy, myth, and sci-fi imagery while drawing from the richness and depth of Renaissance masters’ painting styles. From a complete set of painterly forest, farm and African savanna animals to multiple packages of beasts drawn from classic mythology, Tolkien, and medieval fantasy to imaginative sci-fi characters from outer space, the fully rigged and animated creatures that Protofactor makes seem built for storytelling.

Protofactor's new asset Monsters Full Pack Vol 1.
Protofactor's new asset Monsters Full Pack Vol 1.

“Publishing on the platform has always been an easy and smooth process,” he says. “Receiving monthly income for my creations thanks to Unity’s online store has been the greatest thing that happened to me.”

With over 190 wildly popular packages published on the Unity Asset Store, the small Southern California-based studio’s main focus is 3D character design, but they also have a game called Stellar Ghosts Online in the works, with an alpha version hitting the Steam store soon.

Screenshot of Stellar Ghosts Online.

Protofactor’s path to Asset Store publishing

Langlois started creating 3D art content in 3DS Max 4.3 in the very early aughts, and he discovered Unity in 2009 with version 2.5. “It was so much better and easier to use than any other tool that I was using,” he says. “I was converted right away.”

At first, he was just creating content for personal real-time projects, but he noticed Unity’s new Asset Store in 2010 and spotted an opportunity to make a living as a full-time artist without having to work nine-to-five for somebody else. He jumped into Asset Store publishing in early February 2011 and made his first sales by March. 

Langlois says he’s always been a big fan of tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons, Dark Eye and HeroQuest, and loved video games like Zelda and Gothic 3. “Creating characters that were part of my imagination with my own personal twist was just a natural way to go,” he says, adding that he’d been drawing fantasy creatures since he was four. “Also, there was clear feedback on the forum that Unity users were looking for heroic fantasy content.”

Striking a balance between his passions and what users want has been a lodestar for Protofactor studio. “Persevere, be patient, analyze the market. Try to identify where there is possibly a gap and try to fill it,” he says, when asked if he has any tips for someone starting out as an Asset Store publisher. “Be very, very professional when responding to customers and users. They pay close attention to reviews and especially answers from publishers. This demonstrates how much the publishers care about their products and user base.”  

While the business and its customers are key, at the end of the day, for Langlois it’s about the process of creating his striking characters that counts. “Basically, I’m an artist. Any artist you will meet can’t stop creating,” he says. “There are so many things I want to bring to life. I’ll still be working on it at 80 using Unity 2057.3.”

Save up to 70% on Protofactor art assets in the Spring Sale

Save $175 on HEROIC FANTASY CREATURES FULL PACK Volume 3 throughout the sale, and on Tuesday, April 21 (Pacific Time), you can grab SCI FI CHARACTERS MEGA PACK Vol 1 for 70% off during the Daily Deal. That’s nearly $250 in savings for 30 high-quality robots, creatures, and humanoids.

 

Go to the Spring Sale

April 15, 2020 in Games | 4 min. read

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