The dagger was modeled in Blender, painted in 3DCoat + Photoshop, and based on a concept by the mighty Baldi Konijn. No AI used.
I made this dagger to really solidify my new workflow. The model looked pretty simple from a modeling perspective, but it turned out there was actually quite a bit to figure out. You've probably seen this concept modeled by a lot of different artists already (and maybe you've even seen my version before xD).
This project became something new for me, but in a completely different way.
I don't really care about likes on ArtStation that much (only in case it helps a project stay on the main page for as long as possible and maybe get noticed by an art lead looking for an artist for their team xD), but this one really blew up. I made it relatively quickly, and it got about twice as many likes as my most popular project ever. It also completely outperformed all the illustrations I'd spent tons of time and effort on, carefully thinking through every detail.
After these two weapons (this dagger and the axe from my previous post) some really cool artists from studios where I'd love to work started following me. And that was very strange, at the time, besides looking for a fulltime illustration job, I was also trying to make it as a commission artist. That meant putting a lot of effort into social media and visibility. And despite all that effort, I never managed to get a stable stream of commissions. With 3d, I wasn't even trying to do anything special. I considered these my first learning projects, and didn't really think they had much artistic value beyond that.
And of course, I had a ton of fun working on this dagger.
This was also the point when I realized that I'd really, truly moved on from 2d illustration to 3d. It wasn't just me trying something new anymore.