Hello followers old and new I'm Mike and I'm glad you like what I do More art soon

Took it as a material and detail exercise to take some semi weird shapes and relationships and try and sell plausibility. Some stuff looks stupid but should look better with explanatory notes and sketches.

I should finish rendering these. Hands full with NDA stuff lately.

I feel like with some work I could design compelling faction hardware procedurally and that this is where a particular arrow points. Designing in systems rather than images.

Forget everything you thought about EEVEE. It's not just a preview engine in Blender 5.0 anymore. This is photorealtime. Meet EEVEE Realistic Lighting & Rendering. The future is here, and it renders in fractions of a second.

Plasticity + Marmoset bevel shader. Allows for quick iteration, eliminates highpoly decimation shading artifacts, keeps working file sizes slim. Great combo.

I was very meticulous with my drawings for the longest time because I desired to describe a solid thing with its own reality rather than the impression of a moment with light. Rethinking things as tools and skills improve.

2020 I think in the future I might tend to with a looser sketch and then to 3D in many cases. The end goal for me isn't an image but an experience. Something the audience can drive around or blow up. Artist as Dungeon Master if you will.

I have an idea for having armor plates blown off to both track health without and overlay and make damage feel more visceral.

Time permitting I'm going to take this through the full pipeline and into UE5

Stole an hour and worked on the arms.

"Mobile Police Patlabor" —New Anime Project "PATLABOR EZY" confirmed to be an OVA series of 08 EPISODES. Directed by Yutaka Izubuchi at Studio J.C.STAFF, the new mecha series expected to release 2026.

*Compromises AND art direction

Likewise photoreal character design can make characters look fat and lantern jawed when viewed from a wide angle POV, which is common in first person view games so as to not cause motion sickness. Compromises art direction are needed. https://t.co/zJemjEzJ8N

Retweeting this because character design is UI, or at least has a UI dimension.

Not sure if I'm an unc or gruncle at this point

It's not "DO IT THIS WAY!!" but it can be "Oh hey if the shoulder joint is here it doesn't clip and the AD is happy with the solution" along with misc utility animations for unpack and aggro states etc.

It was never about taking away artistic input from the modeler, and concept model can really be tailored for what is appropriate. A busy senior might appreciate a block saving them a few hours and a fresh junior or non- hard surface person might like the visualization.

I think there are some real wheels turning right now seeing where AA is at and how a small, focused team can do something high quality on a smaller budget.

The progressive integration of 3d into hard surface work lets you hit something closer to a prototype at the concept stage. From the procedural textures here I've moved on to real UVs and bakes. The tools have just gotten so good you can think about the workflow differently.

A year ago today I shared this. I've learned a lot working with Stardock and there's a lot of neat stuff coming I can't talk about yet.