I always found it interesting to show the process in making art/craft. I grew up watching Bob Ross and have always been interested in tutorial books. And just like the masters I'd love to contribute my knowledge to anyone curious enough and want to learn. Personally Im loving 3D and I have only just begun to really expand on that interest over the last few years, but still I have so much more to learn. For now though I just want to share what I have learned in this journey so far.

The making of the Snake Way Cruiser

The idea is to make a retro-futuristic hydro-electric car... why not.
First step was to gather inspiration and a base shape for the vehicle. I wanted it to look 'normal' enough that it could almost pass as a real one. At this point I was imagining Zootopia-esque chibi proportions and was mentally preparing for a stylized look. I don't have a concept art to go off of so I looked up a few concept cars on Pinterest and got right into modeling In Blender.

Traditionally you are gonna want to have some kind of concept art to work off of, for this project I chose to go without. Down the line I will have to do some kind of look development as I model anyway and end up having to make up parts that the concept art doesn't cover. Basically I'll do all of the concepting in real time. This way I can exercise my creative muscles and still get some art done While moving the project along.

First block-in 07-03-2020.
Didn't look much but happy to get most of the pieces in there. I just have to spend some time working on the overall shape from there and slowly flesh out each part.

I tried drawing some ideas a little bit and realized that it was a much slower process at this point in time.  But somehow it still helped flesh out ideas that were swirling in my brain.

After a few sessions of experimenting with various hoods and grill placements, I decided on a design that suits the retro-future style I'm going for. But I was ready to move on to another part of the car to release some frustrations and work on something different for a while. I transitioned into the interior and started putting as much futuristic car stuff I could imagine. Good thing I had some good references to take me there.

Kept the block-in pretty simple only using primitive shapes to set things in place. I just want the feel of the interior, no need to go into heavy details just yet…

... that's what I told myself until I just started going ham on this thing. I got into my flow and just let my creativity do its magic. Some time passed, days turned into weeks, then months, my gold fish drowned, and before I knew it the interior was built out.

I was aware that these details were something you weren't really going to be able to see from the outside but its fun to put this stuff together anyway. It’s all about the details that no one is looking for. I just had to make sure not to overdo it, things just have to make sense where you put them.

These rims for example, designed aerodynamically so that it would naturally push air into the breaks system in relation to how fast you drive the cruiser. Does it actually work?… I don't know but it looks like it does so I just went with it.

12-30-2020 - Months later I finished the overall car and was ready to add some color to it.

Stage 2: Basic Material Block-in

01-08-2021 - car is finally finished
Used some pretty basic materials here just to get the feeling of realism, I still remember to keep things stylized. I just cranked up the emission for the lights, played with the metallic sliders and roughness. No (bake)maps were used. Basically I did some magic and now it has some color. I remember it took me a couple of days to get it to feel right but adding the materials also helped me to better visually tweak some elements of the car.

At this point I felt like it was done and finally ready for staging and lighting. I remember wanting a mountain but quickly remembered the ”Snake Way” road from Dragon Ball Z. So I gathered up more references from the anime and started modeling the body of the road, then slapped some HDRI into the background to help start the scene.

Stage 3: Building the Snake Way

This part of the process was pretty straight forward. I kept adding to the scene every time I got a chance to work on it. Started with the scales, the mountains, then the telephone wires with the birds.

Thought it would be hilarious to model out King Kai and Bubbles to complete the scene.

02-24-2021 - The intended render was completed!
Then I decided to render out an animation too. No problem - Put on my favorite film maker face and went straight into it.

I used the same camera I used to render this shot. Decided I wanted a little parallax effect and realized I can simply rotate the camera around a focal point during the whole animation to achieve the effect. Parented the whole car to a 'curve', wired the wheels so it would only rotate in relation to the roads surface. Spent some time smoothing out the animation curves. Animated the bird. Turned the tires in relation to the turn. And After some quick youtube tutorials on how to export animations from Blender, put the animation together in After Effects and by 05-07-2021 the project was finally complete.

The project started 07-03-2020 as a project to keep me busy through the pandemic. By putting an hour or two of my time into it whenever I could, I ended up finishing it by 05-07-2021. Around 500hrs of love done mostly on Blender.

I am proud of what it turned out to be and grateful I took on the challenge, it only made me a better artist! Thank you for reading.

Please view the Finished animation

-LyndlK

When Larian Studios dropped their first cinematic trailer of their next game Baldur's Gate 3, I lost my shit. I was so inspired by the visuals I started sculpting squidward here in Zbrush then continued to work in Blender. Pretty much with no real direction I started putting him together but quickly realized that I didn't like the design that much. Instead of completely scrapping the piece I continued to work on his skin and slapped on some basic materials on the rest of his body as filler-art. I used Substance Painter to create the materials.

Spent a good amount of time redesigning his armor piece to look a little more appropriate for one such as the Mind Flayer (whatever that even means). I figured these guys are like octopi-wizard-parasites so I made it's armor look like a battle wizard of sorts with Cthulu inspired designs engraved onto the shoulders. I know - pretty cool.

Now this piece isn't quite done yet but I am happy with where it's at for now. Stay tuned for some updates!