Mech per day project (image heavy)
I have been meaning to implement lots of changes to my workflow for quite some time, but never really took the time to do so. I have also had an idea to do something similar to what Vitaly Bulgarov did with his 10 days of mech, just to give myself a real push to actually do something a bit more substantial and finish it, other than my short tiny livestreams. I basically didnt do any proper personal art for... years?
So I figured I would try to kill as many birds with one bevel as possible. 1. Create something more substantial, something that atleast can resemble production quality of my models (one day counts for a highpoly...right?). 2. Figure out and implement new workflows that I have been thinking about for some time, I need a push to get better. 3. Prove my new workflows to myself, under the harshest conditions imaginable (aka in front of hundreds of people) in a variety of cases, simulating production environments of different kinds. 4. Give myself a real design challenge, and see how it goes, when I have no way to back down and have to deliver.
I set myself a date when I would start the challenge, and I had until then to prepare myself. I managed to get the workflow working, and thanks to the guys at the Foundry, I also got permission to use the new Modo beta 11.1, which greatly improves things for me. After some back and forth with William Vaughan, I also made a late addition to my workflow with the polystein kit, which I think is a brilliant tool, esp as it keeps evolving. In hindsight I did not prepare well enough though, my kitbashgame was weak, and I found myself short of many things that would have sped up my process. Streaming for 8 hours per day was just as exhausting as I thought it would be, but I managed to keep the pace up most of the time. I tried to have a different approach and goal with each model, simply because I do make models for very different purposes (concept and production, games and movies) and not just repeat the same exercise every time.
The kitbashset was an added bonus of this experiment, as people have asked me about one of those for a long time. If it goes well I will make more in the future.
Robot1/day1:
This robot was more focused on detailing things with subD, and a less complex design overall. I completely botched the time aspect of it though, and some parts turned out quite dreadful (the main arms, the shell is also very barebones and unpolished). It was my first 8 hour stream, so my time management was definately off. I also overcomplicated things with the arm-attachment. Certain aspects came out rather ok, like the top of the engine part, but I can absolutely see lots of design changes I would make, there are lots of visually unpleasing lines and designchoices that I would have liked to do differently.
Robot2/day2:
A much larger robot, so the focus was more on using the live booleans to get a good base design going, rather than full detailing. This one I could easily spend another day or two on, taking it up to what I would consider a production level, as it stands, its more of a rough concept design than anything else. I am pretty happy with the overall design, it turned out quite well, but it still have a few troublesome areas that I woulkd like to adress. The legs are not quite where I would want them to be, and the guns are very much just blocked out boxes. Overall the design suffers alot from being obvious boxy blockouts, would need to smooth things out a lot more.
Robot3/day3:
This one was by far my favorite. I wanted to challenge myself by pushing away from boxy and easy shapes, and layers with glass, not just metal, hence the spheres. The design was quite timeconsuming, so many of the parts ended up as very basic pieces in order to finish it in time. The legs suffered the most, with some rather nasty and basic sections like the cut between the leg armor and the spikes. But I'm very happy with the end result!
Robot4/day4:
This was a half-day stream, so I made a much smaller design, to be able to finish it in time. I ended up struggling with the design quite a bit, so the end result was very basic in many areas, and have many boxes and hidden away fugly parts. I managed to pull off the look i wanted with the chunkyness, but I failed to get the design where I wanted in terms of layers of mechanical elements, too many pieces that were just showed together for my taste. I actually wanted it to feel a bit more solid, and then adding a layer on top of more complex mechanical parts with tiny springs and hydraulics etc, but it ended up being a bit more messy base instead.
Robot5/day5:
This day was the worst. I had planned to make an animated more complex design, a robot that transformed a bit, but the design never clicked, so after an hour I was pretty sure I wouldnt make it. I gave it another hour before giving up. I then started another design, but still didnt feel it. Gave that one hour before giving up again. I ended up making a quick pistol to wrap the day up early. I guess that just makes it an even better case for variety, some days the designs are just not clicking, and I didnt want to commit to finishing a design I did not like, but I also wanted to see if I could save it, because more often than not when designing things, you have to work against your best judgement, in my experience, to fit the needs of the client.
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