Back in 2010 I had a lot of strange and ambitious ideas for games, mods and designs. None was more ambitious at the time than Space 3102, ACE's Void, a flight sim/first person shooter featuring the M40 Asteroid Class Explorer. This tiny shuttle was a research vessel, designed for high maneuverability in dense asteroid fields and capable of spending weeks in deep space before returning to base. It featured laser cannons, traditional cannons, advanced collision avoidance systems, had lots of scientific equipment on board and was piloted by the best scientists/astronauts the Earth Space Administration and Defense force (ESAD) had to offer. A real Swiss-army knife of spacecraft. In this old blog post I looked at the ACE and some of the story behind how I came up with it at the time, but I also challenged myself to create a third iteration of the design I had at the time. Perhaps it wasn't the greatest design I had ever made but then again I had only been doing 3D modeling for about two to four months or so. So now, twelve years later, I have finally revisted this design and hopefully improved it a bit, I think that even my seventeen year old self would approve.
Finally came the rest of the interior and the renders (the animation took several days to render because I don't know how to optimise my 3D scenes): Overall this has been a fun side-project, even though I rarely got to work on it, I actually started this project back in December 2021, but I'm happy to call it finished. Maybe I should revisit some other ships from this era, like the Aloadae II, the massive paddle / delta wing passenger shuttle or the Athena, my personal space yacht. We'll see!
Until next time, and as always have a nice day. Been doing quite a few Gamemaker Studio experiments recently, including messing around with 3D for the first time. 3D has been a challenge as the vector math, and lack of built-in functions have been making it much trickier to work with than the usual smooth ride that is 2D in Gamemaker. Still I've come up with some fun projects and I will be using 3D for most future projects for sure. Besides that I also made a quick bird to ward of other birds from our balcony. This was done in trueSpace, of course, and then made in wood and finished with an acryllic paint. That's it for this quick update. Until next time.
The Mallard Starcruiser is a spacecraft inspired by the great sea-planes of old. This spacecraft is a bit of a quick design but I had fun making it nonetheless. Once again I returned this year to update a game project I work on once every year; the anniversary boardgame. Once a year for our anniversary my girlfriend and I play a game that captures our memories from the previous years, our experiences and in some cases our troubles. Every year I also like adding a new gameplay mechanic and this year I decided to take it a step further making it a full on RPG with even a basic questline. The game features various levels with cutscenes in between where I created renders. The character models are animated and made using a mix of MakeHuman and sculpting in Blender. I tried not to get too carried away with the character designs but overall it ended up being a little more work than anticipated and me only getting it done just before the actual anniversary. Here are some highlights of that... There is also a companion app that goes with the boardgame where each of us can control our avatars on the board by giving them simple commands like hostile/defensive stance, toggle weapons and change the direction in which we're facing on the board, just for fun. This was a fun project to work on for sure and I can't wait to see what I come up with next year. With the app and the RPG mechanics, there's a lot of potential for expansion so who knows, maybe next year I'll turn it into Elden Ring...
Redesigned my old TCO-14 rifle from my Interstellar Marines fan-art days. The design wasn't actually made specifically for Interstellar Marines but was a concept I'd made some time earlier that I then turned into a 3D model as it seemed to fit the theme of the game. I always liked the compact design of the rifle and the top rail design that I added later and given the fact most of my client requests now are for firearms ...be they science fiction or more realistic looking... I figured I'd use this as an opportunity to improve my understanding of what makes these things tick, so-to-speak. This is the end result of a lot of 3D modeling and animation in Blender as well and while I'm not too happy with either the design nor the animation, I learned a lot during this project and I'm much happier with the overall design of the redux version vs the original.
The Hover Patrol Car (HPC) from Hyperventila is a versatile vehicle that needs to get around the major cities of the central planets, quickly, be it on the ground or in the air.
I recently revisited this design from way back in 2019 and made a short animation, mainly to improve my knowledge of how Blender works. That's what I'm sharing here today. Oh, and I wrote another development blog on how things are going with the game, check it out! Tymen This is the L.E.V Yorktown, another ship design for a client like the previous blog. This one took a little longer though, about two weeks for both the exterior and interior. She is a fairly detailed ship with detailed hull, fully modeled bridge as well as about 42 individual smaller cabins behind those windows.
Another unique design for a client. The Parallax mothership, a ship controlled by an AI that has been on the run for many years. The ship is home to over 100.000 passengers and is more than two kilometers long.
I also had to design the AI's control room. A rugged dark space that is home to the AI itself. Each computer core surrouding the control area. Hi there folks! Besides Hyperventila launching on Steam, I've been doing more and more design commissions for people (gotta pay the bills somehow) and I'd like to just highlight some of my most recent work. Who knows maybe you'll like what you see and commission a design of your own. M an t h a Q u a d c o p t e r This project already rather stands out on its own by being a little more unusual than what I am usually asked to design. A client from Singapore contacted me to design their one-man quadcopter that they may even put into production one day. It had to be light but also enclosed and not higher than two meters. The design was to be used for promotional shots and to pitch to investors. The job continued with additional requirements for animation and adding a character + helmet. This took a bit longer but was a fun challenge nonetheless. Here you can see the two finished animations: Additional animations are planned for this job but seeing as that I was charging less than a tenth of what I should have been charging on Fiverr, I'll have to drive the price up for the next one. M a r s C o i n One of my first commisions ever back in 2014, when this cryptocurrency was just starting out, I was asked to design the official coin for MARS. While perhaps not my best logo design ever they kept it all these years and even recently asked me to design an animated icon for their Discord community. What better way to celebrate the launch of their Discord community than with a rocket launch. F r o m T h e V 3 D A r c h i v e s Now, besides creating new works of art, I've been looking back on my older designs and some of them really deserved a better render. I also wanted to compile a video highlighting my best work in the field of spacecraft and prop design, so I embarked on the arduous quest of importing these old trueSpace models into Blender, setting them up with new materials and giving them a new render. Which brings me to the next project... B r i c k L a u n c h e r
T h e F u t u r e
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My name is Tymen, an illustrator originally from the Netherlands. MY Categories
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March 2023
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