3D Spider Tank

For starters, I'm sorry this blog has gone more than a year without updating. Infant mortality among blogs is pretty high, but I'm still here and I want to develop this venue more as a place to share works in progress, tutorials, and tangentially related material. I'll be revamping www.doscher-design.com shortly and be using that space to display completed work.  It'll also show up here, of course.  My page at mikedoscher.devianart.com is my most current portfolio, but that green background gives me a headache.

Anyways, some time back I did a painting of an 8x8 armored car that was exploring the 'spider tank' cliche from the direction of superficial realism:

The vehicle backstory is this: An aging APC chassis converted into a rocket artillery unit. The batteries lower and are reloaded hydraulically from a magazine between the tube bays. Normally, the gun would be traversed to the rear when firing rockets to prevent damage to the barrel and muzzle brake. In this case, the commander has left the gun deployed to be able to more quickly engage infantry or light armor. This is the sign of either a highly experienced or dangerously inexperienced crew.

The painting was well-received and I found myself wanting to 3D version of it for some time, especially to explore the layout and action of the drivetrain and suspension.

This is just what I've got so far, though it's going pretty quickly. Most of what I've done lately has been for work, and not the sort of thing I can share because of my NDA.

Consider that for the few moments in between losing everything and the lights going out, you are immortal.

A nameless encounter in a forgotten place during the 2090 Troubles.  Speedpaint, done in Photoshop.

Blog, rise from your grave.

Social media makes me antisocial.

Let's see: We've got Facebook, where you get to call coworkers, distant relations, and people you're stalking 'friends'. Then you've got Twitter, which is optimized for tracking the mood swings of b-list celebrities and seeing what parts of London are burning at the moment. Tumblr is like being hosed down with sparkling unicorn poo.

Hello blaaaawwgosphere, I missed you. Sorry to have bored or otherwise disappointed the five or six very nice people who have clickified on some piece of Berners-Lee magic or another and come here. AS YOUR REWARD: Here's something large and rusty, along with a promise to update more often- regularly even.

Eve Online contest

I took time off from working on the book project to make something for the 'Design an Eve Online Spacecraft' contest that Deviantart was having.

I tried exploring a few different ideas for the design, mostly involving trying to make something with elements of 'classic' space opera vessels while experimenting with shapes that pushed the center of mass forward a little.

I also wanted to explore the tension between a (somewhat) smooth hull and the really baroque machinery and pressure hull underneath it. This is the reason for the 'cracked lava' look.

I started with a loose sketch of my idea, then made a low poly 3D proxy model to explore the basic massing. Once satisfied, I made a very light printout and drew my final linework over it. I did this for both the ortho and plan drawings.

The vessel is designed for a strike role, sacrificing armor for speed and firepower. The vessel name is a sort of comment on the vulnerability of the critical areas. =P

Not dead. Just in Vegas.

Oh hey, still alive- Working for Petroglyph out in Vegas doing concept design for a game of theirs. Also working on a book idea or three. This is what I'm working on right now:

Almost done! I should have it done tomorrow.

Back from... well, somewhere.

Awright, I'm going to start updating this again. Check out what I'm working on right now: