Boarding Corvette
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First of all - I'm aware I've been neglecting the blog. It's not like I haven't been sculpting, or working on other cool stuff, but there's quite a lot going on in real life and that is distracting. Good things mostly, but still, a lot.
Boarding Matters
Speaking of the new little ship, I was testing new ships and mechanics in Overdrive, the game I'm working on at the moment (or should I say "one of the games"), and the dynamics of boarding were indeed a bit underused. I wanted something more defining, and more importantly I wanted players who don't have a very aggressive Capital Ship to still be able to annoy opponents with breaches and troops trying to take control of their ships.
Besides, Brennan is busy with a house move, and I really wanted to draw a bit.
Concepts
That meant, I had to sit down and draw myself. I'm not a pro artist (even though people did pay me for concept art many tmes in the past, so I guess I technically am?), and my sketches are not really pretty... but, in terms of exploring the design space, they do the part.
There were quite some options out there, and honestly some of them might come back handy in the future. I settled with an external pod, with its own hooks, which needed some functional design too!
With this settled, and the basic functioning of the magnet sockets and such, I started again with a new shape, a bit more in line with the other corvettes of the game. Which I realize now might not have been showcased here on the blog before. Dang.
Sculpting
Sculpting right after the sketches is a great way to get things right: all the volumes are still clear in mind, and you "only" need to make it in 3D. Easy. :D
It's never just a single iteration. Volumes are blocked out, some stuff added, and people give feedback based on that. This one was too straight, read as if it was moving in the opposite direction of what it was meant to be, so I turned it, and changed some weights.
Fast forward a good day of work (or so), and we're having a better design, with a slanted front, and whe added capacitor on the back really takes away the ambiguity on the direction of movement.
I didn't document the development of the pod itself, but the pencil sketches above were by far the most important step for that.
With that said, a first finished version was ready!
Still some stuff wasn't working right: the pod was too close to the body, both for readability and for simple clipping issues, so I added some spacing in between. Thanks to the advice of a few fellow sculptors, I added a hidraulic spacing between the two parts, and ended up with the actual final piece.
More renders, of course.
The other corvettes, mentioned above, are my current golden standard for the language of this miniature range. And for good reason.
Printed and In Hand
As always, the last step of my process involves cleaning up the 3D mesh, making sure there's no resin sacks, decimating it for ease of handling, and supporting.
The supporting of the Corvette was easy, but the pod was tricky: not only it has some thin spiky parts, but It needs to showcase both the top and the bottom when in use. For that reason, I went for a vertical supporting, which implies a lot of side-beams that made this step definitely painful.
The print came out pretty easily, and no support changes were needed. And here we are.
There might be still some tiny supports, but all in all I call this a success.
That's it for today. Things are evolving fast, and still there's SO MUCH to do before any release. Stay tuned, hold your (space) horses, and keep an eye on the development! Your support matters a lot!
Jack