3D Thursday - Insignia

I'm going on record that Blender is a much easier program to learn then Lightwave.  Each of these took about an hour to make from scratch, while they took a lot longer to make with an Illustrator file before.  I think they even render better!  Anyway, I'll be using these both in the comic and a second attempt at earrings.  


Did I post about that before?  They turned out too small and looked terrible.  I think these will turn out a lot better since things have been sized for tiny printers.  The divots on the Autobot and Decepticon insignias are bigger so it would be easier to paint white on the bottom and the backing is a lot thinker to make them sturdier.  I printed the first run on Frosted Ultra Detail, but since the details aren't super intricate, the next run will be White Strong and Flexible.  It's on the backburner, but should be printed up before Christmas (you know, for gifts).

Insignia

Just a quick render of the three insignias I'll be using. They're my first models in Lightwave and they definitely show. I'm still figuring out the cel-shader and you would not believe how long it took me just to figure out how to get the image files into 3D. So far this transition has been a lot harder that I thought it would be.

Insignia

Any good Transformer fan knows that a faction starts with an insignia. You can't have an Autobot, Decepticon, Maximal, etc without a little robot face on it somewhere (or an M in the case of Minicons). So as soon as I started modeling, I created this guy - it's actually the first thing I ever made in Max.


If it looks familiar to you, congratulations. It's a stylized combination of the fve minibot repaints from 1986. The visor is from Outback, the mouthplate is from Pipes, the crest is a combination of Hubcap and Swerve and the rest of the face is rounded out by Tailgate. There is a reason for it being made this way which will be related at some point in the story. Yes, that's right, I'm writing a fanfic, deal with it.


As you can see from this picture and the title image, I'm going with a cel-shaded look most remiscent of the Energon series. I want this to look like a cartoon and cel-shading looks good with minor details. I've tried numerous techniques for getting it to look right and I think I've settles on the one I'm going to use.

Now I just need to pick a color for the thing.