Doin' stuff

I've been keeping myself busy with study n stuff since the last post.

I've been designing/refining a vehicle. What I want is vehicle suited to the next generation of Metal Slug games. Metal Slug is quite an "old school" style arcade side-ways shooter. There have been many iterations of the game from the original arcade, and is suited to low-spec systems (My most played version was on the Nintendo Gameboy advance & DS). So far it has been pixel art, but it is standard now for 2D games to be animated around 3D models for efficiency and accuracy (bastion is a good example).

Early concepts to help nail the silhouette and it's character - very easy read on multiple backdrops

This is a work in progress - orthographic images

The tank is characteristically "cute" - being very compact and with large smooth shapes, which suit the cartoon/anime style of the game. I am designing it as the original Metal Slug tank mixed together with a conventional UK digger. It has a main cannon (with limited ammo), a chain gun, and of course a digger for close combat and moving objects.... and digging?

I've been learning more about rendering in 3DS Max (not too happy with this but is a WIP)

I am very tempted to make a high poly tank/digger. Not only to bake/project down, but also for my portfolio - I know quite a lot of hard surface modelling techniques & should showcase them (all the little technical bits look cool too).