I hadn't planned on giving this it's own thread, but it got locked down before I could.

I realize that my Skin Contest entry is somewhat lower standard than it could have been, and this is my narrative of the details of it's creation....

It was a week before the deadline for skin submissions, and I had nada . My previous "metal" skin idea had been to model a light tank off of the Mustang dropped from the shuttle at the beginning of the original Heavy Metal movie. I had rented the movie and taken a ton of screenshots, but in the end my artistic skills and a sudden lack of free time to experiment shut down that line of endeavour.

I had pretty much resigned myself to not submitting an entry again at this point. But then I caught the last 30 minutes of the pathetic Judge Dredd movie, and a certain pretty face caught my imagination: image

What if I did a Heavy tank in this style? Massive, immutable metal. No style except sheer mass.

So I opened up Photoshop and started in. The first thing (and probably the single most inspired part of the whole thing) was the gun barrel. I'm not sure where the metal lattice idea came from, but I think it turned out quite well. If you ever get a view straight down the barrel, you'll see the furnace the red light is emanating from. (nothing graphically special, just a circular gradient)

Next to get built was the main armor. Bulky & indestructible was the goal for it. What I wound up with is a fairly simple texture and shading map. I used a different color and texture map to do the support bars. Underneath the tank I put more metal latticework. If I'd been thinking, I probably would have made the internal furnace visible through the slats here. *shrug*

Then the treads were built, using the same latticework. They don't look quite as nice on a Heavy tank as the treads are stretched horizontally.

This had all taken the week I had before submissions were due, and there was just one small problem with the skin...

It was BORING looking! Almost totally monochrome. Bleah. :P

I needed to add color to it, stat! I decided on giving it a battle-damaged look, rather than a pristine, off-the-showroom look. So I started out with some blast damage to it (cosmetic only, naturally. It's supposed to be nigh-indestructible). Then I added the blue stripes, which if you look closely, you can see not only follow the texture of the skin underneath, but are also battle-damaged and chipped in spots.

That helped a little bit, but not enough. With time running short, I thought a few raised colored metal insignias might help. A good standby was a skull. *shrug* I found a good skull online, layered and colored it for a raised 3D effect, and pasted it in some likely places. I didn't want to put it directly on the side panels, as that was too simple, so they went onto the angled panels. As it is, 4 may have been too many.

Up until this time I had been mentally calling this skin "The Judge" after the movie of it's inspiration, but with the addition of the skulls it no longer quite fit. From Judge my mind skipped around until it became the "Executioner", and the tagline was added to the left fender: "Thou Shalt Not Kill" with the "Not" prominently crossed out.

This was what was submitted for the skin contest. I didn't expect to win, but it was interesting to build.

I was disappointed that the standardized views for the contest hid almost all of the interesting details. :( Unknowing, I had placed almost all of the interesting parts on angled side panels or visible from above and behind (the motto primarily). Unfortunately the front, right and back views couldn't see any of this. Oh well, such is life. ;)

Here are the links to the skin set on PTT and some previews that show the better aspects of it. I realize it's still not good enough to win any beauty contests, but it was interesting to build. XD

Skin Set

Last edited: Wednesday, October 11, 2006 at 7:18:02 PM

In this light, it looks a lot better. Overall, not beautiful, however, you do explore some interesting techniques and new presentations and sometimes innovation is more important. Oftentimes, popular skins, have a certain look and feel that appeal to the teenage set that sorta have a Matchbox car/funny car look to them (and I assume you remember the funny cars. :) ), so its sometimes hard to win appreciation when the masses are stuck on a certain style. I definitely think the lattice is something to keep using.

And I'm with you on the time bust. I made "Scrap" the evening of the final day. My original idea, to assemble a heavy tank from discarded items found in a junk yard, was going to be too time consuming on such short notice. I still think that's a pretty good idea, so I may do it later. Still, what I came up with isn't terrible, though I think I needed more constrast. My bit was using the drawing tool in Photoshop to make the raised armour sections, somewhat following the contours of the tank. I've done that a little in the past, so its nothing new, just not this extensively. The red lights were a little more complicated to produce since I used several layers to make them, but until they can really emanate light in game, lights are tough.

So, are you going to run the #4 challenge?

I definatelt see it is a new light now... No really, did you add some lighting effects? :P

I thought it was a good skin from the getgo. Good job. Got more votes that my two did!

No lighting effects intentionally added. Just from angles that show off the pieces. And I received 0 votes, so I got just as many votes as you did. Actually, you got twice as many as I did, having two skins that each got at least that many. XD

Yeah, it looks much better when presented this way.

Both of mine were just the result of days and days of blending, darkening, lightening, softening, sharpening, etc. Lots and lots of layers were used, over 25 in fact! I tried to make them as real looking as possible.

I took mine out because I wanted to release them and get my name on them.

Yeah, crankshaft was actually just a big exparament for me. I used some crome metal filters, noise and blurs. I was goign to originaly make somthing like "brimstone" as well, but I though mithril would bode better. Like you said, though, it came out a bit cluttered.

I can honestly say that I think all of the skins submitted for the last contest were very good. I had a tough time deciding.

Kick ass treads

Like it all but that.... Weird....... White stuff on it

It would have fit perfect for the halloween theme!