Updated: June 7, 2013
It is truly amazing how much can one person advance in their own skill and mastery of certain topics. My own perception of my 3D skills is a great example. I would always get super-excited about some project I made, and then later on, after spending several hundred hours more perfecting my other works, I would look back and laugh at my own unwarranted self importance. My Mechwarrior is a great example.
Which is why we have yet a third gallery featuring this awesome model. The basics do not change. They never do, and this makes it all the more incredible. Take my DD-71 ship. The first render was rather average, the second one fairly great. So I dare not think what will happen in another year or two, when I upgrade my coolness to yet another level. To wit, we have this latest Mechwarrior gallery, and it's the best yet. Honest. Plus it comes with some mind-boggling GIMP effects, so you might want to waste a moment of your life and scroll through. Focus on the images, ignore the text if you will. After me.
Gallery
I made my Mechwarrior participate in an activity, which always adds realism. Somewhat like my Forlorn image in the second article. This time, I made the Mechwarrior stand in rain and sand storm, facing a city, with missiles firing off in the background, aircraft shot down and nuclear explosions shocking the panorama. I took authentic footage of all three, missile launches, planes plummeting from the sky, and a nuclear warhead going off from the historical archives of the US Air Force, Navy and whatnot, and then carefully integrated them into my own images, using my best GIMP skills yet. Throw in the power of Kerkythea, and what you get is pure unsynthesized leet.
I will not torture you in the fine details of what I did, but most images took a few hours to complete, and come with dozens of layers of scenery and effects, all tailored to make things as realistic as possible. I also made sure my Mechwarrior was dirty, filthy, scratched, and dented, with smear of oil and rust and exhaust, and even missile hits on its metallic body. And this moment, it would be prudent to fire up Iron Man, by Black Sabbath in the background.
And we're done. Awesome, right?
Cheers.