Why don't I like it?

Have you ever tried to model a spaceship? I mean to design it so that it is beautiful to look at. I found out that it is not enough to be able to draw well or to think that you are creative.

It can be more difficult than you imagine at the beginning

When you model something that already exists, you have a template to work from. Of course, this also has its challenges, because a potential viewer, whether he wants to or not, will compare the 3D model with the real model, but also the artist can always optimize and adjust the model to reality.

With fantasy stuff, you might think that if there's nothing to compare, you can just do what you want. It will look good. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

What should a spaceship look like? There are so many templates. I'm sure you'll find something.

So you start to look for a template and model your own model. In your imagination it looks good, but after a few minutes you see something in your 3D modeling program that doesn't look like you imagined.

It is too flat, it is too boring, it is not beautiful

When I finished my first model for the end boss for level 1 I was very disappointed. When used in the game it didn't look nice and it was not tangible to me where the fault was.

I started to analyze it. What was bothering me about the rendering. First I tried to change the colors. A few stripes here and a few dots there, but it didn't change the visual appearance in the game.

The model was just too flat. In the game itself it just didn't look like a 3D model. So I had to make changes to the model again. That meant deleting everything and starting over. This time it shouldn't look so flat and not so angular.

Organic shapes  

Actually a spaceship is a technical object. In technology, everything is functional, straightforward, matter-of-fact, and just by listing these characteristics of a form that is supposed to fulfill a technical function, you realize that it's getting boring.

This is where organic forms come into play. Curves, curvatures and dynamics in the design. This makes the result more lively and also more pleasing to the eye.

So I sit down and work with curves in my 3D modeling program. At first I had a hard time imagining what I was modeling, but over time it got better and better.

For the models in my game I tried to use technical shapes with organic shapes. The round and curved shapes as a kind of cover and here and there you should still see that the object is something technical.