After a long time without any posts I have finally finished the flying robots book and I did another 3d version of one of the robots as a fun side project. 

The Flobots book is available in hardcover and softcover by following this link: 
​http://www.willdutoit.com/flobots.html

Here is the little electrician flying robot that I built in 3d.

The game I've been working on with the great team at Io-Interactive has been nominated for a 2017 BAFTA in the category, Evolving Game. 

More details here: http://www.bafta.org/games/games-awards-nominees-2017#evolving-game

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As I continue to focus on my new books about robots, there hasn't been much time to dedicate to much else. I did do a little concept image just to take a short break from the robots over the last month:

This month I've been adding some new images to the Rockstar Animals Collections. Now there is a Lazy Lioness and Cool Rhino as part of the collection.

One more little flying robot to the flying robot family. This time a caring Nurse on her way to help those in need.

This month I have received a wonderful gift. It is a bronze 3d print and it is amazing. Well, it's actually not solid bronze by a bronze plated stainless steel print. It stands about 75cm high and is hollow inside the chest cavity. Shapeways did a great job with this. I used Zbrush to prepare the modeland it is a great tool for getting character models prepped for printing.

This month I have been working on a new image and testing out some new workflows. The image is called Riverside Tank Battle and was done using various software. Zbrush was used for the modelling, Substance painter for the materials and Octane to render the scene out. 
Below you can see the completed image and under that there are single shots of the Sneaky Soldier and the Scorpion and Spider Mechs.

This month we have another flying robot, a new Hero on a bike and an updated Armoured chicken being prepped for 3d printing.

First up, this is a new knitter robot painting from the flying robot collection 

Another new painting for the Heroes on Bikes collection. This one was done for a family member who is a fan of the collection. 

Lastly, I've been redoing the details and splitting this old model into sections with keys. It is going to be printed in a high resolution resin and painted once complete. I'm looking forward to the end result and I will post some more pics of that once it's complete.

This month I have been revisiting some old models and reworking them in Substance Painter. All modeling done in Zbrush and materials in Substance Painter. Renders done in Iray.

First up is my engineering bot that has had a rework of the textures. I'm happy how it turned out and getting those dirty metallic surfaces looking just right is really great.

Next up is the space ship from the painting last month. I decided to add some more detail to it and refine the materials a bit more. 

After a busy start to the year I have managed to find some time again to create some artwork to post. 

Starting off with my most recent painting I finished called 'Clearing the gate'. It was inspired by a scene in one of my favourite scifi books, Broken Angels by Richard Morgan, that I reread recently. 

Next is all the Panda Mechs together as one big team. It's nice to see them all together for comparison

The next three images are of old models that I have re-textured using Substance Painter. This is a great program and was really easy to get into to start producing great textures. I recommend taking a look if your want to take your textures to the next level. 

After a break from posting for the last two months here are the latest artworks. 

Starfish ring: Made from silver, this was designed as a gift. 
Raised curve bracelet: Made from black steel. 
Overlapping leaves bracelet: Made from nickel steel.
Panda Team G. Poster: All the Panda Mechs in one widescreen poster.

isHappy new year! Another year has past with many ups and downs. 
This year has been another time of great artwork that I have been inspired by from all over the world. Below is my small contribution to the artwork created around the world each day.

Two new characters from PTG, two new flying robots, an illustration of an armoured chicken, a new baby hero on a bike and to finish it off a ring design as a gift.

As a continuation of the Green Cities Collection, which is all about the potential of current and future green technologies to transform our cities and energy systems, this painting came about when I read about the Xprize for carbon capture which was announced recently. It sounds like a great idea that instead of seeing carbon as a dangerous substance to be destroyed or limited, find a way that it can be harvested and re-used for the better.

This painting is of a very large extraction platform that is anchored in the deep ocean which harvests carbon out of the air and processes it to be shipped of for use in manufacture. I could imagine a large farm of these platforms extracting large quantities of carbon out of the air and converting it into a useful building material. The ships are all driven by electric engines that carry the extracted carbon to land and the airship floating above is used to transport workers to and from the platform.

This month: Stealth Panda, a refueling station among the asteroids and a repaid bot.

I've started a new collection of paintings which are related to the Copenhagen Monsters Collection. It is called The Knights of Copenhagen. The first one in the series is below.

This month we have a generous chicken and a panda, a solar farm in the clouds and a space captain with some great hair. Read more about each creation by clicking on the images below:

From an old character design from a few years ago I did this quick sculpt of this space captain character. She is from an old project that never got off the ground and I wanted to breath some new life into the design. 

Another friendly little gift animal who has a little present for you. This little guy is part of The Gift Animals collection and has been made by Shapeways with the magic of full colour 3d printing. Check him out over at my Shop: 

SHOP LINK

This is the latest painting in the Green City Collection. The idea behind this was a combination wind and solar farm that would provide double the power generation of just a wind farm or a solar farm on it's own. The tube balloons funnel the wind that somehow gets converted to electricity. At the same time the top of the balloons have a coating of thin and lightweight solar panels that generate maximum energy since they are above the cloud cover and get sunshine all day long. At the bottom of the cable would be a small relay station that pushes the generated electricity to the grid or stores it in a large battery. 

This little chicken is part of The Gift Animals Collection. Accompanying him is a Black Cat, a White Cat and a Panda all with their own gifts. I hope to add more generous little animals to the collection in future. 

This chicken and his friends make great little gifts for the that someone in your life that you want to show your generosity towards. 

You can get your own little chicken custom made for you over at Shapeways with the magic of 3d printing. Check it out here: 
Your own Gift Chicken

For anyone in the games industry, this past week is a big highlight in the calendar. All the big publishers and small indies bring their best games to showcase to the world at the annual E3 conference in LA.

This year, the game I have been working on for the past while was finally announced, namely Hitman. It is the next game in the series following on from Hitman: Absolution. There were two trailers released at E3, the announcement trailer and the gameplay trailer. I worked on some shots for the gameplay trailer which you can see below: 

With everyone putting on their very best showcases there was a great many promising games shown. The crafting system of Fallout 4 looked really impressive and no game came close to Just Cause 3 for pure fun and ridiculousness. Once again Naughty Dog did some amazing work on their Uncharted demo and Battlefront had everyone's inner fan boy very excited about the prospect of playing inside the world of the original Star Wars trilogy. A surprise appearance the The Last Guardian was great to see too with some amazing character animation and a real sense of magical wonder evident in the gameplay demo. 
Considering all the amazing games shown I'm still only looking forward to one game, for the second year in a row, that truly seems to promise the player the world, and a universe too. That is none other than No Man's Sky:

No E3 would be complete without the amazing cinematic trailers that lead the marketing efforts. My favorites this year are from Blur Studios( who always impress with their work at E3) with the Fallen Empire and Dishonored 2 trailers and Ubisoft with their impressive introduction to the Assassins Creed world set in London:

Another print has come back from www.shapeways.com and it looks great. This one stands about 10cm in height (see the scale reference photo with keys below) and is printed in the 'Black strong and flexible' material, which is a dyed nylon plastic and is very strong. The print came out great and has retained a high level of detail. I used the 'print it anyway' feature on shapeways which allows you to test out first time prints to see if they will print regardless of errors with the mesh. This model has some errors in the preliminary checks to do with the small detail on the female character's hair but I went ahead and printed it anyway since this is the first prototype.

The design is from an old drawing I did for a boss character in a video game. The whole idea was that the Queen, the female character in the throne, was the brains and the Mule, the big guy, was the brawn. You would have to defeat the queen first while avoiding the powerful attacks of the mule and then you could take down the Mule more easily without the queen issuing commands. The design never made it into a game but I enjoyed sculpting it and bringing the design into the real world with the magic of 3d printing. 

Below is the original 3d design. I had to remove the chains from the print model because they are too delicate to print.

Another week and another Panda Armour design. This week it's an explosives expert called Boom. His armour is designed to launch all kinds of explosive projectiles, even his shoulder armour. 

The Panda Medic below was the first print in the series. The print came out dusty with white powder still visible on the print but this was more than a year ago and Shapeways have made great improvements in their colored material finishing.

It still amazes me how 3d printing works. Not to mention 3d printing with colour. Even though I've had many of my little sculpted characters printed in the past it just doesn't seem to get old. The latest little edition to my collection is this Armoured Panda Tank. It stands about 50mm high and looks great with the colors from the multi-color material. 

Take a look at it over at Shapeways: http://shpws.me/HUIO

Here is what the 3d model looks like that I send off to Shapeways: