Designing Robots, Futuristic Vehicles, and Architectures

 I was at the bookstore yesterday and I found this book Extreme Worlds by Francis Tsai.  He seem to be a very good artist and also a very good teacher.

According to him, in order to draw robots and futuristic vehicles, he often take inspiration from construction vehicles.

On the other hand, when he is designing futuristic architectures, he uses construction buildings as his reference.

The Importance of 2D Concept Art in 3D Modeling

It is very important that you do 2D concept art or better yet have model sheets before you actually construct your 3D models.

Having one could mean the difference between creating a 3D model in a one day to doing it for a week.

In 2D, you could freely draw your props, environment, or characters. Meanwhile if you work in 3D, you will quickly run against a lot of rules like you should keep everything quads (four sided polygons) and you should keep in mind your edge flow.


If you are just practicing your 3D modeling skills, here are sources of concept arts you can use:

www.anime-model-sheets.com

www.celshading.com/gallery