While the majority of kids from the late 80's, early 90's have Nintendo's Mario as their first game hero, I started gaming on a PC with one of the first games of ID-software: Commander Keen. This boy genius built his own spaceship, but got himself marooned on Mars, chased by aliens, jumping around on a pogo stick with a ray gun.
The Italian plumber has been recreated as CGI countless times and I thought my childhood hero deserved a little attention as well.
Because there isn't a lot of reference material, other than the original 16-bit artwork and some cover art, it was a great way learn more about character design, modelling, sculpting, retopology, shading, rigging and lighting.
The in-depth tutorials of
ccgcookie proved really helpful.
It's one of my first (recent) big projects. If you have some ideas on what I should focus on with a next project - it would be greatly appreciated.
Oh man I LOVE this! Hits me right in the feels. One of the first PC games I ever played and I absolutely loved it.
Awesome job!
Very cool. I'm in your category, never owned any nintendo or such, but started with Amigas (toggle switch for extra 2MB Ram :D ), C64 then pc. Keen wasn't my first choice, but I'm familiar with it, so it's very nice to see it again. Well executed too.
I have not seen a Commander Keen reference, particularly outside of ID IP, in a long, long time!
Gotta get me that pogo stick, and I loved the ability to climb up platforms.
Nicely done!
That is a cool idea, great tribute and coolly executed. Love the small detail of the blast smoke residue on the helmet. Seems like he had a white spaceship, maybe your next project could a a hardsurface one modeling his ship, bringing it to today's graphics and level of detail.