March 18th: My first attempt at creating a SEGA Master System with a controller and a game plugged in - being played on a nearby TV! This first step (i.e. the controller) is all part of a bigger project where I'll be creating a small zoomed-in scene of a kids room; a desk holding a small old-school TV, the Master System console, a game showing on the TV, and probably also the game's box either opened or closed. But I figured I'd consider myself done for now with the controller, which I think turned out pretty good for a first try!
Once I've got a somewhat basic model in place for all of the stuff that I want to appear in this scene, I'll revisit each model and add to the detail (like the now missing cable to the controller!). But now I wanna move on and start working on the console itself!
March 30th: Making progress, good progress too! I finished modelling the console yesterday, adding the cord-connector (between the console and the controller) today which I honestly spent a little too much time on creating lol XP The cord to connect the two will come later on, I wanna get everything into position first.
I also threw in a quickly modelled table just to have some kind of placeholder for what everything will be resting on. And I've got some templates for game cartridges and cases saved onto my hard drive, so next up will be to put a cartridge into the console and also have two or three cases somewhere on the table (possibly standing next to the TV, depending on how neat I want the scene/table to be).
April 5th: Added a game cartridge in the console! Of what my brother believes to be the very first Master System game that we purchased :D Didn't know that to be honest, when I picked it out, but the game (Fantasy Zone II) has always been a close favorite when it comes to SEGA 8-bit so that's why ^^
You'll be seeing more of my favs later on as I add their cartridge cases to the desk, once I have a TV in place :) Earlier today, I also got the idea to place an old gaming magazine somewhere on the table - like perhaps "SEGA Mean Machine" that was published in the 90s. Anywho, pretty happy with how the cartridge turned out! Will probably tweak it a little though, as with everything else in the picture once I'm done adding new things to the scene (like I said 3 weeks ago).
April 12th: Having studied a video on how to add and edit Curves (thanks Ryan King Art!) I very quickly connected the console with the controller! Albeit the cord might be a "tad" short, but this is fine for now and I'm glad that working with Curves wasn't more of a hassle ^^
The same can be said with the TV that I quickly put together: it's fine (kinda) for now, though I'm definitely going to make a couple of changes to the design later on - possibly even starting from scratch rather than trying to modify the mesh that I have! Because there are a few... bumpy hiccups that I'm not sure how to fix through editing. Welp, at least there's something on the screen :P
April 18th: The first game case has been created and added to the room! It turned out way better looking than I thought it would lol, and was also a pretty good repetition on how to apply image textures to different parts of a mesh - and properly align them.
And on that note: thank god for The Internetz being such an amazing library that it can even provide me with high-quality scans of old covers such as this one ^^ More game cases are to come, neatly arranged next to the TV!
May 2nd: Yeaaah so I'm making slow progress on this project now, but that's because I went back to doing courses and stuff! Thus for the past 2 weeks I've been watching a lot of vids here on CGC, but also a few extra on YouTube whenever I find something interesting (including just looking at other people's work), playing around with tools and settings and such (especially nodes).
Since my last update here, I made the TV-screen less convex, added a few more game cases, slightly opened up the Fantasy Zone II case, added one of those funny-weird game cards that SEGA also released a few games on for the Master System (I had one or two myself as a kid!), quickly threw together an old Mean Machine SEGA magazine (loved reading these even before knowing enough English to actually understand everything in the articles), and lastly put a Sonic-poster on one of the walls - adding a few loop cuts to where the poster have creases from being folded (slightly pulling a few vertices to distort the paper). I do feel like there should be some visible shadows or whatnot, so I'll look into that later since I don't want it to look like the poster is practically glued to the wall.
Oh, and I also pulled out the drawer ever so slightly! You know, just to add a feel of some sort to the scene (imperfection, I guess?), hence why the game cases aren't perfectly lined up either ^^
Things are coming along nicely, if a tad slower now that I'm trying to cram some new knowledge into my head!
July 30th: WOW look at how quickly time passes by, huh!? Thought I'd quickly stop by to explain myself and why this project came to a sudden stop, not that I believe that anyone is following along but still! XD
So here's the thing: starting Monday, that's two days from now (so August 1st), I'll be a student at the seemingly extraordinary talented college of CG Spectrum in Australia! Yup that's right, I've decided to go all in on 3D modelling by becoming a student!! That's how fun I've been having with Blender and creating stuff like this project here, as well as taking "lessons"/challenges here on CG Cookie. It felt like a pretty big step for me to go from looking at YouTube videos to becoming a paid member of CGC, and this step is equally big - if not slightly bigger!
So while this means that I'll say goodbye to CGC for the next 9 months as I take this course, I do look forward to revisiting CGC and this retro room of mine - to show ya'll what I've learned at CG Spectrum! One could argue that I could've kept working on it and how I should be able to find the time to add stuff to this project while also taking classes, and I can agree with that. But I'd rather not mess up shortcuts and such by working in two different programs at the same time, and that's why I decided to take a long break from Blender X) Cuz I know for sure that this silly brain of mine would have a harder time getting into Maya if it kept referring to how Blender works.
Thanks for stopping by and reading this update! Again, I can't wait to show both you and myself just how much I (hopefully!) will have improved 9 months from now, when I graduate from CG Spectrum! \^_^/
@conradargo, this is pretty sweet! Everybody's done a great job on the CGCookie console, but it's great to see somebody applying the principles to a different model.
I particularly like your decals.
Keep up the good work!
Ty so much for those kind words!! And yeah I learned a lot during that course and it was what sparked the idea of re-creating something old-school and retro ^^
Doing slow progress on the Master System console due to other things in life that craves my attention for the moment, but I _am_ working on it!