A couple of years ago, after nearly 20 years of perfecting my 2D craft, I discovered the work of a Russian fellow whom called himself "600v" aka "Ixlrlxi".
He has all these wonderful retro-styled cars and was designing with the extremely easy to use 3D program: Google SketchUp.
His work is now found at http://600v.deviantart.com/

My 3D learning block was finally removed and I found myself on a quest to learn more.

Enter MoI3D!

Thanks to Pilou, a frequent at SketchUcation.com, I was lead to Moi3d.com and thus my 3D horizons broadened!

I have to say after some observation, there is a very exceptional level of politeness and mentor-ship here at Moi3D.com,
thanks much in part to the admirable attention and helpfulness of Michael Gibson.
Because of those qualities, this forum harbors a very conducive atmosphere to learning and artistic/design advancement that MoI is geared to assist.

There are a couple of other 3D designers that inspire me as well:
Jose Garcia aka "Cutangus" at http://www.flickr.com/photos/cutangus/ and http://cutangus.deviantart.com/
And Alexey aka "Karanak" at http://karanak.deviantart.com/
None of those artists use MoI, that I know of. But, their stylings can be translated to a MoI workflow.

Of course, I have an appreciation for anyone's art works where good time and talent has been invested. Many reside at Moi3D! ;-)

Here, I'd like to pay homage to "Cutangus".
Jose is a designer of these great spider-legged tank concepts and fighter planes that seem to herald from a bygone era, attributed to the styling called "Dieselpunk", a related genre to "Steampunk".

His design method is based on the repetition of simple geometric shapes, especially spheroid and cylindrical solids.
His software of choice is Solidworks for NURBS modeling. He then perfects and renders his work in 3D Studio Max with post work in PhotoShop.
Before I discovered his use of Solidworks, I could note the tell-tale use of Fillets.

I have taken a couple of nights of free time and produced a replica of an eight-legged tank creation of his.

Because it is a replica of his device, though it is considered and independent work of parody, I'll only post screen captures of it here and will not proceed to render it or post it in the Gallery.
After all, it is only a pale replica.

Here is the source image:
I re-created this model by eye and making guesses on the proportions, while allowing for some natural variation.

To view the image larger, you must visit his site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cutangus/319531813/in/photostream

The value I received from building this model were the four or five techniques I discovered or perfected, from Blending to better use of the Axis Rotation tool.
The complexity got to the point where I could no longer work on it on my home PC. (it only has 1 gig of ram and is at least 8 years old)
Note my use of some of my Lighting Options...

Here is my reproduction:

If you right-click and [view image], these will be twice this size...




















"Cutangus" says it's a tank powered by "decomposed hydrogen peroxide, with torpedoes on the front". From what I remember, this type of fuel was used in the German missiles that devastated parts of London during WWII.


And... Your work inspires me too, Pilou!!! Your images appear to dance with all the colors and patterns. ;-)




Thanks to all the other MoI designers that share their works, I study and appreciate them. Even I, a tutorial-maker am a humble student as well.