picano here! A 3D Artist’s Introduction

Hello! My name’s Tony but go by picano pretty much everywhere online. I’ve been a 3D artist for 15+ years now, primarily using Blender. I’ll probably stick to posting weekly art and the occasional article on software and games. I have a tendency to over-explain myself so, I tried to start with a short summary… but if you want the full picano experience, read on!

Inspiration: ReBoot

My favorite show growing up was ReBoot! I watched it and Transformers: Beast Wars before school every day. It’s probably the reason I wanted to get into 3D animation in the first place!

It’s not much to look at by today’s standards but it was one of the first fully computer animated series! Everything in the series felt like it was meant for me; it had references to Star Trek, The X-Files, various video games, cartoons, and anime; the entire world and its peoples were based on tech jargon at a time my family got its first computer.

Beyond the series itself, I felt a great deal of respect for the creators. In
Fast_Forward:_The_Making_of_ReBoot I learned all about how the series came to be, how they were making the software to make the show as they went along, why characters were designed the way they were. Later on there were other interviews and articles about censorship from the BS&P resulting in Dot’s mono-boob, a gun that fires inflatable rafts, and other ridiculous but hilarious things.

Software

Some years before high school I started looking into 3D software and… didn’t find much. At one point I stumbled upon some Japanese software and this one artist’s model of Sakura Kinomoto, but not knowing the language (or even having a computer that supported the character set), I didn’t figure out much beyond simple editing.

A year or so later I started playing an online, top-down, spaceship shooter: Subspace. By the time I joined, it was free to play and using the Continuum client.

The game was sprite based but ships, weapons, arenas, and their tilesets could all be customized. At some point I created my own zone (server) to mess around in and hopped around other custom zones looking for unique ideas.

Eventually I stumbled upon Hyperspace run by Dr. Brain. The big gimmick of his server was reverse-gravity wormholes that allowed super fast travel in their vicinity (compared to normal wormholes that acted like black holes with a random warp on entry). I did a lot of simple 2D graphic work while he messed with bots/servers (Merve Bot and ASSS respectively) to come up with gameplay unique to our server. Once we got more popular, Dr. Brain introduced me to Blender and Gimp, major upgrades from my MS Paint arsenal.

I’m not sure what the original version of Blender I used was but it’s been upgraded a ton since. The 2.4->2.5 transition was tough; pretty much had to relearn the entire UI. Cycles, introduced in 2.6, was another tough hurdle… but one I avoided for months before giving in — but I’m glad I did; previews in “real time” with progressive updating and much more control of textures via the node system. And then came 2.8 with Eevee, which I’m using today, and the obsolescence of the first engine; fortunately Cycles and Eevee rendering are mostly interchangeable and Eevee offers true real time rendering!

Gimp on the other hand… hasn’t improved much. I use it mostly out of habit now and constantly get made fun of for it by my wife, a Photoshop -> Clip Studio Paint convert.

First Renders

“Hello World” is the programmers’ first step; the donut with sprinkles is the 3D artists’.

Once I mastered the 3D arts… I started doing various video game inspired art. Warp pipes (in reference to the Warp Pipe GameCube LAN->online software), Star Fox (one of my favorite series, arwings being fairly, simple in design), Kirby (specifically G&W, no shading necessary), Bob-ombs (again, simple design), and Bomberman (you see where this is going…)

Original Characters

I used to draw, a lot, but most of this was done K-8 before I got fully absorbed in gaming and 3D. Lots of anime tracing, freehand-copying, and eventual drawing of unique but not fleshed out characters, the standard kid stuff.

Belle was my 1st character to be given a name. She was originally sketched up as a mascot for a friends’ short-lived gaming blog: Should I Play. My friend didn’t care for my initial sketch and instead requested someone with larger breasts and a more sexy outfit; this sister of Belle’s never got used or named.

Although the site is long gone, I’ve continued using the joystick logo on Belle’s outfit ever since. Strangely, this initial sketch doesn’t even include her namesake golden bell tied to her tail.

59 wallpapers (and who knows how many smaller 3D renders) later, Belle got her first 3D incarnation in some .hack//Sign inspired renders.

Over 200 renders later, I decided she needed a friend. For this I dug up an old character I had drawn many times but hadn’t yet named.

Pretty much all my catgirl drawings have a bell on their tail. I wanted to keep the theme but differentiate this girl — so I ended up changing hers’ to a silver jingle bell. Not wanting to call her Jingle… I ended up calling her Chime shortly before uploading.

100 or so wallpapers later I started messing around with 3D printing. I don’t have my own machine and I suck at painting… so I used Shapeways’ service to do some full-color sandstone prints! For the most part, it worked great, but every once in a while something came out the wrong color.

And so Kagami was born. She breaks the naming scheme but I figured it was appropriate and fitting the “from other dimension” vibe I was going for.

Another 100 or so renders later, my wife and I were watching Shield Hero. She mentioned that Raphtalia wasn’t really a raccoon and was surprised I didn’t make a raccoon girl of my own. So… I sketched something up the next day.

I started modeling immediately (using Belle’s most recent incarnation as a basis) and finished a couple weeks later. Decided on Glockenspiel (GS); started off as a joke… but it fit the theme.

There’s a lot more art of Belle, Chime, Kagami, or GS if you’re interested~

Now and the Future

As of this post I’m at 575 wallpapers (over 10 years of consecutive weekly posts, even after discarding weeks where I’ve released multiples) featuring 198 models of 165 characters (mostly from anime and games). All models are of my own making, because I’m stubborn like that.

I have no plans of breaking my streak and will do more 3D art (even if lazy) each week as long as I can. I’ll start posting my weekly stuff here in addition to to my personal site, twitter, tumblr, and Deviant Art. That said, I sometimes want to post stupidly long stuff like this… and here seems a good enough place as any.