I’ve been pretty depressed over the past few days due to family problems, but I guess the best way to deal with depression is to build a totalitarian regime in Sketchup, or at least the headquarters they operate in. 

This is the Solar Eye HQ design that will be used in Fisheye Placebo. It’s based on the concept of a panopticon in which the building is the “inspection house” and the city is the “prison”. However, the design is only symbolic and can’t actually function as a panopticon since there is no way to see everything from the building. A modern day functional panopticon is created through CCTV surveillance. The philosophy behind it is that since we never know if we’re being watched, it’s better to be safe and stay within the line at all times, thus internalizing the authoritative gaze and staying obedient. 

At first glance one might think this building’s design is modern and cool, but staying true to the Fisheye Placebo theme, all architecture in this story will be retarded and counterproductive. Sure, having an office in a giant geodesic glass dome looks nice, but try monitoring the citizens when bright sunlight turns all LCD screens into a black mirror.

Special thanks to Sketchup’s 3D Warehouse for the miscellaneous furniture etc used in the model.   

(Source: yuumei.deviantart.com)

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you *drum roll* the most retarded kitchen sink design ever! :D

This is part of Vance and Frey’s dorm for Fisheye Placebo. Just like the 2 toilets in a bathroom, this sink has 2 faucets. The tall one releases water onto the counter since the spout is not long enough, so ideally you would use the short one with the long spout, but its handles are blocked by the tall one so you can’t turn it on, thereby rendering both useless XD

I aim to make their college experience very difficult >:3

And yes, that is a spatula for no apparent reason.

First test integrating hand drawn character into the 3D background :D

Here we have Frey from Fisheye Placebo looking rather pensive.

(Source: facebook.com)

First test of Vance’s half of the dorm :D

This is not the final version yet, but it’s mostly done.

Special thanks to SketchUp’s 3D Warehouse uploaders whose models I have used in part or in full (like that book on marijuana XD ). Without those free models, it would have taken me forever to make all the miscellaneous stuff. 

And yes, Vance has a body pillow XD I used an image found on Google but the final version will have one drawn by me.

(Source: facebook.com)

I spent half of yesterday 3D modeling Frey’s electric violin in SketchUp and I’m pretty happy with the result. Here’s is a post render + hand-paint over of the model.

Here’s the first design drawing I made a while back :D 

(Source: yuumei.deviantart.com)

Day 5 of non-stop 3D modeling of the Fisheye Placebo dorm room and my mind is going…

So here, Vance’s stash of Red Cow lol. Because hackers drink Red Bull, but bootleg Red Cow is all they have in CERia XD

Full tutorial found HERE

Yay, it’s out! :D 

I hope it helps!

Finally got the first city test :D

I ran into so many dead ends trying to do this *sob* First I wanted to use CityScape but the company died so there’s only the trial version that couldn’t import the various buildings that I needed. Then I got CityEngine and that would have worked if it didn’t crash all the time. I think I would need 24 gig ram for that program but my computer only has 10. 

I ended up using 3DS Max’s Ghost Town plugin but the plugin is buggy and often crashed as well. Eventually, I got an acceptable city but it took up so much ram that 3DS Max refused to work properly (wouldn’t let me instance materials…). After repeated head-desking, I found a way around it and rendered 3 versions. 1 for basic color, one for contour outlines, and another thinner outline because it’s not distance sensitive enough.


After that, I painted over everything in SAI for color adjustment and brush texture, then Photoshop for minor distortion (it takes away the hard edges and jarring straight lines of a 3D image).

This took a lot longer than I expected (about 6 hours but still faster than drawing by hand), but it will be way faster in the future after I figure more stuff out (and get more ram lol)

Tutorials in the future after I get back from AX and SD Comic Con!

(Source: yuumei.deviantart.com)