This is a crosspost from my newsletter.

Welcome back to The Hydromecha Monthly! The title of this installment is not, in fact, a sentence describing a monster that mines, but is instead describing the creation of one of the major attractions of this edition. Let’s get right into it.

The Monsters

Previously I showed off some placeholder art for a couple new monsters for Antarctica Must Fall, a Doom mod I’m working on. They and a new-to-the-newsletter monster all got sprites made from 3D models.

Gallu

As stated before, the Gallu are based off of Salps, a kind of planktonic tunicate that can be found off of the coast of Antarctica, among other places, while their name derives from demons in ancient Sumerian and Mesopotamian mythology.

I thought the model looked kinda plain just going off of the concept art, so I added a bunch of tusks to make it more interesting from different angles.

Although very frail, the Gallu’s projectile can still be rather dangerous as it pulls the player in whatever direction it flew in from.

Mazzikin

This was the other monster I revealed earlier. The Mazzikin is loosely based on the Antarctic Springtail and takes its name from a kind of demon from Jewish mythology.

Mazzikin are melee monsters that leap at the player when they’re far away, letting them potentially jump over other monsters to close the distance and attempt to slash you apart with their razor-sharp proboscises.

Aberration

The Aberration is based off of a kind of Isopod that can be found in Antarctic waters that resembles Trilobites. Its name was taken from the eponymous type of creature from D&D.

Aberrations launch a large, slow-moving projectile that spawns damaging spikes on the ground as it moves and zaps the player with lightning for its melee attack. The rows of spikes should cause some interesting area denial in combat that doesn’t exist in the base game.

The projectile-related sprites were all made by throwing some placeholder art I'd drawn into an Explosion Texture Generator, and then editing its outputs in Krita.

Once I finish the sprites for the rest of the original monsters (there are three more to go, not counting bosses), I want to redo the materials and some of the animations on the Gallu and Mazzikin.

In the meantime, a good friend of mine has done a ton on the code side of things for the monsters (he made the Aberration’s projectile work) and has also made some major progress on one of the maps.

Whataboutpageism

I’d been meaning to redo the render on my website’s About page for a while but I wanted to get the recent funny video out first. It doesn’t show in the above screenshot, but the scanlines and noise texture on the shades are both animated on the website! The moving bits are in a separate .gif that was painstakingly positioned atop the larger static render. There’s also a new secret page you can access by clicking on the fancy new cranium. If you aren’t seeing any of the website changes, try clearing your browser’s cache (Ctrl+F5 on desktop).

Pizza Reprise

After a decent break, I’ve finally returned to making my own pizzas! You can see them below alongside some other interesting stuff I cooked.

I made a really nice batch of the Michelin pancakes I mentioned a while back. I’ll link the recipe video again here in case you’re just tuning in.

And that’s all I’ve got for now. I’ll see you again next time with another newsletter!

Have a good one,

-Hydro

This is a crosspost from my newsletter: https://news.hydromecha.website/p/opening-night

Tonight’s double feature includes a pair of major projects I’ve been talking about for a while.

The Funny Video

It’s done! Like I’ve mentioned in previous editions, this is for a very specific audience so there’s a good chance you might just find this more confusing than anything. If you’re familiar with Xavier Renegade Angel or other similar rapid-fire wordplay/comedy stuff this should be right up your alley.

I definitely learned a lot while making this in terms of animation, compositing, and editing. There are a bunch of useful techniques I’m going to be carrying forward to other projects I have in mind.

One of the things I was finally able to take a swing at was Datamoshing, which is a technique that takes advantage of how video files work to create weird glitchy effects. I used this awesome webapp called Supermosh, which you can find here: https://supermosh.github.io/

In regards to Blender, I also got to try out using the Wiggle Bones addon to automate some secondary animations in a few shots. Those same shots also used Auto-Keying for animating the main parts of the characters, which is something I want to try out more extensively to attempt to mimic GMod ragdoll animation. There was also a cool shader I found that I’m gonna try using for some future animations. I also found out you can use fisheye lenses in Blender (though it’s only available in Cycles) which I used for a few shots.

If there’s any interest in a more specific rundown on how I made something in the video, let me know! I could do a follow-up video later going over that sort of stuff if there’s interest.

The Funny Story

The last free member of The Demilich Brotherhood must face his ultimate reckoning: an irresponsibly large mortgage he cannot possibly repay on his own.

This is also out! You can read it over on my short stories Substack or on Newgrounds as part of The Literature Portal Collab, where you can find a whole swath of stories written by the other members of the collab.

https://stories.hydromecha.website/p/dave-the-depressed-demilich

Foodland

I’ve cooked a bunch of stuff since last time, pictured below:

In order, we have some gochujang-marinated chicken, chocolate-chip and oatmeal banana bread, mini bulgolgi patties, a taco-ish rice bowl, some waffles (which had some really nice aeration), a chicken parm-esque casserole, some proper bulgolgi, a big ‘ol slab of cookie with a creme brulee’d frosting layer, and a taco-esque casserole.

Here’s another picture of the creme brulee cookie so you can get a closer look at it:

And that’s all I have for now! I’ll see you again next time with another newsletter.

Have a good one,

-Hydro

This is a crosspost from my newsletter.

I’ve done a fair bit more reading than usual since last time. I read through a collection of Robert E. Howard’s stories surrounding Bran Mak Morn and started reading through some of Franz Kafka’s short stories, one of which this edition’s cover drawing pays some homage to. You’ll see a reference to another of Kafka’s stories below along with another bug-related thing further down.

But speaking of short stories, I’ve made some good progress on my own!

Dave The Depressed Demilich - Coming Soon!

The short story I had first revealed a couple months ago is getting very close to completion, and soon after publishing in the Newgrounds Lit Portal Collab! I just need to do one more pass on it before I can call it finished. I also made a cover for the story, which you’ll be able to see spinning around in all its 3D glory when the collab releases. I’m also going to be mirroring it on my short stories Substack soon afterwards.

I’ll make another post whenever it’s out so you can give it a read.

Livin’ Like a Bug Ain’t Easy

I recently re-read Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, which naturally reminded me of the masterpiece that is the Franz Kafka Rock Opera from Home Movies, linked below in case you haven’t seen it.

I thought it would be really funny to do a drawing of Dwayne in the bug costume that went extremely hard for no good reason so here we are now.

This piece started as a paper sketch which I then blocked out in 3D in Blender to help me figure out the perspective and lighting better. I then rendered that out and used it to help me make the final digital drawing in Krita.

There are a couple nods to the original short story in this drawing, namely the apple lodged in Dwayne/Gregor's back, and him using an armchair to prop himself up against the window.

A Duo of Doom Monsters

Last time I mentioned I had some more monsters cooking up for my mod. I recently got a couple of them functioning with some placeholder sprites.

The first is the Mazzikin, loosely based off of the Antarctic springtail. It takes its name from a kind of demon from Jewish mythology. It’s a melee monster that leaps at the player when it’s far away.

Next up is the Gallu, which is based off of Salps (tunicates that can be found near Antarctica). This monster takes its name from ancient Mesopotamian demons. The Gallu is a slow flying monsters that fires a similarly sluggish projectile. If that projectile hits you, you’ll be sent flying towards the Gallu that shot it.

Tales from The Food Dimension

There wasn’t a ton of cooking done since last time but it was still some good stuff. The first picture shows some air-fried potatoes I had alongside some steak. Next up is a slab of chocolate chip oatmeal cookie and another attempt at those Michelin pancakes that instead turned into crepes. Lastly we’ve got a double-patty smashburger with some gochujang mayo.

The potato recipe is pretty simple: Slice up some potatoes, toss them in olive oil with seasoning (I used salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and paprika) and then air fry them. I usually just wing it with the time and temperature.

Anyways, that’s it for this edition. I’ll see you again next time with another newsletter!

Have a good one,

-Hydro

This is a crosspost from my newsletter.

Last month I finally got back to playing some singleplayer FPS games, which got me wanting to make my own game. Then I remembered I still have to finish a Doom mod. So, since the last edition of The Hydromonthly I’ve largely been focused on that.

ANTARCTICA MUST FALL - The Return

After an almost two year hiatus I’m finally back to working on this mod! The three monsters I’ve added so far are now all feature complete (outside of some particles for the Cyberpenguin). Below is a short overview of what they all do, with more specific details on the newest developments further down.

Frost Fiend

These guys used to be called Snowdemons, which was an old placeholder name from when I thought it’d be funny to have snowman monsters.

Outside of a name change, I also updated the function that determines the trajectory of its arcing projectile. It now uses some trig and calc to figure that out instead of whatever wonky function I’d cobbled together for the previous version.

You can check out the code for the arcing projectile below. Feel free to use or modify it for your own mod, just put me in the CREDITS.txt.

Surprise Elemental

I finally added a death animation for these things, shown in the video above. The confetti sprites started as placeholders but I think they’re good enough to keep.

Cyberpenguin

The Cyberpenguin finally has proper sprites! Like I mentioned in the video, I still need to make some particle effects for one of its attacks and I might want to tweak the knockback a little, but other than those things it’s good to go.

For some context, the Cyberpenguin used to use the following placeholder sprite I’d thrown together out of some random images.

I threw together a rough sketch for the new look and then proceeded to model it in Blender. There were a few iterations before I settled on the final design.

You can check out some more high-res renders of the model over here:

Mapping

I’ve made some pretty major changes to the old MAP01 layout, but I’m still not super happy with it. It feels like there’s too much going on for a first map so I’m gonna shift gears to working on a more difficult map and return to MAP01 later. I have a rough story/map progression plotted out so I’m gonna do something with one of the other ideas I have there.

Other Monsters

I have some ideas for more monsters to add and even sketched most of them up, but I’ll share them when I’ve actually finished the sprites and whatnot.

A Bookwheel of Fireball Tomes

This is a model I made for Low Poly Day. It combines a Bookwheel (an actual 16th century invention) with a gatling gun to create a massive automatic fireball cannon piloted by a wizard. I was originally planning on making the wizard the typical pointy hat and beard guy but making him a funny Shadow Wizard Money Gang fella was much simpler.

I made all the textures for this model using Blender’s shader nodes. I really didn’t want to bother with UV unwrapping the model so this was some good procedural texture practice.

Getting the spellbooks to rotate the way they do took some finagling with empties and constraints. I can share more details on how I got that to work if there’s interest.

Foodland Feat. Fancy Flapjacks

Last time I teased some fancy flapjacks I made using a Michelin recipe from a YouTube video. And now you can see photographic evidence that I did indeed make them. Twice, even!

The recipe is very meringue-like which is where the super porous structure comes from.

Here’s that pancake video I mentioned:

Next up we’ve got some pasta and meatballs. I cooked the meatballs in some olive oil and then cooked down some tomato sauce on top of whatever was left on the bottom of the pot when those were done.

And then there’s some chicken teriyaki, where I marinated the chicken and peppers in the sauce (plus some seasoning) before cooking it on a skillet. When the chicken pieces were fully cooked, I removed them from the sauce, let it reduce, and then tossed the chicken back in along with some corn starch.

Lastly there’s an assortment of things that don’t really warrant as much explanation.

I didn’t make any progress on the next proper video but I’m planning on rectifying that sometime this month. Same deal with the short story I shared in the previous issue.

I’ll see you again next time for another newsletter.

Have a good one,

-Hydro

This is a crosspost from my newsletter.

I made some decent progress on things since last time, but there isn’t a ton to show for it outside of the cooking department. Let’s get into it.

Video Progress

In case you need a recap, the upcoming feature presentation will be a strange mix of VSauce and Xavier Renegade Angel wherein I address the heinous accusation alleging that I am a “VTuber.”

I was going to use B-roll of actual VTubers for a couple of shots but I thought it’d be way funnier to make semi-convincing fakes. I’ve concocted two characters for this purpose but I want to leave their designs and such a surprise. I will, however, share their main sources of inspiration.

Both take from Dominions 6 Pretenders and Transformers (which funnily enough also has characters classified as Pretenders, but for completely different reasons), with the second design additionally pulling from ReBoot.

The first false VTuber is based off of the Demiurge and Dirgegun (from the Japan-only Beast Wars II).

Meanwhile the second one is based off of the Carrion Dragon, the Quintesson Judge, and Hexadecimal.

So how do these disparate sources coalesce into coherent character designs? You’ll just have to wait to find out!

Dave The Depressed Demilich - A Short Story

I’ve been working on a short story for the Lit Portal Collab currently titled Dave The Depressed Demilich. It’s set in the same world as my previous short story, Mystery of The Memoryhole Monastery Pt. 2, and my TTRPG system Table Knight (to be released eventually).

I’ll link the new story and the collab in a future newsletter, but for now I’ll share a couple of excerpts from the draft.

Ten years ago Dave had taken out a massive mortgage on the equally massive, twelve-story Gothic citadel that he partly called his own. The Debtomancer owned the rest, on paper anyways. Well not really on paper per se, but you don’t have to worry about those details right now.

Dave’s mortgage agreement had shackled his soul to the world of the living whether he liked it or not. That mortgage was unfinished business, and he couldn’t die until he felt he was finished with all his business. This had nothing to do with him being a Demilich. The natural magic of the world is just funny like that. It works because people believe it works, thus making it work.

“You sure that thing’s working?” Cannon Knight nudged the Arcana Counter in Brick Knight’s hands like an annoying brother.

Brick Knight turned a crystalline knob on the stone PDA and pointed it at the cannon that Cannon Knight was using like a skateboard (it had wheels). It beeped.

“It works.” Brick Knight bluntly retorted. He re-tuned the Arcana Counter and aimed it around again until he heard a low-pitched beep. The two Knights continued down the barren hallway of the castle they had spent the past half hour scrounging through.

“I dunno, something still feels off. Doesn’t this place seem a bit too empty?”

“It’s an abandoned castle.”

“No, the town around it was abandoned. Those buildings were trashed and then some. I mean yeah, it’s dusty in here but there’s nothing else. You’d think monsters would’ve started squatting in here or something.”

“The magic thing in here could be repelling them.”

“How much is that worth?”

The duo stopped. Brick Knight pulled a dense, leatherbound, gemstone-encrusted shopping catalog out of his backpack and started flipping through it.

“There it is!” Cannon Knight proclaimed, jamming his finger onto a page. Behind their visors, the Knights’ eyes lit up like fireballs of ionized gold.

The Debtomancer was one bad day away from quitting. Having to deal with adventurers and Mages daily was one thing. Having to deal with their finances was another, much, much worse thing. It seemed like nobody in those lines of work knew the first thing about fiscal responsibility, except maybe Economic Mages and Wizards. But they all worked for The Economancer (as did he). The Economancer didn’t take kindly to fiscal irresponsibility. Merely witnessing him cast Power Word: Audit on some poor soul was enough to scare you into straightening out your financial situation.

As the only Wizard working in the Loans Division (The Repomancer retired last year and there hadn’t been a replacement yet), The Debtomancer was personally responsible for collateralizing and repossessing magic items. Lesser Economic Mages weren’t nearly powerful enough to handle some of the more dangerous situations The Debtomancer often found himself in.

Just last week he had to take a microplastic golem from a Hazmat Mage in a castle full of noxious gasses. Another time it was a Bag of Endless Rubber Chickens from Clown Knight, who put up a fight. Yesterday it was an experimental Staff that could turn inanimate objects into kitchen countertops (and back). It was called Counter Spell. There were also vast swaths of less interesting things like enchanted swords, rings, and amulets.

Sure, they were valuable on paper (and according to The Endless Catalog of Majicks) but they just didn’t sell very often. The weird stuff even less so. The Debtomancer was quickly running out of space. He was running out of patience exponentially faster.

Pizzas, Pastries, and Protein

Ah yes, the three major food groups.

From first to last we’ve got a couple marinaras, bbq chicken, chicken pesto, and another marinara.

In this corner we have a couple of chocolate chip cookie slabs and some pancakes. I tried whipping up the eggs in the pancakes which turned out quite well. I recently found this video covering a different kind of pancake recipe that’s kinda like a meringue. I tried my hand at that earlier today but you’ll have to wait till next time to see the results.

And here we’ve got a bulgogi-ish ground beef bowl, some more proper bulgogi, and finally some grilled chicken thighs (given a dry rub of salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and paprika) that I used for some wraps.

In a previous newsletter I had talked about how I was gonna do a future video on making chocolate chip pancakes but those plans may very well change. I’ve had two friends express interest in a hypothetical video on my pizza making procedure so I might do that instead. We’ll see.

Speaking of seeing, I’ll see you again next time with another newsletter.

Have a good one,

-Hydro

This is a crosspost from my newsletter.

This is gonna be a bit of a shorter one. I spent a good chunk of last month traveling (for work and for personal stuff) and feeling like industrial waste (these things happened separately). Despite this, I still got some stuff done, which you’ll see evidence of below.

Video Progress

I got a couple more shots animated and edited together. One of them was (mostly) hand-drawn and the other entirely 3D.

When you’re out at sea it’s important to find your bearings.

When you’re out at sea it’s important to find your bearings.

Jetstream Salmon (Go play Metal Gear Rising if you don’t get it)

There are a few other bits that aren’t nearly as funny out of context so you’ll have to wait for the full thing to see them.

Reverting to my primal form. A beast mode one might call it.

The above image isn’t part of the video, by the way. I was just messing around with the model and thought it was mildly amusing. In that aimless articulating I achieved an absolutely aura farming posture that is part of the video, pictured below:

This pose is on screen for maybe three seconds.

This is how industry plants are made; They’re vat-grown in secret government facilities just like this!

Looksmaxxing a Prehistoric Fish

Looksmaxxing is certainly one of the trends infesting very specific corners of the internet. Some Looksmaxxcolytes (this isn’t a real term I just made it up) will go so far as to smash their facial bones in with a hammer to try and achieve their desired, and one can only assume to be maximized, look.

Image from Wikipedia

Dunkleosteus (pictured above) was an aquatic apex predator during the Late Devonian period. One of its most prominent features (and the only part we really have fossils of) was its heavily armored face, made of bony plates.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

I want to see more paleoart like this, I think it’d be really funny.

I think the results speak for themselves. I’ve been wanting a scale model of a Dunkleosteus skull for a while so maybe I’ll just make one myself. This is going to be the subject of a future video.

A Short Order

I didn’t cook a lot of things that warranted documentation last month, though those pizzas were probably the best I’ve made to date.

And that’s all I’ve got for now. See you again next time!

Have a good one,

-Hydro

This is a crosspost from my newsletter.

Compositing is turning out to be a lot of fun! I haven’t delved too deep into the VFX rabbithole just yet - it’s largely been simple color corrections, blurs, and glares so far - but it’s still really cool seeing how much of a difference it makes.

The image above was drawn in Krita and then given a fancy background and other VFX in Blender. The filter on the background is from MP_Comp. I can share the node setup for this image if there’s interest.

Video Progress

I’ve got two scenes of the next video rendered and composited so far. Below you can see a few select frames with extremely real context in the captions. I wanted these shots to look like they take place at the bottom of the ocean and I think I got the look down pretty well.

Depending on progress, you’ll either get more out-of-context screenshots or maybe even the finished video with the next newsletter. We’ll see.

If you want to know more about how I’m making this, let me know and I can share some more details next time.

If you want to know more about why I’m making this, it’s because I think it’s gonna be really funny. I’m hoping I get a few “What the fuck did I just watch?” sort of reactions. This may alienate some viewers who subscribed from the scorpion video, but it did have a pretty blatant warning about what was next.

Unfortunately we don’t have time to address the remaining interrogatives.

Website Updates

The Hydromecha dot Website saw a major overhaul to its overall aesthetics this past month. Several legacy assets were touched up and sent through the compositing dimension while others were newly minted just for the occasion. The new stuff was all drawn in Krita, with some of it being processed further in Blender.

Landing Page

I re-did the render for the landing page monitor and did some post-processing to make it fit the deep sea look better. There’s also a transparent grunge texture over the screen that I made in Blender. Instead of using a transparent image with a hole cut out in the center (used to show the scrolling static), I used another image as a mask. The collective filesizes of the non-transparent image and mask are much lower than the previous alpha-channel-having picture.

I was having some trouble getting a shadow to work nicely using the 2D plane/image of the monitor so I made a duplicate of it in black as a stand-in.

Homepage

The tablet frame for the main page was edited slightly in Krita and then sent into Blender for the usual VFX procedure.

I’m quite fond of how the new menu elements are all physical things, although I’m a bit iffy on the featured creation section. It’s supposed to be a display window in a store but I’m not sure if it’s clear enough. Other than that potential change I want to add some icons to the navigation buttons on the left.

Speaking of those nav buttons, they were (outside of the actual LCD screen, which was made in Blender) drawn in Krita and then VFX’d in Blender.

Most of the shadows were done using CSS box shadows. The rest have the shadows painted in, like with the button tracks above.

I ended up making a pretty nice wood texture for the magazine stand that gets almost entirely covered. If the image below gets messed up by compression, you can see the original version from the site by clicking here.

Site Button & Cursors

The site button and cursors were also touched up using the same techniques discussed ad nauseam.

I still need to upgrade the rest of the pages and I’d like to use some other styles or mediums for them. I imagine it’ll take a while.

Foodstuff (Non-VFX)

This section won’t have anything to do with compositing. Don’t worry, you’re safe here.

I recently acquired a waffle iron. More recently I acquired an electric mixer. In the interim period I had to whip egg whites by hand to make waffles. I’m very thankful for automation.

And that’s all I’ve got for now. I’ll see you again next time with another newsletter.

Have a good one,

-Hydro

I rendered the first shot of the next video I'm working on (material view preview can be found here along with some other unrelated stuff) and I'm really happy with how the compositing turned out. The goal was to make this scene look like it was filmed at the bottom of the ocean and I think I got the look down pretty well. I'm gonna have to change the film grain filter (using MP_Comp for that plus a couple other things) later since it gets killed by video compression.

For reference, this is what the above frame looks like without any VFX:

There are a bunch of other sets/environments I want to use for this so that'll be a fun opportunity to mess with more compositing setups.

This is a crosspost from my newsletter.

Am I glad he's frozen in there and we're out here

If you’re anything like me you might just live in some part of the continental US. So how about that recent storm, huh? It was kinda amusing having to free my car from its icy exoskeleton.

Let’s get on to the projects and whatnot.

Next Video Progress

Here’s an early preview of the next video. It’s for a very specific audience (primarily me) so there’s a chance you might not get it.

This is a screen recording of the material preview so it’s lacking proper lighting and VFX. It’ll look a lot nicer in the final product.

I started messing around with some procedural materials for the hologram head and now it’s got this cool scanline effect as well as some other interesting stuff going on with the goggles.

IN A.D. 2025 COLLAB WAS BEGINNING

This is something I drew for the All Your Base Collab. I thought the idea of a space tow truck was kinda funny so here we are now with this tow-Zig sorta thing. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you can check out this video by Whang for an internet history lesson.

The Tow-Zig started as a super rough sketch that I then recreated in Blender to help me figure out the geometry of the vehicle better. The sketch was based more on some promo art of Zero Wing that had protruding wings and four round thrusters on the Zig instead of the single pair of boxy thrusters (without wings) that the in-game sprites (and some other art) use. I haven't actually played Zero Wing but I still wanted to make something close to the source material.

Rust Cube

I wanted to do some more painting after I drew the Tow-Zig so I started on this rusty cube. Not sure if I’ll finish all the sides, but it was still good practice nonetheless.

A Whole Buncha Baking

Last time I said I was gonna try making my own baguettes following this recipe. That I did. I also made some other stuff, seen below:

(Higher-res pics on Substack)

After I finish that animated video I’m gonna do a cooking vid on how I made the chocolate chip pancakes above. I already have the footage for it, so that’s one step done. I just need to write a script, record it, and then edit it all together. I have a funny idea for a thumbnail as well. All in due time.

Speaking of time, I’ll see you next time with another newsletter.

Have a good one,

-Hydro

This is a crosspost from my Substack newsletter.

Now That's What I Call Kafkaesque! Vol. 1

I’m going to reference The Metamorphosis again in the future, mark my words.

I hope you all had a pleasant holiday season. I made a big snowball, as is tradition. As of writing it still stands strong in my parents’ backyard.

When I was a kid I didn’t like powdery snow since you can’t make snowballs out of it easily but now that the government has irrevocably branded me with the designation of “adult” I can appreciate that it’s easier to shovel.

I don’t have any New Year’s Resolutions because I’d be contractually obligated to stop following them a few months into the year. I don’t make the rules. I do, however, make other things. You can see some of that below:

Wiretap & Wingthing

This is that Transformers custom I’ve been talking about for the past couple issues of the newsletter. It’s finally done! The purple one is Wiretap (repainted from Blurr), and his colors are based off of the Autoscout drone Soundwave used in a single episode of the G1 cartoon. Wingthing (repainted from Fangry) is the black/orange one, based on Soundwave’s Targetmaster (little robot that turns into a weapon) partner from his Action Master figure.

You can check out some more pictures of these guys plus my back-catalog of other customized figures (along with bios for a few of them) on TFW2005.

https://www.tfw2005.com/boards/threads/hydros-custom-thread.1285624/

Table Knight Creatures

Table Knight is a custom TTRPG and setting I’ve been working on for a while. I recently started up another campaign to playtest some new things (I just ran a session where we tested out the stealth mechanics). I’ve also been on another speculative evolution kick so that’s culminated in a couple well thought out creatures (and one joke creature).

Hydraken

There’s this old medieval belief that every land animal had to have an equivalent animal in the sea. So what would a Hydra’s aquatic cousin look like?

Behold, the Hydraken, a titanic cephalopod with large claws at the ends of its feeding tentacles that resemble heads. If a “head” is cut off, it will eventually regrow. The real body of the Hydraken remains submerged while it sticks its eyes up on stalks to look for food. It lives in wetlands and swamps where it can use the surrounding greenery for further cover. If the claws weren’t enough, this monster can spray an aerosolizing toxin from its jets. It uses this in tandem with its many “heads” to disorient and ambush its prey.

At some point in the future I want to make a physical model of one of these things.

Terrestrial Sea Pig

This next creature came about to answer what the Hydraken would normally feed on. Hapless adventurers aren’t a stable source of sustenance.

This funny looking pig-like thing is based on sea pigs, warthogs, and shell-having mollusks. I’m going to redo the shell at some point so it isn’t dragging it around on the ground. The idea is that these descended from the oceanic equivalent of warthogs/wild hogs. They live in the same wetlands and swamps as Hydrakens, using their tusks and mouth tentacles to dig for plants.

Siren

This is a stupid idea I had a while back that I finally scribbled down recently. It’s half ambulance and half fish. It tailgates boats with its high beams on. I’m gonna have to redesign this later so it fits the tech level of the setting better. It ought to have something more like a Model T for the front half.

New Video Progress

Last time I said I was gonna get started on the next video. I did get started, but just barely. There isn’t really anything interesting to show for it right now. More info to come next time depending on progress.

Comic Character Model

Last time I also talked about making 3D models of characters for a comic I’ve had sitting on the back burner for a while. I also got started on that, with the results clearly visible above. This is a background character that’s only gonna appear in the first page or so.

For context, this comic is a one-shot that was gonna be for a comic jam last year that I didn’t finish for a number of reasons. I did draw the first page, but the panels are super cramped because I wrote a script that was way too long for the page limit. I gotta redo all the page layouts later.

I’m gonna try using Grease Pencil, Blender’s 2D drawing/animation tool, for adding details instead of going through the whole rigamarole of UV unwrapping and texturing. If I can get that to look good it’ll save me a ton of time.

I’ve been enjoying this whole process so I’m gonna go ahead and make more characters, assets, etc. and just do the whole comic in 3D. It’s gonna take a while but I’ll have a lot more experience by the time it’s done.

For Whom The Dinner Bell Tolls

Here’s some stuff I cooked up last month. I’ve posted similar things before, so if you’ve got a lot of frequent flier miles with us you know what the deal is.

The steak in that last picture is a reverse-seared strip steak seasoned with salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, a tiny bit of red pepper flakes, oregano, rosemary, cilantro, honey, a bit of lemon juice, and a whole bunch more lime juice.

In other news I finally cleaned up and reorganized my hobby space. I still need to clear a bunch of junk off the table but the rest of the room is way, way better looking. The major value added in all this is that I’ll have much better lighting when I film stuff for making-of videos. Instead of one ultra-bright lamp I now have a couple of adjustable light panels near the sides of the table. It definitely looks a lot more like a studio in there now.

I’m gonna keep chipping away at the next video and the character model this month. I also wanna make another webtool for Table Knight and try making my own baguettes. There’s this video I saw a while back about 5 minute baguettes I’ll link below (it’s 5 minutes of actual work, not counting time to rise/bake).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-husjZkxHw

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Have a good one,

-Hydro

Newgrounds-Exclusive Postscript

Printable Tankman Action Figure Files Now Available!

Last month I was asked if I could share the files for the 3D printed Tankman action figures I made for a couple Pico Days so they're now available for free on Printables. Check out the news post I made about that for more info and download links: https://hydromecha.newgrounds.com/news/post/1587666