this series of artworks were created around 2022-2024 iirc. the style is heavily inspired by the technical limitations of the Playstation and Spyro the Dragon (1998)
knowing that these works are retro-inspired will probably make your eyes roll since it's an overdone style today; I agree, a lot of 3D artists who are new to the medium or lazy tend to use "retro graphics" as a way to make fast and low-effort artworks while having the audacity to believe they should be taken seriously. I think it's ridiculous, what I find more interesting than the way these old games used to look is why they look the way they look. It's because of both technical limitations and working around those limitations, ideally artists from the 90's would've had their creative works look as amazing or realistic as possible. but because the software at the time was either too obtuse or primitive to use, many artists made 3D graphics which look primitive as a result. only with time, better software and practice would the industry produce better 3D graphics among smaller teams
that being said it wasn't impossible to make something look good with restrictions, you can pick out any of your favourite retro games as an example. but me personally I find the struggle between limitations and doing all that you can within them to be fascinating, thus I've been making artworks around this idea for a good while. I took some time to learn about the Playstation's graphical limitations and while most of that information hasn't stuck overtime, I made sure to obey a good few of them which you can read about in your own time elsewhere: Vertex colours, texture sheets, polygon limits for both character models and the environment, absence of real-time lighting / baked lighting etc. these are all simple yet critical things you need to obey if you want to make faithful Playstation graphics, I guarantee you 99% of tutorials online won't mention these
finally, Spyro the Dragon is a very important game to me, I played a bootleg copy a lot when I was young and after replaying the game much later in life I've learnt to appreciate it even more. I also played Spyro 2 and Spyro 3 for the first time later in life as well, but something about those two just didn't do it for me compared to the first game. yes the target audience for these games are children so it's not that complicated, but I still think there's a simple yet elegant way Spyro 1 conducts itself that the others just don't do. I encourage you to read about the way Spyro 1's art direction was created & the rules it obeys, there's an article or two online about it & there's also plenty of videos online of Stewart Copeland going over how the music of Spyro was produced. better yet just play the Spyro trilogy and come to your own conclusions
these are the first works I made which obey most of the limitations I described earlier. the third homeworld of Spyro 1 is Magic Crafters and it inspired each of these heavily. in said homeworld you go through various levels which take place in high mountain tops full of wizards, weird beasts and magic. something in particular I'd like to point out is throughout the levels you can spot buildings with ornate designs, towers and spires with pointed bauble tops, checkered tile floors and imagery of the cosmos. with the theme of magic and being high up in the mountains, these buildings invoke a sense of importance and order and the dragons are all of that & more, as is with their mythos in most legends. mystical
this is a scene I created as a proof of concept for a Spyro fan-game. I really like Spyro 1 and I wish 2 & 3 were more like it, so I asked myself whether a game which is just more of Spyro 1 but transformative could work? I think so, I did a good amount of brainstorming in a .txt nobody will read anytime soon & my conclusion is that there's potential. this scene uses textures directly from Spyro 1 instead of OC textures like the series of images before this one. there is zero real-time lighting used, only vertex colours, meaning I had to manually light everything up, it's really not that hard but most self-proclaimed 3D artists won't do the same
finally this is a one-off artwork I made just to see if I still had my touch as a 3D artist, the gap between this artwork and whatever I make in future is way too big already, but I've been occupied with IRL and video production. this was inspired by MediEvil from the PS1, in said game there's some objects which only make use of a single or zero textures & only use vertex colours for detail. I think it has a certain allure; they lack texture, an important element which might tell you how heavy something is, the way it feels etc. in its absence it makes them more abstract & dangerous, for example the Magic Sword from MediEvil is this large splintering blade, pitch black with a radiating blue swirl. there's no lore for why it's like that, maybe a description but I don't remember, it's all laid bare in-front of you so you can make your own theories about it
