About 3 months ago, I started the Alphabet Superset challenge, imagined by struthless. The challenge is to make 26 pieces of art, one per week, and all of them in a single theme, style, and medium. For my challenge, I chose the theme of sophonts from the Orion's Arm Universe Project playing games, used 3D modelling as my medium, and pursued the style of semi-photorealistic. Now six art pieces in, I believe I have learnt a lot. I write this in order to share my lessons online, and perhaps others may be inspired to take up their own supersets. I must also mention an acquaintance of mine, Worldtree, who helped me with feedback and supported me along the way. As well as some others…
models
Adumbrans
Adumbrans were the simplest sophont to model. They are essentially sapient utility fog entities that shape the weather systems of planets. They can be many kilometers long and are a few hundred meters at least. I started off strong with this one. I enjoyed making my image of them! But I believe they are not as good as I could make them. But as they take forever to render (due to requiring Volumetric shading) I am content with them as they are.
Bitenic Squid
Bitenic Squids also went off strong. It is through modelling them that I truly started gaining confidence in my modelling. And also got comfortable with rigging en masse. These sociopathic cephalopods deserve the utmost care when being modelled!
Caleb
Calebs were harder to model, because their shape is generally more complex. But I pulled through. For their game, I decided not to pick a specific game but rather show them playing various games seperately.
Dyglufsare
Dyglufsares were my favorite to make.