Alright, so this whole Mongolian tank sci-fi concept thing, it’s been rattling around in my brain for a bit. I figured I’d share how I went about actually trying to make it a reality, or at least a cool picture.
It kinda started, you know, from just mashing ideas together. I’ve always thought Mongolian armor and aesthetics were super cool – all those layered plates, the curved forms, really distinct stuff. Then, obviously, I love sci-fi. Big stompy robots, futuristic vehicles, the works. So, I thought, why not try to fuse these? Seemed like a fun challenge.
First steps were mostly just scribbling. I got out my trusty tablet and just started sketching. Didn’t really have a clear image at first. My initial doodles were pretty rough, not gonna lie. Some looked like weird space bugs, others just like regular tanks with funny hats. It’s always a bit of a mess at the start, trying to find the right shapes.
I spent a good chunk of time just looking at references. Tons of historical Mongolian gear, looking at how the armor was constructed, the patterns they used. Then I switched over to sci-fi art, lots of different artists, trying to soak in how they did plating, tech details, that sort of thing. The trick was trying to get them to talk to each other without it looking like a total mishmash. It’s harder than it sounds. You want it to feel like it belongs in its own world, not just a kitbash of two different things.
Once I had a rough silhouette I liked – something that felt heavy and powerful but still had a bit of that nomadic, almost animalistic vibe – I started blocking it out in 3D. I’m not a master 3D modeler or anything, I just use some basic software to get the forms down. This part can be a real grind. Pushing and pulling vertices, trying to get the curves right. Sometimes you spend an hour on one tiny piece and it still looks wrong. My computer definitely complained a few times, especially when I started adding more detail.
Then came the detailing pass. This is where I tried to really bring in the “Mongolian” part of the concept. I looked at traditional patterns and motifs, trying to integrate them into the armor plates, the trim, stuff like that. Not too literal, more like an inspiration. And then layering on the sci-fi greebles – vents, pipes, sensor arrays, exposed mechanical bits. And of course, the main gun. Had to make that look suitably chunky and dangerous. I went back and forth on the turret design a lot. It’s easy to overdo it with the details, make it too busy.
Painting and texturing it was the next big hurdle. I wanted it to look used, like it had seen some serious action. So, lots of metallic textures, some painted sections, and then a whole lot of dirt, grime, scratches, and rust. Weathering is always a bit of a pain, trying to get it to look natural and not just like you threw a dirt texture over everything. I tried a few color schemes. Initially, I thought about something really bright and ceremonial, but then I leaned into more muted, practical colors – desert tans, dark grays, with maybe some accent colors for lights or insignia.
In the end, I got something I was pretty happy with. It’s not perfect, never is, right? But it felt like a decent representation of what I had in my head. It’s funny how an idea can just pop up and then you spend days or weeks wrestling with it to make it tangible. This whole process was a lot of trial and error, a lot of “that looks terrible, undo, undo!” But that’s just how it goes when you’re trying to create something new from scratch. You just gotta keep poking at it until it starts to look like something.
