Max van der Merwe

I’ve been summoned! Shading is pretty simple, cel shading with a smoothstep + soft directional ambient.
Ian is doing a lot of heavy lifting with his beautiful compositions here, and I tried to give the art team as much fine control over colour as possible. Nice shapes + nice colours = v. pretty!

Some of IQ’s domain warping examples have a similar look, I think you could get something very close with some tinkering. Just lots of layered perlin noises, distorted with even more perlin noises.

iquilezles.org/articles/warp/

Oh man, it was such a shame given the strong start to the season. Just aggressively unpleasant television.

How to create beautiful terrain with erosion in Blender fast (thread) ✨

Boarding my 11 hour, transatlantic flight with a promise to myself that I WILL understand the Caves of Qud when I land.

You just know the Rayonné is the dirtiest synth bass you’ve ever heard.

I dont want AAA games anymore, i want games made by a little freak with a vision

Oh hey, I did some fun work on this one! Well over a year ago now, very surreal to jump into a Monument Valley game as a player, essentially blind! (I assume it has changed greatly since my tenure)

Hello America!
(please be normal)

The tracker seems to imply a possibility that my flight could decide go to Jamaica today instead, which sounds ideal, fingers crossed!

I have somehow, through a series of unexpected personal and economical events, found myself on a plane to relocate my whole damn self, from the UK to the US, on election day. Everything feels totally unreal, here’s hoping I land in a normal country!

Oh my god! This is incredible, thank you! How did I not find this? And yeah, I’m using Unity, but was seriously considering porting everything over to dots physics or something else less black box-y!

Oh that’s amazing! I’ve actually been tackling the exact same problem over the last week or so, and have been plain stumped by the way physx handles its inertia matrices. It’s been very difficult to get right, well done for seeing it though!

An ad for a toy goose that dances

Maybe the funniest ad copy I’ve ever seen

Digital painting of some towering clouds in dramatic yellow and orange lighting, and dark grey shadows.

Digital painting of a character walking in a field of brown grass around golden hour. The sky is filled with large, pastel iridescent clouds. The character is seen from the back.

Digital painting of a woman standing still up to her stomach in a bright red river that somewhat resembles lava. It is around nightfall, and the woman is lit from underneath by the reiver.

Digital painting of a seascape at night, with a huge two-story iridescent cloud overtaking the sky and brightly shining over the sea. In the middle of the ocean, there is a small boat with a small figure sitting in it, watching the sky.

Hello! I'm a person who draws the sky a lot, but sometimes other things too! I'll be hanging out around these parts.

anti-piracy print ad. huge font at top of page: warning photo: two floppy disks side by side, one that official disk for a game called 'see it, shoot it', the other a pirated disk with 'see it, shoot it' handwritten on the disk label. below the official disk, the text: this disk will give you hours of fun. below the pirated disk, the text: this disk could give you 6 months in prison. more text: if you pirate softare you are a thief. thieves will be prosecuted. bottom right hand corner: a skull and crossbones with a circle and a diagonal line through the skull and the text font: 'piracy is theft' below it. the ad was published by e.l.s.p.a.: entertainment and leisure software publishers association

(1989) archive.org/details/Zero...

hurgh it's #portfolioday and i am very tired and am down for 3D generalist work

sure, all my portfolio stuff is characters and texture work but can you imagine how badass my gradient textures would look on props? get in here early and you get my great personality and jokes for free

I'm looking for gamedev and graphics peeps to follow. Who you got? Reposts appreciated!

A tiny unsorted selection of mutuals and familiar faces skimmed off the top of my follows!

@omershapira.com
@unconed.bsky.social
@filipm.bsky.social
@drpritch.bsky.social
@ocornut.bsky.social
@vassvik.bsky.social
@aishization.bsky.social
@gfxnico.bsky.social
@victormoneratto.bsky.social

Feels like most graphics folk are much more active on Mastodon, which is fair. If more people make the jump here, as Twitter continues to implode, I would love to (or for someone else to) set up a custom Graphics feed!

It's true, I'm actually just 15 million mosquitos in a trench coat and glasses.

Of course, that makes perfect sense!

This is so cool, have never heard the term ‘multi-armed bandit’ before and I kind of love ‘regret’ as a metric. Are there any common problems in graphics/games that could be characterised this way, or is this primarily an ML space thing?

Why should I care enough to read or behold something no one cared enough to actually make?

I think most sci-fi that I've been exposed to was either too deeply entrenched in then topical Modernism ("We're on a trajectory for the stars!"), or Post-Modernism ("Megacorps own your organs! How grungy!") to honestly engage in this specific kind of self reflection.

QRT the character VS how do you draw them

Struggling with the lack of any kind of map in Cocoon! This is 100% a me problem, Cocoon seems so beautiful and incredibly well designed.
But being unable to look beyond my immediate surroundings combined with the number of blind forks and one way gates is very stressful for Maxes!

Ag! Totally obsessed with The Devil's Plan. It's a korean reality game show with a heavy emphasis on game design, and a spiritual successor to 'The Genius' one of my favourite TV shows of all time! It's BACK baybee! (its on the netflix or can probably be gotten via other means or whatever)

👾 OUT NOW 🪡

vividfax.itch.io/crossle

Crossle is a daily cross-stitch pathfinding challenge where you have to complete all of the crosses in the pattern using the least amount of thread. I find a tactical combination of the English and Danish methods works best ;)

Recording pitches with a face cam (yuck) and I’m not sure how people record long videos in isolation and remember to be aware of and personable to the camera. I’ve stuck a little guy up there to be my stand in audience and he’s helping me through it.