The finished Button Norn. Not sure what I'm going to do with this guy...


The finished Button Norn head, minus the cloth texture.


The beginnings of the Button Norn.


The design history of this metaroom--which wasn't even originally called Devil's Reef--is extremely convoluted. First there was a lighthouse, then there wasn't, then I made a better one, things moved, the lighting went crazy, and the original ship was also traded out. The original name was actually going to be "Y'ha-nthlei", except I realized it would be difficult for most people to pronounce.


For fun, here's the pirate ship from Devil's Reef (sans barnacles).


This is an early preview of a metaroom that was sadly lost years ago, although parts of it later worked their way into the Biodome. That metaroom was Hydrocea, and the background was modeled by the extremely talented Moe.
Although I had no hand in its development, it was the single biggest inspiration behind Devil's Reef (yeah, even bigger than The Call of Cthulhu). The pirate ship in DR was intentionally based on the Hydrocea one, even though I was modeling it mostly from memory until Moe graciously lent me a copy of the old teaser pic.

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I don't think I ever showed this one to anybody. I like the distant background with the obelisk but the rest isn't too great... although I think actually I re-used those ears from the "Anubis Norn" for Banubey.


The head of a Sabertooth Norn.


The head model for the Deep Norn. One of the most persistent--and dumbest--things I ever modeled was this Norn head, which was also modified for the Sabertooth Norn. I still didn't have the best grasp of modeling in Blender and the first Norn heads I tried to make sucked. So I got frustrated one day and just sat down and modeled this head vertex by vertex in Milkshape. I was very lucky--it ended up being one of the few models Blender would edit/subsurf without crashing.


The dinosaur pull toy I released for the CCSF 2008. Well, sort of--I had no idea how to make the "pull" part work, so it ended up being something Norns just pushed along. This was created for KT--hence the similarity to the other toys like the war drum--but I ended up releasing it early. Ultimately my "Milkshape phase" didn't last very long because I realized there were some pretty sucky drawbacks; for instance, this model crashed any time I tried to edit it in Blender (I wound up editing those weird "reins" out using Photoshop). Most of my Milkshape models also crashed when subsurfed. Nasty.


The moonflower from the Tulu metaroom. See any difference in appearance compared to my first models? I was modeling using Milkshape instead, only using Blender to render models. Milkshape seemed more comfortable back then because I had already been using it for a while creating new clothing for The Sims.


Tulu is a bit of a funny metaroom. I was already in the process of making it when I was literally just starting out with 3D modeling, so only a couple objects were actually modeled by me; the pho-dgan and blackbird (which was supposed to be a part of this room) were actually made in Photoshop, and the "nice" 3D models like the tree, church and pumpkin pie slice were borrowed from free stock renders. But it is still my absolute favorite metaroom.

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A head for a Jaguar Norn, based on the same model I made earlier.
Of course, this was the last time I used this model, or Nurbs in general. Of course, Embri told me it wasn't a good idea to use Nurbs for everything, and she was right.


Body for the Jaguar Norn.


My first "decent" Norn head.


An early attempt at body parts to go with that Grendel head.


A generic Grendel head, with Chaos Development's Yeren Grendel for comparison. Not horrible... but in the end I never actually used it.


A bat wing.


The beginnings of the CaveNorn "world". Dig the volcano! There's going to be a waterfall that flows down into the crevasse on the left and into a pool.
This is, obviously, the model that went on to become the background for KT.


A bridge to go across the crevasse. I didn't make the bones, but they fit very well with the theme. I added the ropes/vines in Photoshop.


My concept of what a Banshee might look like, although this one is more on the Grendelish side. First object created without using nurbs.
I really liked this one, but sadly a poor understanding of Blender's features can lead a person to disaster. I accidentally overwrote the file and lost the model. Grrr.


The head, body and tail of a Spotted Dolphin Norn. One of the last objects I made using Nurbs; Nurbs work okay for bodies but are a pain in the butt for making heads.


The Python Norn body/tail, this time with pattern added.
Of course I had no idea how to use UV maps at the time, so it took a lot of adjustments to the graphics to make them look right on the models, and always looked kinda funky close up.


My second model: the body and tail of a Naga Norn.


The Strider, this time with scales and proper eyeballs.
The Strider was eventually dropped from Bai-Loki, but if it looks at all familiar there's good reason: the Strider duckbill from KT borrows its textures and overall look from early designs for this animal.


My first object; the Strider, a dinosaur-ish creature originally planned for Bai Loki's desert terrarium. It was meant to be sort of a skinnier relative of the Gnarler.

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