iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

making some goopy guys

Two sketches on gridded paper in pink and black pen

The top sketch is labeled "Atlantean 3-pilot biomech" and the bottom is labeled "Atlantean Pilot"

The top sketch shows a large biomechanical monster with three slits where its head should be, long arms reminiscent of starfish, and spikes or ridges along its back. A tiny figure stands nearby to show scale, indicating that this monster is at least 20m tall.

The bottom sketch is of a biomechanical helmet with ridges and bumps. The eyes are covered in bumpy half-spheres, and there are mouth tubes coming out on either side of what looks like a mask. The ears are covered with bulbs that have a twisted tube coming out the middle.

Xavier @xavierck.com · 29/09/2026

How goddamn cool would it be to play a game entirely from a room with this little desk and a whiteboard for you to write notes or draw maps?

A desk with several small CCTV monitors, a control panel, a mic, and a few other accoutrements

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 26/09/2026

bout to pay ten bucks for what is sure to be an incredible adventure

A booth at a touristy local farm spot with a sign that says

AXE THROWING
ROCK CLIMBING WALL

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 24/09/2026

literally this where it's just fading out from titty distance

Meme of a super well drawn horse butt with a child's drawing for the front of the body

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 24/09/2026

Continuing to think some thunks

A render window in Blender showing a battleship with legs hiking through the mountains at sunset

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 21/09/2026

Fixed some stuff up so the top of the mesa has better density and such. I'm also learning the benefits of where to use geo nodes and where to reference in geometry This is crazy fun

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 21/09/2026

Right now it's a simple mesh that gets repeated and then stretched along a spline My nodes are still a mess, so here's the relevant section

A screenshot from the Blender interface showing the geo nodes setup to get that mesh repeating along a spline

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 21/09/2026

Working on a little mesa generator using geo nodes

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 19/09/2026

Having a doozy of a mental health thing, so I'm leaning on old comfortable things a lot these days

A photo of a TV showing Star Trek with Locutus of Borg saying "I am Locutus of Borg."

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 16/09/2026

I want a jacket with a back panel that has this embroidered on it

A hugely complex label with lots of abbreviated stuff I honestly can't read.

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 16/09/2026

losing my fucking mind at the graphic design on these electronics labels

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 14/09/2026

oh shit, I just remembered that the Shaded Texture viewport shading mode in Modo is Gouraud shading just like on the PS2 fuck yeah vertex lighting

The model from above, this time with dramatic lighting

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 14/09/2026

The polycount on this guy isn't horrible for something like mid/late-gen PS2/Gamecube, but I feel like I could still trim things down just a touch more I'll wait until I have the rest of the body built out though. Need to see what actually requires enough polycount for good silhouette breaks

An untextured view of the models from the previous post showing big chunky polygons like you'd see in a PS2 game

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 14/09/2026

CRT filters make everything so much cooler

A low poly character head wearing a tan and reddish mask with straps going around back. They have visible scars on their neck.

The mask is pulled away to reveal full face scarring, cameras for eyes, and no lips or cheeks.

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 14/09/2026

how your email finds me

a pixelated UV mapped texture of a scarred face with no lips

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 14/09/2026

Been thinking about doing low poly portraits of these characters for a while, so here's a first pass on some textures while I sort out how I want them to look

Screenshots of a low poly head with no nose or lips and extensive burns. They have small cameras for eyes. The top row shows the character with a mask on.

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 13/09/2026

Working on the visual design for the main character in my book Trying to strike a balance between cool, friendly, disturbing, and "feels like a vaguely plausible futuristic medical appliance" for the mask

Two screenshots of a model in Zbrush. On the right is a character with a horribly burnt face, no lips and nose, and eyes that have been replaced with camera implants. On the left is the same character wearing a mask to cover their face

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 11/09/2026

Did a few tweaks and adjustments and I think I'm closer to what I had in mind for this piece. Still a little noisy, but I like the atmosphere a bit better

A nighttime scene of a dense city with a huge space elevator platform in the background. Lanes of flying cars are visible angling around skyscrapers.

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 10/09/2026

Hazard Corps chapter 7 is out! Trying to repair a relationship, Indi opens up about his past as they travel through a transfer gate and down a space elevator. www.scribblehub.com/read/2488758...

A large city of dark buildings surrounds a large white building at the base of a space elevator

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 10/09/2026

I just need a quick scene where these characters introduce themselves to each other

Spongebob meme that says "6 Pages Later"

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 05/09/2026

The sequel, of course, to this image showing the other end of the elevator high, high above the equator of Periclene.

A space station seen from below. Beyond it are planetary rings. The station is shaped a little like a snowflake.

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 05/09/2026

The bases of space elevators are generally busy ports, but none more so than Periclene's Base 12. Located on a tropical archipelago that sees some of the finest weather on the planet, Base 12's gargantuan metropolis is home to approximately six million people.

Aerial view of a large city at dawn. Flying cars hover in long lines and in the distance is the base of a space elevator

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 04/09/2026

I wanted to be able to manually control the distribution of skyscrapers, so I plugged the vert color attribute into the geometry nodes setup and used it as a mask Works pretty well

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 04/09/2026

I'm not going overboard, YOU'RE going overboard.

A screenshot of the Blender interface showing a viewport shot of the cityscape from the render in the previous post

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 04/09/2026

Blocking in another scene from my book. Still a bunch of details I want to add, but I really, really, really need to go to bed.

A sci-fi city with hovering traffic that has blue thrusters. A space elevator is visible in the background

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 03/09/2026

Chapter 6 of Hazard Corps is now out! We finally see firsthand how dangerous the antagonists can be as they take over the bodies of two unwitting men onboard Cascadia Station. www.scribblehub.com/read/2488758...

A huge space dock carved into an asteroid, with each of the six main sections being separated into 10 smaller hangars. Ships are in the process of docking.

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 03/09/2026

I sometimes forget that the reason I started doing this stuff was because there are little bits of joy sprinkled in it

A screenshot of two nodes from the Unreal material editor. The top node is labeled "Star twinkle speed" and the bottom is labeled "Star twinkle power"

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 02/09/2026

Mmm, I think I like this version just a touch better. Really hits that space-opera-masquerading-as-hard-SF look I'm interested in

A slightly less bloom-filled version of the image from the previous post

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 02/09/2026

When you stop at Cascadia Station, don't forget to check out the original Mondo Noodles just off the main atrium! Or if you're feeling spooky, explore some of the abandoned military tunnels around the outer ring during one of the hourly ghost tours.

Space ships dock at large bays carved into an asteroid.

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 01/09/2026

it's turning my render of an asteroid into an HD texture pack meme

A glitchy Blender render with lots of repeating patterns

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 01/09/2026

Guess which character puts his feet up on the screen during every single loading screen with every single different outfit in constantly-changing poses and lighting conditions anyway I never want to touch AAA with a ten foot pole ever again

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 01/09/2026

Blender render window turning out some solid glitch art

A glitchy bit of pixelated rendering in the Blender render window

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 27/08/2026

Chapter 5 of Hazard Corps is now out! Distrust is already brewing between our cast of misfits, ready to boil over any second. www.scribblehub.com/read/2488758...

Faux mass market paperback with a ringed planet lit by bright sunlight.

Title: Hazard Corps
Author: Xavi Kos
Tagline: Is that body really yours?

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 24/08/2026

Mass transit plays a huge role in the sci-fi spy novel I'm writing, so today I'm trying to figure out the exact layout of an interplanetary ferry that will be showing up under increasingly more absurd and dangerous circumstances throughout the book

A whiteboard covered in blue and red marker drawings of a space ship, one of its decks, various sketches of possible engine layouts, and a view of the interior of the central atrium

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 22/08/2026

you're so predictable

the feed labeled "Pinball on Bluesky" from Chris's image, circled in red

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 22/08/2026

Today I learned about the bonobo named Kanzi Just look at this fuckin guy!

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 20/08/2026

Chapter 4 is now out! What's a spy thriller without a little sex? And what's a little sex without mood manipulation via neural implants? And what's a little neural fuckery without a self-identity crisis? Anyway, you should read my book. www.scribblehub.com/read/2488758...

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 19/08/2026

You can get some pretty sweet bunching and scraggle if you mask off some of the smoothed vertex normals and let a little of the underlying mesh normals poke through

A screenshot from Blender showing a 3D model of a complex hairstyle with braids

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 19/08/2026

Oh cool, turns out you can use vertex colors as a mask, so you can effectively paint where you want custom normals and where you want unmodified ones

A 3D model of some hair showing vertex normals on some braids disappearing smoothly

The wireframes showing that the mesh detail is still there

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Xavier @xavierck.com · 19/08/2026

Let's see if Bluesky will actually show the full resolution image of the geometry node graph

A Blender geometry node graph showing the setup for the things from the previous posts

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