DK's Steel Jungle Pursuit

I'm back with another retro style render! I got the inspiration for this from a certain scene in the new Mario Galaxy movie. I don't know if I can post a screenshot without getting copyright claimed or something, but you probably know which one I'm talking about. I mean it wasn't hard to miss lol, It's literally the only scene with DK (sadly).

The movie was great as a Mario fan but I can see why people might be disappointed with the fact that illumination didn't really listen to the complaints about the first movie's pacing being too fast (and almost doubled down on that aspect honestly). I also wanted more of Mario's family and arc as a hero shown, but we rarely even see Brooklyn. The ending was a little brief as well, but that 'reveal' of a certain character's backstory was great, even if it had the side effect of gimping some of the story stuff from Galaxy the game. I guess if you put a gun to my head, I'd say that the first one was somewhat better, but I enjoyed them both a lot.

Anyways, back to the art. I'm continuing to attempt to get better at accurately capturing the look of the old Rare renders. Getting the silicone graphics look was tough with this one. The more lighting I added, the more modern it looked, even with the contrast/exposure adjustments and the half tone filter added in photoshop.

What really helped was switching the renderer from cycles to EEVEE. I think it really helped get rid of all the extra bounce lighting and soft shadows, which I was trying to avoid. I'm proud of the composition and lighting in this one, it was really hard to balance looking like an old render and having good lighting. I learned a bit about hard surface modeling too, apparently windows on a helicopter are an absolute pain to model, who knew?

I hope you guys enjoyed this render, let me know what you think!