The Download Munkey : Tracking the Treasure Down …

Back in February, I wrote about the cool concept art I found at the official site for Nuclear Dawn, an anime-influenced sci-fi mod for Half-Life 2. I finally found the illustrator for some of those artworks and he happens to be a local artist from Singapore

Known as ukitakumuki on deviantArt, Kai was one of the artists (together with Daniel “Arcipello” Conway) who did the concept art for Nuclear Dawn. Unfortunately the concepts are no longer available on the Nuclear Dawn site, but you can still see some of them in his deviantArt gallery. Below are Twin Moons (top) and Twin Suns (bottom).

© Kai

There’s more concept art done for Nuclear Dawn such as Hell Divers, To Be Free and Wonderful Days among others.

Other than the fantastic Nuclear Dawn pieces, there’s a lot of great artwork in his deviantArt gallery too, of mecha like the amazing 100 Years of Force (top) and Air in Kyoto (bottom), which was done for Half-Life 2 mod Hull Breach …

© Kai

And of warriors both past For My Pride (top) and future Black Trinary (bottom).

© Kai

Some of the other subjects that he illustrates happen to be things that I like a lot, such as the Death Guard Legion of Chaos Space Marines in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. See We Are Legion below …

© Kai

Gundam, like the lone Zaku II in the Zaku Heat of The Night below …

© Kai

Transformers (mainly Starscream) in Like Nothing on Earth (same as the tagline for the RSAF recruitment ad, only that it’s for the Royal Decepticon Air Force this time round …

© Kai

And grim fantasy stuff like Nation of Sol – Urchin Down (below).

© Kai

Check out Kai’s deviantArt Gallery for even more awesome eye candy.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Zaku II Artwork by Tetuya Watanabe
Warren Louw – Illustrator
Keith Thompson – Illustrator
Adrian Smith – Warhammer 40,000 Illustrator
Andrea Uderzo – Warhammer 40,000 Illustrator
StartDrawing.org – Asia’s Drawing Portal

Four official wallpapers from the upcoming animation Appleseed : Ex Machina produced by John Woo and set to be released on 20th Oct 2007 in Japan. First read about Appleseed : Ex Machina over at the SWFToys blog.

© www.exmachina.jp

The first and fourth ones are very cool – I especially like the body armour design for the Olympus ES.W.A.T memebers in the fourth one.

Too bad there’s no 1600×1200 resolution for the wallpapers – only 1025×768 to 1280×1024 sized wallpapers available at the official site @ www.exmachina.jp.

Can’t find the Downloads section for the wallpapers? You need to launch the official Flash site, click Enter and then look for the Downloads button on the bottom left of the picture of Olympus city that pop-ups in a new window. (see below)

halcyon realms also has some scans on Appleseed : Ex Machina from Japanese magazine Animation Note issue 07 which you might also be interested

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Mecha Image of The Day (miotd.com)
Needa Schuetlitch (ニーダ・シュトリッヒ) Wallpaper
Code Guardian Movie
Metal Wolf Chaos Wallpaper
Anime Wallpapers @ Madman.com.au

I always had the assumption that robots currently used in military service were only used in place of humans in highly hazardous roles such as Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD).

So when I saw the armed robot in the Games Convention 2007 trailer for the game Frontline : Fuel of War set in the near future, I immediately dismissed it as purely a vision of future warfare.

© Kaos Studios

Apparently, armed robots are a thing of reality (although not equipped with a multi-barreled cannon as in the trailer) when I saw Foster-Miller Inc’s listing in Army Technology, a directory of military-related suppliers.

Foster-Miller Inc manufactures TALON robots configured for EOD purposes as well as SWORDS variants for armed reconnaissance, outfitted with either a M16, 40mm grenade launcher, M240/M249 machinegun, Barrett .50 rifle or the M202 rocket launcher. (the product literature states that the M202 is an anti-tank weapon but the M202 apparently only fires M74 incendiary rockets from what I read at Gary’s U.S. Infantry Weapons Reference Guide – maybe new anti-tank rockets have been developed for the M202).

© Foster-Miller Inc

With the different weapon options available, it seems particularly suitable for urban warfare where it’s maximum speed of 6.6 km/h is not a limitation.

A more heavily armed version of TALON known as Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System (MAARS) is already in the works – read the press release.

Right now, these robots are controlled remotely by humans so those stories about robots taking over the world and driving the human race to extinction aren’t going to happen (yet)

Read more or download product brochures from Foster-Miller Inc’s TALON page. Alternatively view some of products created during Foster-Miller Inc’s 50(!) years in the robotics field in this 2.8 MB PDF (other PDFs are available from the Literature section.)

UPDATE 18 Oct 2007: More info on SWORDS at Defense Review and a super high resolution photo over at army.mil.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Vision of future war in Tom Clancy’s EndWar trailer
Possible Influences for Weapons in Frontlines : Fuel of War

On 3rd June 1943, an unidentified object was spotted crossing the Atlantic Ocean by a lone American seaplane (a Vought OS2U Kingfisher to be exact).

© cee-gee.net

Unfortunately, no further reports were received from that seaplane and it was presumed destroyed.

© cee-gee.net

Not long after, the alarm was sounded at Jersey Harbor as a grey giant rampaged thorough the naval base and destroyed all in its path.

© cee-gee.net

Due to the secrecy of the weapons used, this incident was neither reported nor written about by military historians throughout the world until this video was recovered recently.

The 13 min video is actually a fully computer-generated film titled Code Guardian written, produced and directed by Marco Spitoni of www.cee-gee.net. What’s a Code Guardian exactly? You have to watch the film to find out

Additional 3D models and digital content in the film were supplied by Alessandro Baldasseroni (remember the Hellgate London’s Hunter illustration?), Giovanni Bianchin, Iacopo Di Luigi and Alessandro Briglia.

© cee-gee.net

The paint scheme on this beautiful Mustang E2-S appears to be fictional because squadron code E2 belongs to the 361th FG which had blue markings on the tail (see here)

The quality of the models, textures and animation is top-notch and Marco’s skills have definitely improved a lot when compared to his earlier works. The explosions in the video appear quite pixelated probably due to the video encoder but doesn’t really detract from the overall experience.

Download Code Guardian (under Movies – 161 MB) or read about the creation of the Aviator’s Wife photo (below) or the spectacular floating drydock used in the video at Alessandro Baldasseroni’s website here.

© cee-gee.net

Read about Cee-Gee via Alessandro Baldasseroni’s site while looking for the original artist for the Hunter illustration. It’s amazing that there’s so much quality artwork and 3D stuff out there on the .NET that deserves much more publicity outside creative circles

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
miotd.com – Mecha Artwork
Alessandro Baldasseroni – Illustrator (Hellgate London, Marvel Ultimate Alliance)
Marek Okon – Illustrator
Gundam Musou / Dynasty Warriors Gundam Intro Video

The game intro for Gundam Musou or Dynasty Warriors: Gundam by Omega Force/Koei, the creators of Dynasty Warriors series and published for PS3 and Xbox 360 by Namco Bandai Games.

Some screen captures from the intro trailer, including this awesome part where a MSZ-010 ZZ Gundam obliterates an entire group of Zaku IIs behind a building as well as several other unfortunate Zaku IIs idling around several blocks away. Play the video in slow-motion and you can really witness the destruction in detail

Behold the awesome power of the ZZ Gundam

A thousand stars in space

A transforming MSZ-006 Zeta Gundam

A definite must-download for fans of the Mobile Suit Gundam universe. Download the Game Intro HD from Gametrailers.com or another one spliced with gameplay footage here. Some captures for the latter trailer.

WD-M01 Turn A Gundam vs a group of PMS-108 Marasai

An dual heat saber-wielding AMX-0004-2 ‘Quebeley II’ hacking up hapless RGM-79 GMs

Dual Buster rifle attack by XXXG-00W0 Wing Gundam Zero

Read more about the player-controllable mobile suits at the official Gundam Musou website @ gundam-musou.jp. I would love to pilot Jupitoris PMX-003 ‘O’ or Char’s MS-06S Zaku II Commander Type

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Cute Gundam Papercraft Downloads
Zaku II Papercraft
High Resolution Gundam & Mecha Artwork @ miotd.com
Zaku II Artwork by Tetuya Watanabe