I’ve had a horrible time as of late; I’ve aborted several projects because I didn’t feel they were up to scratch, mainly decent ideas with sub-par execution. I decided to avoid plunging into the depths of a crisis of confidence by going with what I know to get myself back on the right track. Here are the fruits of that endeavor: two variants on an Emperor Dragon AK-47.

I wanted to call it ‘Mother of dragons’ because they appear thrice -- I didn’t because of potential IP issues; ‘Dragon queen’ was another alternative, keeping it ‘regal’ yet potentially opening the door to the moniker ‘drag-queen’. The colour scheme is loosely based on the emperor dragon desert eagle so to avoid confusion (and litigation) I chose convention - sorry chaps.

What's different in this design is the facing dragon on the ‘spine’. In order to get the scale pattern detail at both ends of the weapon I decided to have dragons coming from both directions. This meant the head would face the player - in principle this is a good idea although a nightmare to render in a symmetrical fashion that doesn’t betray the side projection. I think the end result is a little quirky, but it kind of works.

I was hampered by weird UV glitches in that area that only appeared ingame but not in 3D software - as if some areas of the UV are weighted causing the textures to distort. Also UV face duplication presented a few problems to overcome - notably on the mag front and iron sight. I wanted to place more line detail on the rear stock but the resolution on the top wooden part is terrible! I employed arduous trial and error to iron out most of the issues.

Because I live in fear of the ‘no gold’ stipulation in the FAQ; hence (B) has a completely brown base, whereas (A) feature gold accents to the base metal.




There are other reasons too: I didn’t like how the highlighted areas were impacted by the patina colours during a hue-shift test; the brown version worked slightly better in this regard (albeit not as well as the p2000) whereas the gold looked like it had been dyed in the wash. Long story short: option A for gold with negligible colour shift, option B for brown with a magenta shift. Both boxes ticked. Yay!

Option A or B?
Also - what do you think to the facing dragon? Yarp or narp?