Making a Living Toy Universe Feel Serious There is an inherent contradiction at the heart of any world built from toys. Plastic soldiers, molded smiles, bright colors, simplified anatomy… these elements are culturally coded as harmless. They belong to childhood, to imagination, to play. The moment they move, speak, and wage war, the premise risks … Continue reading Plastic with Consequence: The dilemma of portraying toys as something serious →

The Evolution of Plastic Soldiers in the Army Men Toyverse Like the clones in Star Wars, Plastic Soldiers are mass-produced with a single purpose: to fight. Fresh out of the mold, they are identical in appearance and function. They have no personal identity, no opinions, and no customization. Their abilities are the same, their uniforms … Continue reading From Identical Soldiers to Individual Warriors →

Flags, logos, and other visual representations are powerful tools in graphic design, serving as symbols that convey identity, values, and messages of groups, nations, factions, and communities. Let’s explore these elements from a graphic design perspective, focusing on representation, iconography, and the meanings behind various design elements and their users. Army Men Nations flags Flags … Continue reading Making the Microverse, Part 10: Flags, Identity, Nations and Factions →

The Toyverse thrives on the belief that every toy has a soul, a tiny spark of magic. So in the Real World, the world that ties all toys to a common origin, is so bigger that contains a few “embasies” from the other worlds, officially recognized by some toykinds and some of this worlds. So … Continue reading Embassies in other worlds →

There are many ways to make conceptual art… The points to take into consideration for our Army Men concept artists: Conceptual art is an artistic and simplified sketch in which the conceptualization or idea is more important than the drawn/conceptualized art. Ideas prevail over their formal or sensitive aspects so that the artistic aspect of … Continue reading Making the Microverse, Part 6: Concept Art & Storyboards →

… So here we go with an in-depth study on the soundtracks of the Army Men franchise games… Soundtracks are an indelible mark on a franchise’s identity. They are very important when creating a sequel video game to a franchise as established in collective knowledge as Army Men. Sounds and Music Samples all around the … Continue reading Making the Microverse, Part 5: That music sounds familiar… →

To work or not to work, that is the question Weapons will work in a very particular way in the Army Men Toyverse. They will work normally in the worlds they come from, but will stop working in other worlds, or will be nerfed at least. This way we ensure that the seemingly weak plastic … Continue reading Making the Microverse, Part 4: Weapons Malfunction →

Tone, hue, or tonality: the degree to which the visual color stimulus can be described. The Army Men armies in our project, especially in canon and in Army Men Revolution, will have different shades within their own ranks, just like plastic soldiers in the real world. Photos courtesy of Caenen Meltesenhttps://instagram.com/caenenmeltesen Over the years, the … Continue reading Making the Microverse, Part 3: Shades of Plastic →

To make an incredible video game sometimes you need to do a lot of research A pigeon fighting a plastic soldier sounds ridiculous, until you see it with your own eyes… High speed. Precision. A weight of 250 Gr (9 ounces or 0.6 pounds). After watching this video, you don’t have to use much of … Continue reading Making the Microverse, Part 2: Animal Warriors →

Before 3D design and video game design, other talented artists had to face the challenge of making small beings look realistic, and showing giant environments from their perspective. In this first part of this series, we will reveal some of its ingenious secrets, knowledge that will help improve the experience of the small world of … Continue reading Making the Microverse, Part 1: Miniaturization secrets on Cinema! →

The Toyverse thrives on the belief that every toy has a soul, a tiny spark of magic. So in the Real World, the world that ties all toys to a common origin, is so bigger that contains a few “embasies” from the other worlds, officially recognized by some toykinds and some of this worlds. So … Continue reading Embassies in other worlds →

To work or not to work, that is the question Weapons will work in a very particular way in the Army Men Toyverse. They will work normally in the worlds they come from, but will stop working in other worlds, or will be nerfed at least. This way we ensure that the seemingly weak plastic … Continue reading Making the Microverse, Part 4: Weapons Malfunction →

Plastic World’s Dawn Land is an almost exact copy, a mirror, of a place of the same name, but in the Prehistoric World, or vice versa. Upon entering this place from the respective portal, the user arrive at an almost identical place, as if it were the same place, but with the original statues like … Continue reading Mirror Worlds: Different worlds or the same worlds but during different times? →

Remember those great Concept Art pieces? Well, we started making them a reality (sort of). There are some ideas in Concept Art pieces that never became reality (or, in fact, most of them never did). So here we’ll show you the process of how we make them a reality, one way or another.

Army Men 2.5D games: Step by Step The first Army Men games, Army Men (1998), Army Men II (1999), Army Men: Toys in Space (1999), Army Men: World War (1999, PC version), and Army Men: Air Tactics (2000) were developed by The 3DO Company during the late ’90s. These titles were created for PC, though … Continue reading How PC Army Men 2D games were made →

Several 3D models from the Army Men franchise have appeared over the years. Here’s a compilation of the ones the fandom have and the ones we’re missing… Here you can find links to download some of the 3D models made or acquired by 3DO. All of them will be made available gradually. 1. Official but … Continue reading Army Men 3D models →

What is more difficult than creating a character from scratch? Recreate a pre-existing one from low resolution images Something extremely difficult is to imitate a 3D model only with poor quality reference images. It is a tedious and slow job, much more difficult to do than creating a character from 0, at least from the … Continue reading Designing the Army Men in 3D, Part 1: Recreating from Reference Images →

3D models Showroom Characters, vehicles, weapons and other 3D models for the project. Below is a series of galleries showing some of the 3D models for Revolution and the rest of the Army Men Toyverse projects. Characters Vehicles Making of 3D models & 3D printing Weapons Objects

The assets of the game will be a lot, but for the most part they will be the same three-dimensional geometry with different textures, as in the case of the Real World assets. We will try to make each door, each wall, each window and each wooden furniture different, using an algorithm that will modify … Continue reading Revolution assets library →