The plan for this project was to design and model a two-way radio inspired by 90's technology styles, that could fit within a futuristic scifi setting. I'd already established a narrative for the piece and had a good idea of the art direction before starting the model. Many more ideas appeared along the way, which helped to bring more personality to the final result. 

The first thing to do was gather reference images of 90's technology such as MiniDisc & tape Walkmans, PDA's, cameras and Gameboys. With a few good images to refer to, I began sketching out some of my own ideas. When I had a design that I felt captured the feel of 90's tech, I moved onto modelling.

Inside Blender I used my sketch as reference and started to block out the main form of the radio, using 3D space to balance the scale and weight of the object. Once the basic blockout was ready I moved onto detailing the individual pieces, paying close attention to scale and refining it where necessary.

I wanted to make two versions of the radio: one brand new and shiny (similar to the 90's tech reference) and another that was more suited to the narrative. The idea behind it is that this radio has been discovered in an abandoned facility and has seen a lot of use, so I used chipped paint and grimy metal textures to suggest that.

Using Affinity Designer I worked on some decals for the radio. Most of these were functional, such as volume, channel, lock and push-to-talk decals, and the final one was a company logo. Once these had been applied I started to set a scene for the presentation render. This included some additional assets that I modelled: one of my illustrations from earlier in the year, a couple of "photographs" of some environment renders, cables, sketches, and the ID card of the radio's previous owner.

Once the objects had been arranged in the scene and I was happy with the lighting setup, I rendered it out and headed into Clip Studio for post editing. I made some brightness and contrast adjustments, followed by saturation tweaks and called it finished.