Explore Nacho's heartfelt tribute to the legendary Spanish illustrator Alfonso Azpiri, as he transforms childhood nostalgia into stunning sculptures inspired by Azpiri's iconic video game artwork. Journey through the OXO Video Game Museum's exhibition, celebrating 40 years of Dinamic's enduring impact on the gaming world.
INTRODUCTION
Hi! I’m Nacho, a 3D artist from Aranjuez (Madrid, Spain), and I would like to tell you a story that starts in 1986 when I was a kid and ends 38 years later in a videogame museum.
Over time, I've worked sporadically in the industry with various programs like Max, Maya, XSI, and Blender many years ago. I've also taught 3D on multiple occasions.
I always wanted to fully immerse myself in the Open Source world, so one day I made the switch, adopted a Linux distro, and transitioned entirely to Blender on Linux. I appreciate the freedom of not needing anything else.
Currently, I own a Fine Arts shop and pursue 3D projects in my spare time. I'm open to collaborating on any new projects that come my way.
JOURNEY
Inspiration
Some time ago, as a hobby, I decided to recreate 8 of the most special game covers from my childhood in Blender—not only recreating them but paying tribute to that era. It wasn't just about doing "something similar,” since I have great respect for them, it was about trying to bring the spirit of an era to 3D.
Of the 8 sculptures, 7 are by Alfonso Azpiri and one more by Juan Gimenez.
All of them belong to Spanish 8-bit games between the years 1985-1990, and I always include details and winks, both to the author of the cover and to the game itself (including elements of the game or the comic on which they are based, to create 360º sculptures).
(you can see them in this BlenderArtist thread: 8 retro games sculptures)
This is the history of one of them, “Army Moves.”
1986 is the era of 8-bit microcomputers like the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad, MSX... the games came on cassettes that you had to wait several minutes to load (we had a lot of patience XD).
I had a 48k ZX Spectrum, and I was truly fascinated by those games, but above all, by their illustrations.
In 1986, the game company Dinamic created the game "Army Moves," and Alfonso Azpiri drew the cover for them. And that was a great game in the history of Spanish video games, with an unforgettable tape cover.
Azpiri & the Original Illustration
Alfonso Azpiri (1947-2017) was a renowned and beloved Spanish illustrator who worked in many fields, from comics to cinema, including video games, and it was in this field where he created the legendary illustrations that accompanied the games on which I base my sculptures.
This is the original illustration by Azpiri from 1986:
And this is Azpiri with more of his work related to games in those years (Portrait of Azpiri drawn by Angel Luis Sanchez, another great Spanish illustrator, for the exhibition):
If the game had a tape cover drawn by Azpiri, it would be a bestseller. We are talking about a time when games were sold mostly by their covers; many times, you did not have much more information about them.
Perhaps his most famous characters are Lorna and MOT, and he published for years in sci-fi magazines like "Heavy Metal," “Cimoc,” etc. He also created books for kids featuring “MOT” or “Lump.” But he will always be mostly remembered for his illustrations in the world of video games (those that fascinated us when we were children).
You can search the internet for “Alfonso Azpiri” and see his monumental work.
I was very lucky to meet him in person. He was an extraordinary person, always close and kind, always with a smile on his face for anyone who approached him. We miss you very much, Master.
Dinamic & the Game
Dinamic was founded in 1984 by Pablo Ruiz, together with his brothers Nacho and Victor. It became the most famous game company in the history of 8-bit games in Spain, in an era that came to be called the golden age of Spanish software.
In 1986, with Army Moves, it reached 1 million players internationally—the first time a Spanish game achieved this—opening the doors to the international market. In 1988, its game Navy Moves was awarded the best game of the year.
You can see the entire history of their games on their page. Do the games Game Over, Risky Woods, PC Futbol, or Imperivm sound familiar to you? To name just a few...
This is an original copy of the tape and some screenshots from level 1 of the game:
Yeah! Retro Time!
In level 1, you drive a jeep, jumping and firing between broken bridges. As you can see, it fires up and forward. (The game has more levels; it's a game with a lot of variety.)
In 2024, they celebrated their 40th anniversary, and that is when Pablo Ruiz became interested in taking my model to the museum as one of the objects of the exhibition.
The Blender Model
This is the 3d model:
Chassis shader: Always a mix of masks (baked and painted) with procedural noises, scratch textures, and hand-painted detail layers.
This is my usual workflow; I always try to paint everything inside Blender, and if I need any external program, I use Krita (all of them under Linux).
When starting from an illustration, I only have that information, and for it to be a 360º sculpture, the rest has to be figured out. In this case, the closest base to take references from is a Willys Jeep MB from 1945.
Detail of the wheel with and without modifiers (Remesh and Displace to get the rough touch without losing the geo base).
The missile launcher group was the part I had to invent and design the most while respecting what can be seen in the original illustration.
Launcher tubes:
Base launcher:
It was fun; I wanted a piece that looked strong and hydraulic, with a traditional mechanical appearance.
The driver:
As always, I made use of the Multires Modifier for sculpting, and for the painted version, I set a low level of Multires combined with the baked normal map from the highest level.
Base of cassettes:
There are original ones, and you know—the tapes that your friend from school recorded and you decorated.
Because I wanted real geometry for the cassettes (not just a normal map effect), I used booleans and mirrors to build them (the grated blocks are simply an array).
Textures and decals (displaced from their original position) of the cassettes.
Do you remember that the game was about a jeep jumping and shooting between broken bridges?
The bridge:
But how does the driver shoot the missiles?
Because it has its own mini ZX Spectrum on the jeep dashboard, with 2 keys to shoot up and forward (this is a retro wink; they are real keys from a ZX).
Light and composition are mostly strong lights from behind to create a nice rim effect, some lens distortion driven by an ellipse mask just to get the effect at the “outers” of the image, some basic enhancement of the inputs, and mixed with a background group at the end… and EEVEE (4.1).
Avalon & Gael, the Ones Who Made It Real
With the idea of carrying out the model for the exhibition, Pablo put me in contact with “Avalon Fortune” (Buru Aran) and “Gaelic Props” (Gael Dominguez), so we started working together. Avalon and Gael are both prop-makers who teamed up to carry out the piece by combining their skills.
Here are some pictures of the WIP in the workshop:
Avalon is a great prop-maker in the traditional way, sculpting, painting, and creating everything by hand, with extraordinary attention to detail that has led him to work on collaborations for Nintendo and Bandai-Namco, among others.
Nintendo Collector's Box for Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
Bandai-Namco`s Elden Ring Limited Edition of 50 Special Boxes
Gael is also a great prop-maker but is more focused on modern arts. He studied and mastered 3D and programming and is the engineer in charge of a group of "Anycubic Photon M3 Max" printers. However, as he has always done, he continues painting and finishing his models by hand.
Here are some examples of his work (I love Hellboy's gun):
It was an immense pleasure to meet and work with them. They did an extraordinary job in record time (working literally until the last minute), for which I am enormously grateful to them.
The OXO Museum and the Dinamic`s 40th Anniversary Exhibition
The OXO Video Game Museum, founded by Kaiju Group and its CEO Javier Ramos, is located in the Plaza del Siglo in Malaga (Spain), in a beautiful building of five floors at the center of the city. Here is their Instagram page.
The museum is dedicated to the preservation of the entire history of video games and their projection into the future, in addition to holding temporary thematic exhibitions (the one before this was about Final Fantasy, for example).
The final dimensions of the sculpture are approximately:
1.1 meters in length x 0.6 meters in width x 0.8 meters in height, not including missiles (43.3 x 23.6 x 31.5 inches).
At the Museum (vertical version):
At the Museum (horizontal version):
Public Reel of the OXO Museum:
At the Press Conference, the founders of Dinamic and creators of the game:
So here I am, with a model I made as a hobby out of pure love for an illustrator, a game, and a time of my childhood, while being part of the exhibition dedicated to all of it 40 years later. I feel enormously grateful for that, and to all the people who have been part of it.
Hope you liked it, and many thanks to Alina Khan and BlenderNation for allowing me to tell this story.
Best Regards, Nacho!
About the Artist
Nacho is a 3D artist from Aranjuez, Spain. Despite not working currently in the industry, his free time is spent creating with Blender and collaborating with projects.
