Sci-Fi Workstation

I love the look of old computer monitors from the late 80s and 90s, and looking at other artwork in the “Cassette futurism” genre made me want to try it out for myself. The concept is a tricky balance between design and function. I tried keeping every element logical and functional, while making sure that the overall design remained somewhat stylized. Like a funky industrial version of the original Macintosh workstation.

This was an interesting challenge: keeping the construction as functional as possible, making sure that no element was added only for the sake of aesthetics, while trying to make all parts work harmoniously in the overall design. At the time I was still new to 3D modelling, so I limited myself to poly modelling from primitives

Reference & Inspiration

The original Apple Macintosh was my main inspiration for this, but I also looked at dozens of other personal computers from the 80’s and 90’s, as well as countless fantasy workstations, kiosks and tech gadgets from Artstation. Even though it was initially inspired by the Macintosh, it’s still running Ms DOS.

The Process

No surprise, this design also went thorough many changes. In the end I moved quite far from the simple design I wanted to do in the beginning. This project was also my way into modelling in maya, so the biggest lessons were getting my topology right (I only developed it closer to the end) and leaning to texture the glowing buttons, so they actually look like buttons with a light inside.