M.A.T.

Haven't we all been there? Longing to voice our deepest emotions when words stumble and fall

So has been Yves, a brilliant inventor who's been in love with Riley for ages.

As the years passed, their love deepened, but Yves feared losing Riley due to their difficulty in verbalizing affection. Determined to bridge the gap, Yves channeled their love into the creation of MAT—Magical Affection Tracker.

With MAT, Yves has been able to mend the relationship with Riley.

MAT's appearance remembers a traffic light as it does its function: red light when emotionally unavailable, yellow light when confused, green light when calm, and gradient when feeling all the things at once.

Initially, Yves painted MAT in green, but the underlying primer layer had not been applied with precision. This imperfection lay beneath the green paint, lightly revealing uneven patches and a less-than-smooth surface. 

As time marched on, MAT began to show signs of wear. Yves, noticing the fading green and the first hints of wear and tear, decided to recolour MAT in yellow.

Yet, the passage of time took its toll, and the yellow paint eventually bore the marks of wear. The internal battery's death and the non-functioning charging base became the catalyst for maintenance. During repairs to address these issues, Yves added external components, exposed wires, electrical zip ties, and electrical tape, leaving hot glue marks here and there to keep the cables in place.

In this project, I used curves intensely to realize many components: cables, led panel lines, weldings, charging base details, electrical zip ties, writings, and the head's main mechanism springs. Displacement too was used in multiple areas.

I struggled in the first place to find a concept to realize. Then an idea💡came up :)

I wanted to make use of the inside of MAT's head space. After some trial and error, I found a proper lightbulb for my advanced table lamp.

Here below are some of the alphas I created in Photoshop. They are not many, as for most I used Substance Painter's standard ones.

And that's a wrap! It's been a long journey since the beginning, and I went through quite a creative process to give shape to what I had in mind. I'm very happy with the outcome, and I hope that in some manner, it can resonate with you as it does for me.