Artistically Speaking with BattleTech’s New Art Director, Marco Mazzoni

I don’t need to tell you that a big part of why BattleTech has stuck around for so long is because of the incredible art that seemingly gets better and better with each passing year. From the line drawings of the original TROs to the breathtaking multi-page art spreads that use cutting-edge software alongside the most talented artists in the biz, BattleTech‘s art is what keeps fans coming back and what brings new fans into this dynamic and expanding universe.

BattleTech has been lucky to have a succession of excellent art directors, and I’m happy to report that trend continues as Marco Mazzoni will now head BattleTech‘s art direction. To get the lowdown on what we can expect in BattleTech as a new wrangler takes over the visual reins, I sat down with Marco to ask him about his history painting for BattleTech and how he plans to ensure artists continue to create stunning pieces for the game universe we all love.

Sean (Sarna): Thank you so much for agreeing to talk to me. You are certainly not a new face to BattleTech, but you are new to your position, so we’re going to be seeing a lot more of you. 

Marco Mazzoni (CGL): It’s exciting. It is exciting.

Sean: Before we begin, let’s of course have introductions. Who are you? 

Marco: I am Marco Mazzoni. I’ve been a fan of BattleTech since the eighties and now I’ve been given the keys to the kingdom so I can run amuck with the art as I see fit.

Sean: And how much amuck are we expecting? 

Marco: Oh, I’m gonna go crazy in here! No, I’m just honored to be able to carry Brent‘s torch and continue his legacy. He did a fantastic job of training me up for the position and I’m excited to push the ball forward, as it were.

Sean: We will always appreciate you, Brent, and everything you do. 

Marco: Absolutely. 

Sean: But let’s go into your BattleTech history because I’ve already interviewed Brent twice. So, what first got you into BattleTech? 

Marco: My BattleTech journey has three chapters. The first was back in the ‘80s. My brother was ten years older than me and he just always had the cooler stuff. His room was full of comics and RPG books. I loved Transformers at that age, so I gravitated towards anything with robots in it. Of course, I had no idea what they were at the time, but seeing these giant blueprint posters of Marauders and Warhammers on his wall was very exciting to me.

I was always going through his books and grabbing his little minis. So—much to his chagrin- I got into tearing through his stuff, and I just really gravitated towards the BattleTech TROs. There was something incredibly cool about just seeing these things presented as real objects, as real vehicles with these technical specs. I didn’t know what any of that stuff meant at the time, but it looked so cool, and it inspired me to draw these robots in school with all these crazy thousand-ton ‘Mechs with billions of rockets. I was drawing all this technical jargon for it, trying to make it real.

After he moved out I sort of got into other stuff for a few years, but I think when MechWarrior 2 came out back in the ‘90s, that’s when I was like, “Hey, I remember that from when I was a kid!” I kind of had that resurgence when the cartoon came out. It was a good time to be a BattleTech fan at that point.

That really sort of reignited it. I was really just blown away by the art and the stories. I started picking up the novels, I had a bunch of minis I was painting and I was trying to get my friends to play the games. Of course, that’s a very technical thing to get some 13-year-olds into at that time, but I tried very hard. Everything around the art of it really inspired me at that time. At one point I had Les Dorscheid‘s Black Thorns poster hanging above my bed and I remember telling myself, I want to make that! Then towards the end of high school, I shifted my art focus towards making films and I sort of lost track of BattleTech for a while.

Fast forward to around 2010 I started seeing Alex Iglesias‘s ‘Mech art on DeviantArt and was like, “Oh wow, yeah, that’s right! You can actually make these things cool and, like, legit!” And then when MechWarrior Online came out, I got hooked on the gameplay and it just cranked it all back up to 11 again. I was even playing comp with my team ISENGRIM as recently as last year.

And so eventually I was just like, “OK, I’m a bit obsessed with BattleTech again, I need to get back into this and I need to do this professionally.” At that point, I was already working in video games and I kind of had the confidence that I could actually pursue this stuff again. So, I was able to find some industry connections to eventually get to Brent and pitch some stuff to him, and he immediately grabbed me and put me on some interior pieces for the Mercenaries book and yeah, the rest is history.

Sean: We’re going to get into that history a little bit more since Sarna’s article has a hole in its details for you. But first, we have to answer the all-important question. What’s your favorite ‘Mech? 

Marco: Ooh, that is a loaded one. I mean, I would have to say the apocryphal Bull Shark is probably my favorite since that’s the one that I created from scratch, so it has a very special place in my heart, of course. But, if that didn’t exist, I would probably have to go with… hmmm, it’s a tie between the Hatchetman and the Warhammer, I think.

Warhammer is the first one to grab me because it was on the box cover, so it’s probably the one I was staring at the longest, but there’s just something about that Hatchetman. I think that’s the first one I saw in the TRO that really jumped out at me because it’s a robot with a hatchet. It doesn’t get any cooler than that!

Sean: And look at its head! It looks kind of like a fish head. 

Marco: Exactly! And then we find out the head detaches, I’m like, “Ah, yeah, that’s great. I want more of that!” So yeah, I would say it’s a close tie between those two.

Sean: Very cool. As I mentioned, we do have your bio partially in Sarna; you started off doing fan pieces and then doing contract work for CGL and that got you to do some book covers at the time. Then you started doing concept art for Harebrained Schemes with their BATTLETECH game and then marketing art. And then you eventually worked that into becoming Co-Art Director at HBS, and that lets you develop the Hatchetman and art for the Urban Warfare expansion. 

But then we kind of lose track of you. So bring us up to speed after you were Harebrained Schemes’ Co-Art Director. How did you become Art Director for BattleTech at Catalyst? 

Marco: So I stuck around Harebrained Schemes for a while after that. We had a couple irons in the fire that unfortunately didn’t materialize into anything. I think it was probably a good two years where we were diligently working on stuff that never saw the light of day. I eventually moved over to the Lamplighters League to help out with concepts and art direction. About a year later that game launched to, unfortunately, not enough fanfare. And then the studio shut down. 

But this whole time, I was still doing contract work for Catalyst on the side. I was still pumping out covers and some interior work for them, so I still maintained that connection. It’s sort of a funny-sad story, I guess, when I did finally get the news that our studio shut down. I talked to Brent and I was like, “Hey, if you need any covers or something, I’m going to need a little bit extra work to kind of help make ends meet.” He immediately texted back the most excited, happy, exclamation point-filled text of like, “Oh my God, this is the best news I’ve ever heard!!!” I’m like, “Oh, okay… great!”

It was a huge relief for me to know that they had a place for me and I didn’t have to totally uproot the family and move or anything—I could immediately just kind of slide into a position at Catalyst. So I joined up with him and, similar to my role at Harebrained Schemes, it was sort of a co-art director position.

And really, he just immediately started training me up to eventually fill his position. I didn’t realize that was his end goal, but he had me help out with art direction on Ilkhan’s Eyes Only, which was the first book that I worked on.

Sean: And is available now!

Marco: I’m actually very proud of the work that our artists did on that. 

So for the last year and a half really, he’s just been giving me the inside scoop on how things are done and showing me the ropes. That made for a very smooth transition so that when he gave me the sad news that he was leaving, he was like, “Well, here are the keys, you’re ready now.”

Sean: And then Brent fades into the mist. He’s not dead, he’s just working elsewhere. Anyway, let’s go back a little bit to talk about some of your work because you’ve done a lot! You did the cover for BattleTech: A Game of Armored Combat, the beginner box set, the Alpha Strike boxed set, Commander’s Edition, BattleTech Universe, BattleTech Tukayyid, IlClan, and more. You’ve done a lot of work. What’s a piece you found especially challenging, and what made it so rough for you? 

Marco: Oh boy, well, I would say there are two. There’s one that was a challenge that ended up successful, and I’m very proud of, and another very challenging one that I look back on today that I don’t like as much. I’m still proud of the work I did, and I learned a lot from it regardless, but the end result is a bit of a mess.

I’ll start with that one. That was the Kickstarter exclusive box for the original Clan Invasion Kickstarter. There was a lot going on in that piece. The challenge was, I think there were 13 ‘Mechs on a moon with zero atmosphere, so I can’t lean on my environmental effects or anything. Full combat, everything’s bright, vivid color all in a vertical format. Which, as an artist, if you’re trying to do an epic scene, and you’re given a vertical format—

Sean: It’s only good if you’re drawing from under the sea to the stuff on land, and then the stuff happening in the air.

Marco: Oh, I put as many ‘Mechs in the air jump jetting as I could! I put ‘Mechs on hills. I tried throwing missiles up in the air. Compositionally, it was a nightmare. I was trying to get the eye to flow up and around—I was trying to do a spiral thing. It’s fine. I learned a lot about what not to do on that one, but it was a very challenging piece. 

I don’t always read comments but I did hear some feedback on that one that some of the backers were less excited about it as well, and I get it. I don’t really take that stuff to heart in a bad way. I went to art school and I’ve heard worse critiques, so it’s totally valid, but every time I see it pop up somewhere, I cringe just a little bit.

The success story of an even more challenging piece would be that Mercenaries Kickstarter giant banner spread. It was originally pitched to me as a four-panel piece, starting with the Banshee scene as the main focus. And yeah, it didn’t even have the fifth panel with the Starslayer yet.

They wanted to make that new fifth panel the box cover, but at the time it was actually a Vindicator. So I had a Vindicator in that shot pumping out a huge blue PPC bolt and it was supposed to contrast with that nice, hot yellow/orange atmosphere. Everything was tied together just the way I wanted it.

I think I was working on this piece for probably eight months off and on, because this was when I had a full-time job at Harebrained Schemes as well, so it was definitely something I was cranking away at night. It was the biggest thing I’d ever worked on at that point and a lot of pieces to tie together. I think the file was like six gigs or something crazy. It was gigantic and it was a lot of hard work. 

When I finally turned it in, the very next day, I got a message from Brent saying, “Hey, this is awesome. So… that Vindicator actually needs to be a Starslayer now.” I’m like, “Okay, it is not just a single layer I can pull and swap out, everything’s weaved together.” I just had to laugh. I was like, okay, deep breath… let’s do this. Let’s make it work.

Yeah, and about a month later, I was able to give him a full piece with the Starslayer as well as new cover art for the Beginner Box now featuring the cut Vindicator. It was a fun challenge and in the end, I basically got six usable pieces of art out of one project.

Sean: How about you walk us through the process of composing an image? Do you approach different pieces differently or do you kind of start from the same place and work outward? What’s your process? 

Marco: Unless there’s some unusual circumstance, every image starts with a very loose scratch thumbnail session. I like to go full color with my thumbnails just so I can really kind of—I don’t want to be too artsy, but find the emotion of the piece. I want to figure out what the full impact is going to look like.

And a lot of this comes down to what the messaging of the specific pieces is. Sometimes the fiction is a little loose or we don’t want to give too much away so it’s just a ‘Mech is just standing, full alpha-striking at the camera. There’s a lot of those, but sometimes we get a chance to actually paint up a specific scene in a story or something that’s on an alien planet.

It really depends on the mood, but I really want to make sure that every piece kind of has its own unique hook. My color sketches are very abstract. Actually, when I send them to Brent, sometimes he was just like, “Wow, yeah, that’s rough.” I’m like, yeah, I get it, but it’s for me! This is my roadmap so I can kind of see where it’s going.

And I keep it that way so that I can jump very quickly into Blender and really start locking in a lot of the composition from there. I already have an idea of where the flow is going to be, where the eye is going to move through the piece, and so I can just kind of quickly translate that into 3D. I can actually manipulate where the lasers are specifically pointing, making sure everything feels legit. Just having these wonderful models to work with is such a lifesaver for making sure the pieces are very accurate.

For a lot of our artists, it’s a huge time saver, but for me, it also lets me focus more on the stuff I actually enjoy doing, which is really painting up the textures and the details and the battle damage. I love painting combat effects, I love thinking about the physics of the environment they’re in.

I live in the Pacific Northwest, so we sometimes get this heavy fog rolling in, and I love to think about how that stuff moves through trees and around buildings pushing the visual scale, and I really like just trying to make sure these things feel gigantic. When they’re stomping, they’re affecting the atmosphere and even the lighting around them. Jumping to 3D just lets me play in that sandbox a little bit longer, I think.

Sean: So would you say you’re more of a 3D artist now than perhaps before?

Marco: I would say I’ve definitely moved more towards 3D in the middle section of the illustration, but I don’t do a lot of actual modeling myself. There’s sort of a sweet spot I’m still trying to find where you’re establishing the composition, materials, and lighting, then moving out of 3D and getting into paint. There’ve been times where I’ve spent too long in 3D and then I’m like, great, now I’ve only got two days to actually paint this!

And you can kind of tell in the end results—it’s almost too crisp and too clean and too 3D feeling. It’s like, okay, I could have jumped out of there sooner. I think I’m finding it now, where you jump out a little bit earlier and you can actually get into the paint and you can actually get the organics back.

I still consider myself a painter and artist. I love that process. That’s the fun part. It’s definitely a balance. As long as it serves the end piece, I’ll do what I have to do. 

Sean: Do you ever get inspiration from outside of the franchise? Maybe from other science fiction series? Or do you kind of look mostly internally when you’re looking for inspiration for a new BattleTech piece? 

Marco: I definitely look for inspiration wherever I can find it. I watch a lot of old sci-fi and horror movies, especially stuff from the ‘80s and ‘90s where they use a lot of practical effects and real in-camera work and in-camera lighting, and so I definitely draw inspiration more for lighting and atmosphere from those

Compositionally, I don’t know if there’s anything that really deals with the big chunky ‘Mechs in the same way. 

Sean: There’s Robot Jox.

Marco: Oh god. Yeah, I actually unironically, love that movie! It’s so much fun.

I actually do pull a lot from my time on video games, as well. I recently referenced the original Doom art for a piece where it’s basically one unit fighting off hordes of enemies—it’ll be fun to show this one off. There are a lot of fun places to pull from, but it’s tough because there’s not a lot of stuff that deals with things with these proportions and this kind of scale of action. I do feel like we’re in a very unique space there, which I’m grateful for. I like that we can do something new and fresh and it’ll stand out from the crowd.

Sean: How do you best like to show the scale of ‘Mechs in your pieces? 

Marco: Anytime I can put infantry in there or something that really kind of shows the human scale of it in contrast, oh, that is my favorite. 

Sean: What was your favorite BattleTech project or piece that you’ve worked on so far? 

Marco: Yeah, I would say probably the BattleTech Universe cover. That was a lot of fun. I love doing dark compositions and night scenes, and for cover work, you don’t really get a lot of opportunities to do that because you usually want something bright and flashy that jumps out of the page. Being able to do that and find ways to really push that color and contrast to still get that impact was really fun. Plus it has all those unit scale elements I like. We get infantry, we get vehicles, we’ve got DropShips in the background, we’ve got aerospace fighters, we’ve got urban settings full destruction—it really has everything that I like in a piece.

And it’s one of the few that whenever I see it, I still kind of get that little swell of pride, you know? I’m a very harsh critic of my own work, so that’s a very rare thing, I think. 

Sean: That cover has been on quite a few articles lately. I saw it on Forbes most recently.

Marco: Wild, yeah. That one blew me away. I was like, wow, I think I finally made it! I sent that one to my mom.

Sean: Speaking of making it, you are now the art director, so we get to ask you some questions about what you plan to do as the guy in charge of art for all of BattleTech. This is more of a business-side question from a Sarna reader. How much art does BattleTech actually commission each year? How many artists does Catalyst have, either in-house or external freelancers?

Marco: So, we usually put out one big product a year, typically a big sourcebook or a big box. They can get upwards of 60 to 70 individual art pieces. You’ve got your cover art, you’ve got a full-page splash art, you’ve got our TRO-style paint schemes. We’re starting to get a lot more actual character work in there, so we’re going to have more characters trying to get full body. We’ve got logos, and there’s always something else too that pops up as well. 

That’s the bulk of it. And then we have probably about eight to ten novels that come out every year, so we have to commission a cover for each one of those. There are always a couple of other smaller books that pop up that tend to have about 20 to 30 pieces each including a cover. I think that about covers the usual yearly workload 

As far as the artists we use, we don’t really have in-house artists; everybody’s contract for the most part, but we do have a couple of regulars that we go to. We have Tan Ho Sim, who’s our rock star for novel work. If we need something quick, he’ll do it and it’ll look amazing. We know exactly what we’re getting with that guy. Eldon Cowgur is amazing as well. He’s one of those guys who if you need a complicated scene that is like a ‘Mech in a hangar bay with some stuff that we don’t have designed yet, he’s got that covered.

We’re starting to get a couple of new artists that I’m very excited to work with. Jayden Morris has been doing some exciting work with our TRO paint schemes—you’ll see some of his work coming up this year. I’ve never seen our ‘Mechs look this good just standing on their own without any sort of background. 

I’d say we have probably a good dozen or so artists with a couple kind of rotating in and out, and it’s usually just based on their own schedules. They’re all at different points in their career, so I love when we get new artists that I can show some of our techniques and sort of show how we can really leverage these 3D models we have and still keep it organic. I’m actually very excited to work with them a little bit more directly now, too.

Sean: Now that we kind of have a sense of scale for the amount of art that’s being created, how would you describe BattleTech‘s art direction overall? 

Marco: Oh, that’s a good question. We’ve been going for a very high-impact, eye-catching look, I think, for our colors and our compositions. It’s very, very action-oriented. Someone on the team recently was talking about our illustrations saying something like, “A ‘Mech always has to be firing”, and I don’t fully agree with that. I think that we need that room for contrast to have some quiet pieces now and again

There’s a consistency now—especially in this last decade with these redesigns—that we haven’t had in the past. When you look at these things, you’re going to have this sense of scale, you’re going to have this consistent level of detail on these ‘Mechs and these scenes, and just really pushing the dynamic range of both in the values and color contrast. 

It lives in an interesting space where we’re not going for anything fully cartoony, but we definitely want those vivid colors. We want those things to really pop. Also, a PPC is recognizable versus a laser, so nothing shares that color range.

Sean: How do you plan on expanding BattleTech‘s art heading into the future? Do you think the quality currently is good or can it be improved even more? 

Marco: Oh, well, I think it’s absolutely in a great place right now. The current course is to maintain as best as I can and grow incrementally, but I do have some ideas for just boosting the quality and how we can kind of expand into other mood ranges as well.

I think in the coming months, it might take a little bit longer to get to, I want to make a full art bible internally. Something that we can hand off to new artists to make sure that they really know what it is we’re doing with and keep that consistent quality throughout and also give them the tools to express themselves as well.

Sometimes we get a new artist that people really react to, that they want to see more of… we recently had one artist, Benjamin Parker, he came out and he just has this very interesting almost like an animated style that’s really unique, and he’s got this magic for composition that just gets people excited when they see it. I’ve been able to work with him a little bit on IlKhan’s Eyes Only to get a little bit more of that detail that we’ve been doing as well, and a little bit of the mood and atmosphere, and he’s been able to combine that with what he does. He’s put out some of my favorite interior illustrations on that one.

So, it’s really kind of cool to see individual artistic voices come out. Once you have that box and you kind of know what the rules are, you can really push toward the edges of those constraints. I’m excited to do that. I’m excited to get these rules laid out in writing. It’s visually something that I can just hand off and, say, “Hey, anything within this box, have fun,” you know?

Sean: You mentioned that we’re going to be expanding the mood of BattleTech because as you say, it’s very action-oriented. Do you have thoughts on any other ways that you could use art in BattleTech that you are not currently doing? 

Marco: I don’t have much pull yet as far as new products, but I’m definitely trying to push for some more of those quiet scenes in some of the art notes. In contrast to those big epic battles, every once in a while you need a scene of a MechWarrior just sitting on his ‘Mech, feeling between combat and reflecting on things and really kind of pushing back to the human aspect of it. 

I think one of the things that’s been so exciting about the art in recent years is just—and it’s probably a little thing to a lot of people—shine in the cockpit and feeling like there’s actually a MechWarrior inside of these things. I feel like that goes a very long way for the players to put themselves in this world, like, hey, I can be in there. Really reconnecting back to the human side of this. That’s something I’m excited about and I’m looking forward to ways of doing more like that, especially as we start launching more MechWarrior-specific content.

Sean: I can definitely remember a lot of iconic images where the camera is in the cockpit and you see the pilot struggling with their joysticks, sweating their balls off, while a Warhammer is just about to put a PPC through the glass.

Marco: It adds a real tension to it when you can feel that guy sweating.

Sean: Absolutely. Okay, let’s talk about some of the redesigned ‘Mechs. Which redesign do you feel was translated best from their old line drawings to how they look now? Are there any you’re particularly fond of? Which do you think veered in a completely different direction than what maybe the old line art may have initially indicated? 

Marco: Yeah, I would say Anthony‘s team has done a really bang-up job hitting the right nostalgia points while still making the designs fresh and accessible to a new audience. Like, my son can look at these and be like, “Oh, these are cool.” Not like, oh, that doesn’t look like whatever specific ‘Mech. 

I would say the early Unseen redesigns were probably the weirdest but intentionally so at that time, because we hadn’t quite won the Harmony Gold battle yet, so they were really trying to skirt that a little bit more. I would love to see his take on those now that we kind of do have a little bit more free reign. Especially the Marauder and Warhammer, the two that I would love to see him tackle to recapture the magic of the originals a little bit. For me personally, those two are my big nostalgia favorites.

Sean: I honestly think the Shadow Hawk looks very close to the Sun Dougram design. The Thunderbolt too. The Marauder seems pretty great overall. 

Marco: I think it was just the arms on that guy. I always remember them to be really low-slung.

Sean: Yeah, they were basically down around his ankles.

Marco: I wouldn’t take the design that far, but yeah. There’s something about the less humanoid nature that really appealed to me when I was younger.

Sean: And which redesigns do you think translated best? 

Marco: I feel like a lot of them were very successful. I have to go back to my favorite, the Hatchetman. I feel like he really recaptured that look and feel of that one. He puts a lot of love and care into these things.

It’s really kind of hard to pick a close favorite on those guys. When he veers, it’s intentional, like the Nova or something; you have to break apart the torso bits because these all need torso twist, so when you make those changes, it’s a necessity. I feel like that one, there’s a lot of attention to the original.

Sean: I agree with that. I know that everybody at CGL has a list of ‘Mechs that they want to see redesigned. What’s on your list that has yet to be redesigned?

Marco: Yeah, this is tricky for me because a lot of the ‘Mechs I grew up with really stopped around like the Civil War era, and I think we got most of those already.

Sean: I think we’re missing a few key ones though. Unless you know something I don’t, we don’t have the Hercules yet.

Marco: Oh, that’s true. 

Sean: We also don’t have the Black Watch, the Jackal, the Maelstrom, Daikyu, Tempest, Bandersnatch, Huron Warrior—

Marco: I think the ones I would like to see most are more aerospace redesigns, to be honest.

Sean: Same. 

Marco: Yeah, not that I don’t want to see more ‘Mechs, don’t get me wrong—I love seeing new ‘Mechs. But I got really excited when they started putting out vehicles for the Mercenary packs and then starting to get some of the aerospace with the Shilone and Visigoth, and it’s like, yes please! More of those! Those need that practical rework.

Sean: Agreed. But uh, we didn’t actually get the ‘Mech you wanted redesigned—

Marco: Okay, okay, okay. Alright, give me a second here. What is—I’m having a hard time, I’m struggling with this. I think that’s your gotcha question, man. 

Sean: Well, there was always going to be one.

Marco: I want to see the LAMs.

Sean: Okay. I think they recently announced a Gundam minis game that’ll use the same hex bases as BattleTech for some reason. So maybe we will see those LAMs but from a completely different game. 

Marco: Well, it sounds like we have to do our version then, for sure. 

Sean: Yeah, you are now on the clock. 

Marco: Alright, there it is: Phoenix Hawk LAM. That’s my ‘Mech. 

Sean: Excellent. I mean, you’re already starting with a Phoenix Hawk, so now you just need to transform it. 

Marco: Exactly. 

Sean: I forgot to ask this when I was speaking with Eldon, but we’re getting a comic book this year! What direction was given for creating BattleTech’s first comic book?

Marco: Ah yeah, the comic is definitely going to be a very different beast from a direction perspective.  The majority of the big decisions on that project already happened before I stepped in, so I’ll mostly be following the tracks that Brent laid down.

Much like an animation project, the very first thing we have to nail down is the characters. So we’ve had a lot of back and forth between Eldon, the directors, and the writers to make sure we nail down every single important detail in the character sheets.  Besides locking in the look of our main characters, this also helps us establish the overall line art style that we want the whole comic to live in, so there’s actually a lot at stake with these few images.

From there we already have a fairly well-established pipeline for turning our 3D mech models into lineart for the TROs, so the idea is to lean on that process for the battle scenes.

Sean: You touched on this a little bit already, but how will you mentor and develop other artists who are coming on board with BattleTech?

Marco: I think starting with the art bible, that’s going to be the biggest boon for me on that, but also there are a couple of artists I’ve been working with on how I use the 3D models in Blender to get the organic look of painting on top of it too.

I want to break away from the look on some images that we just did a 3D render and slapped some colors on—really get it back to the art and the human touch of it. I think that’s going to be very important in the next couple of years. People are going to be craving that human touch in their art, especially with the proliferation of AI trying to take that away from us. I think that’s the biggest thing I’m working with right now. 

Sean: Alright, I think that’s a good spot to end the serious questions. Now we can get a little silly with some fun questions, and this one actually came from Ray. What future products are you really excited about? If you can tell us about any of them, of course.

Marco: Oh man, that’s tricky because yes, I have one product I am incredibly excited about that I cannot talk about until after Adepticon, at least. It’s a product that I worked on for about four months last year, which has a lot of art in it and is sort of a passion project for a small group of people, and I think it’ll be very exciting. I hope they’re going to be as excited as I am to see this because I put a lot of love into this one and I’d love to make more like it down the line.

Sean: Now for a fun hypothetical question. You have to make a hockey team out of your current batch of artists to take on Sarna’s moderator team. Which artists do you draft into your artist hockey team to compete in the BattleTech Media Creators League?

Fair warning: Sarna’s team is mostly made of Canadians. But not me. I’m very bad at hockey.

Marco: Well, definitely Alex Iglesias. Definitely Anthony. Let’s get some Eldon in there, and Tan Ho Sim as well, those are all very incredibly reliable artists. I know what I’m getting out of those guys. 

Sean: Okay, but can they take a check?

Marco: You know, I can’t skate, I can’t play hockey, but if I fall down, I’m sure one of them will help pick me up. Yeah, that’d be my star team right there. 

Sean: Excellent. Alright, that’s everything I had. Was there anything else you wanted to talk about? Because we can just go off the cuff if you want.

Marco: I think we actually kind of covered most of the stuff I’m excited about. 

Sean: Alright, cool. Well, in that case, thanks so much for talking and letting us get to know you a little bit better. I’m looking forward to seeing what you do with BattleTech‘s art in the coming months and years.

Marco: Thank you so much for having me. Like I said, a long-time listener, a first-time caller. 

Sean: Haha, nice! Thanks again.

Marco: Alright, cheers. Take care, Sean. 

Thanks again to Marco for taking the time to speak to me about himself and BattleTech’s art, and he even gave me a hint about an upcoming product. And double thanks for giving us a sneak peek at some unreleased images! You can find more of Marco’s art here.

And as always, MechWarriors: Stay Syrupy.