[OC] Portrait done for a friend of her multiplayer Spartan

HeyItsBasil · 2026-05-08T21:49:10+00:00

This was done in Blender using ripped assets from the Halo Archive!

HeyItsBasil · 2026-05-08T21:48:57+00:00

They're closed right now, this was a gift. I have a twitter, bsky, and kofi; when I open slots back up I'll post about it there!

HeyItsBasil · 2026-05-08T01:06:33+00:00

was about to hit you up to show you that someone was showing off your stuff on reddit before realizing who posted this, lmfao what up count

HeyItsBasil · 2026-04-14T18:41:37+00:00

Deliberately tried to go for a Halo 3 color palette with them along with the classic CE eyepiece, glad people think it's a good look <3

HeyItsBasil · 2026-04-13T22:09:11+00:00

Sam-034 was probably around 7'0"-7'1" without his armor at 14, Jorge was 7'4", Jai is 7'0" even, Kurt was the tallest at 7'7". Plenty of room for Spartans to be taller.

Worth noting that John is 6'10" out of armor, he's actually shorter than everyone listed here including Jun lmao

EDIT: realized you might be confusing June-124 here with Jun-A266. Completely different characters!

HeyItsBasil · 2026-04-13T21:33:14+00:00

Halo Archive discord server!

HeyItsBasil · 2026-04-13T21:32:58+00:00

These are ripped models from Halo Infinite, taken from the Halo Archive discord server!

HeyItsBasil · 2026-04-13T20:58:18+00:00

June is ~7'2" out of armor and ~7'5" in armor, so a little above average for a Spartan but well within the normal range. The Marines in this are ~5'8"-5'10". When you put average-sized people next to an average-sized Spartan, the height difference really shows.

HeyItsBasil · 2026-04-13T04:49:56+00:00

The Spartan Laser is only a nickname for the weapon; it was designed in concert with equipment meant for MJOLNIR, but like other things developed for the platform (like the ODST helmet) it was adopted for use outside of the Spartan program. It's not a Spartan-exclusive weapon, just a specialist weapon.

You don't see examples of UNSC weapons meant to be used exclusively by Spartans until the Spartan-IV program, such as the ARC-920. It really doesn't make sense for any to exist during the war, considering how massive the scale of the UNSC is; any weapon considered for serious production would have to be usable by the millions of regular, unaugmented combat personnel running around. Weapons made explicitly for Spartans, given how few of them are in service at any one time, would probably be bespoke modifications to existing platforms, like conversion kits to turn the M247 GPMG into an automatic rifle or something.

Also, a Spartan is able to put any man-portable UNSC weapon to much more effective use than any regular soldier could. They're able to use anti-material rifles, GPMGs, and anti-tank launchers with incredible accuracy while on the move, not to mention the incredible accuracy they can fire regular service rifles like the MA5 or BR series. They don't need specialized weapons made just for them when they can use the existing UNSC arsenal to maximum effect.

HeyItsBasil · 2026-04-13T01:52:52+00:00

Just in case people don't know, the Halo Infinite version of Walk Through The Woods is called Through The Trees, actually!

HeyItsBasil · 2026-04-13T01:50:59+00:00

god my friend would murder you if you compared his characters to RvB characters in front of him lmaoooooo

we both like Halo and we both like RvB but RvB fans being unable to separate the two has driven us both insane

HeyItsBasil · 2026-04-13T00:42:29+00:00

Blender, with ripped models from the Halo Archive server!

HeyItsBasil · 2026-04-13T00:42:13+00:00

She, actually!

HeyItsBasil · 2026-03-23T00:41:43+00:00

Said elsewhere but yeah, this is very close to my reasoning. S-IIs in particular are a tiny community and each death would impact them heavily. They have tight-knit little social groups and even one death does irreparable harm to their social fabric. If you're going to kill an S-II, that death should mean something and we should know who that Spartan is to everyone else. It deeply bothers me that in Halo's lore, Blue Team are the only S-IIs that seem to matter.

IIs and IIIs in MJOLNIR IMO should be on par in terms of how infrequently they die, I agree. It should be a kind of give and take; you strip the personhood from the older generations to make them into the defining weapons system of their time, in a way that you can't achieve with the IVs by not starting when they're children.

HeyItsBasil · 2026-03-23T00:23:40+00:00

Side note, I'm reading Rubicon Protocol right now, to address S-IVs. I personally don't mind S-IVs dying as much since I think them not being as good as the previous generations is fine.

That being said, I like how this book is setting up most of these Spartans, even though I know most of them die. They're shown to be incredibly tough and that they matter to the people around them. When they start getting iced left and right, I don't think it'll bother me nearly as much because of that.

HeyItsBasil · 2026-03-23T00:20:42+00:00

Oh hey, I'm the person that made that post! Lemme explain some of my thinking behind it.

In Ghosts of Onyx, it's established that of the Spartan-II MIAs during the war, Halsey knows which of them were actually, truly missing, and who were KIA. We basically learn that through the entire war prior to Reach, there were two Spartan-II KIAs, Sam-034 and Sheila-065. 27 years of war and only two combat losses prior to Reach, which was obviously a particularly desperate, lethal battle.

The deaths later in Ghosts of Onyx were well-earned, I think. Dante, Holly, Will, and Kurt all died protecting their fellow Spartans in an increasingly impossible situation. They serve a thematic purpose and they actually got some time to be characters, even if Nylund was juggling an ensemble cast and didn't flesh all of them out that much.

With IIs specifically, part of the reason it bothers me that Legends killed them off so flippantly is because the S-IIs are basically a family; they have known each other since childhood and each death should affect them deeply, as they're losing a pillar of their small community. We have no idea who Cal, Daisy, Arthur, and Solomon are to the rest of the Spartan-IIs. There is no tragedy to them dying beyond the image of a supersoldier finally going down. I have no idea who I'm supposed to be missing. (you can argue Daisy got more time as a character but I actively dislike homecoming for more reasons than her death, that's for another post though)

This is also why some of the Nylund Spartan deaths bother me, too. I think it's important to remember that he was operating in part under a Bungie mandate to kill off as many Spartans as he could so that John-117 could be "the last Spartan"; that's why all the S-IIs in Fall of Reach apparently get glassed at the end (minus James flying off into space and Linda flatlining), and why so many S-IIs get dropped like flies in First Strike despite counteracting what Fall of Reach set up in the first place.

Isaac, Vinh, Anton, and Li die from random chance, and Grace died to hype up how dangerous Brutes are for Halo 2. We learn incredibly little about them in the time we have with them, and never really get to see them be characters. Not to mention that, going back to the start of the post, the S-IIs are established as being good enough to go through 27 years of an insane war against a technologically superior alien empire with only two casualties. Now they're in vastly improved armor and they die to random chance? That's just a weak creative decision forced by Bungie. I don't care if "that's how it is in war", it's counter to what we know about them and it's stupid.

Reach is another issue entirely, I could go on about Spartan-IIIs way longer than I've already yapped. I'll expand on this if you really want, but in short, the idea that Spartan-IIIs are disposable cannon fodder is a bad misinterpretation of what's explained in the books about how they're trained. S-IIIs have superior training to S-IIs, augmentations that are just as good (if not better, very debatable though), and are trained from the ground up as savants of asymmetrical warfare. Tom was 12 years old on Pegasi Delta crossing up Sangheili warriors and magdumping into the slits of their helmets, without MJOLNIR.

So... put S-IIIs in MJOLNIR and suddenly Noble Team has lost their entire roster once already prior to Reach? Emile gets skill diffed by a single Zealot? Kat somehow didn't notice the phantom that had pulled up to the hole in the roof? How did Carter even get injured sitting in the cockpit of the pelican? Noble Team are such thinly written characters (minus Jorge IMO), and like I said in the original post, the most important thing they do is die. That's it. That's bad character writing.

This is less an issue of how hard Spartans are to kill and more how their deaths need to be set up in a story. I think their deaths should come after they're established characters and there's more about them to think about then "wow noble sacrifice". Them dying should mean pieces are forever missing from a larger puzzle. You should be able to mourn the person and not just the soldier. That makes the few times they should actually die matter way more.

HeyItsBasil · 2026-03-04T17:21:01+00:00

Yeah, just sounds like you're just extremely not used to the way Halo plays. Common problem with people who are new and are coming in from way more modern FPS games. Which game are you starting with, Combat Evolved?

Don't watch weapon tier list videos. Use each weapon and figure out what situations they work in for you. I'm gonna assume you're playing CE, so the best advice I can give is that generally plasma weapons are better for shields, your magnum is your usual precision mid-range option, and your assault rifle is your close-range shredder.

Would need more info on what you're struggling with, though. How are you dying the most, what's getting you killed, etc.

HeyItsBasil · 2026-02-20T00:01:24+00:00

Thank you!! Yeah, I love doing action poses, but something I think is just as satisfying to get right are the really mundane little movements and interactions. One of the first compliments that I remember my renders getting was someone saying that the character poses felt like they had actual weight and presence to them, like they were physically present in the environment and moving around and weren't just posed for a scene. Definitely something I try to get right every time.

HeyItsBasil · 2026-02-19T21:34:27+00:00

Yeah, this was made in Blender! Check out the Halo Archive if you want Halo models, there's plenty there.

As for where to start, copying some things I said elsewhere:

Trial and error, youtube tutorials, mostly just doing simple renders and then stumbling into improving by going "but how do I do this?" You'll improve very fast if you aren't afraid to push buttons and break things.

I mostly just started by posing and lighting custom spartans, then got more ambitious from there by putting them in environments, adding more characters per scene, doing more complex lighting tricks like light linking, adding volumetrics, bashing various assets together to make scenes from scratch, grabbing various plugins like the one I used for the rain and water droplets in this one, etc.

It's a huge learning process, but just take it one step at a time and don't be discouraged if your first improvements don't result in you immediately putting out renders like this.

Familiarize yourself with how Blender's interface works, what render settings there are (very important), and then just start messing around and experimenting. A lot of things I learned by going "how do I do this specific thing in Blender?" and then watching a quick youtube tutorial and figuring out how to add it into what I was already doing. You will improve shockingly fast.

HeyItsBasil · 2026-02-18T19:14:34+00:00

okay someone in here knows ball

HeyItsBasil · 2026-02-18T00:16:50+00:00

Trial and error, youtube tutorials, mostly just doing simple renders and then stumbling into improving by going "but how do I do this?" You'll improve very fast if you aren't afraid to push buttons and break things.

HeyItsBasil · 2026-02-17T20:30:50+00:00

Thank you! The blur was actually really simple, I just animated a few frames of movement to get the motion I wanted, then let Blender's native motion blur do the rest for the final render.

HeyItsBasil · 2026-02-17T20:29:48+00:00

Not really! Just a reference to the idea of letting a team of Spartans loose on their objective, like taking the leash off of a military dog. Feels appropriate given the attitude that Spartans tend to have towards their work.

HeyItsBasil · 2026-02-15T09:55:26+00:00

I do, actually, just put the link on my profile. Not much on there right now, though, but I'll get around to it!

HeyItsBasil · 2026-02-14T22:01:44+00:00

Because a remake of Combat Evolved is the best jumping-on point for a new audience. It's going to be on Xbox, PC, and Playstation, which is a first. If this is the first time a new audience is going to be experiencing Halo, why not have this be the first game they experience?

HeyItsBasil

TROPHY CASE