Development journal

From a Sketch to a Walking Turret

2026-08-25

A first look at the walking turret, from the early concept sheets to a working scene in Godot.

I am drawn to automata built for harmful purposes: machines that carry out a task without hesitation. The walking turret grew from that idea, shaped into something that could patrol Ashenmoor instead of standing still.

First walking turret research board with compact silhouettes, moving feet and projectile ideas. — Early concept explorations 1 / 3

Second walking turret research board refining the tower silhouette and showing it in the landscape. — Early concept explorations 1 / 3

I painted the chosen design in Krita, then used Krita FAL to call fal.ai without leaving the canvas. It handles image generation, upscaling, background removal and image description online, leaving my computer responsive while those jobs run.

Keeping it editable

My Blender workflow stays non-destructive: modifiers remain unapplied and materials procedural. I can return to the asset, improve it and run Kiln again to create a fresh game-ready version without breaking the working model.

I first animated the turret in Blender to settle its movement and art direction. In Godot, scripts drive the animation procedurally instead.

Into Godot

Godot Flex Bridge sends the three placed turrets as lightweight references. The importer replaces each one with its .tscn scene, including its Area3D nodes and scripts.

In this first procedural pass, the scripts only move each turret from point A to point B. The same system can later support more complex behaviours.

The making-of is a web export; the original master remains outside the site.