I've been seeing photos of soldiers in futuristic loadouts in photos and shared by various airsoft players and groups around. I never had a clue who made these images until early this week, Flanker of the Ballistic Tsunami Airsoft YouTube channel sent me a link to Sploid Blog at Gizmodo. Checking it out, the digital artist is Johnson Ting who is based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and who is as of now, the concept artist for Project TriForce.

I must say the designs of Johnson Ting on Deviant Art are really impressive and all through the use of Adobe Photoshop. The photos I've seen were touched up photos of actual present-day soldiers. But it's no easy feat for us who are just mere mortals at the use of Adobe Photoshop as it takes a lot imagination and skills to pull something very convincing. With all the exoskeletons we see in the recent action movies such as Tom Cruise's Edge of Tomorrow, or Matt Damon's Elysium, Johnson Ting's designs will easily fit in, even in those first person shooter video games.

According to Rob Chaney, Johnson is an active gamer and has actually done work for Activision, NetherRealm, Infinity Ward, Electronic Arts, DICE, and 2K. No wonder that the designs he makes can be imagined to be part in the video games.

His work DEFCON Zero is getting a lot of admiration amongst airsoft players, with many in the airsoft community being ultimate geardos who can outgear even a real world special operations soldier. With the use of a Wacom Intuos Pro tablet, he spends hours and hours going over existing real world photos of soldiers and turning them into futuristic-looking soldiers.

In what probably will be his Magnum Opus with be his book project called NEO JAPAN 2202.  Johnson is gathering feedback from his fans and followers on Deviant Art if they would like to buy copies of the book when it eventually gets released (and hopes a video game will be developed too). This will be full of his artwork with stories to go along with these. No final details yet on what will comprise this project and release but the reception is actually good. Naming it NEO JAPAN 2202 is also a very brilliant move since the Japanese are the most at ease with robots and mech.

Most probably somewhere in the Philippines, someone's already going over Johnson Ting's designs to make some airsoft masks. We would not be surprised if some of the NEO JAPAN 2202 concept head gear will be seen in the Takap Lupa or Cactus Hobbies products (both companies are based in the Philippines) given the details they give to the other airsoft masks.

Personally, I am waiting for more concrete information about Johnson Ting's book so I can order one if it really  gets released. It will find a nice place in my collection of sci-fi design books.