Fighter Patrol

Hashed this out quick, two heavy starfighters on a casual patrol.  Based off a photo of a pair of F-14 Tomcats in a similar formation.

Mercenary Mechs: Sunspot Crusher

Continuing the theme of gouache-giant-robot-paintings, I present Sunspot Crusher, the sniper-mech.  It's mostly elbows and knees and looks a bit goofy, but when you're packing the most power anti-armor laser this side of the Rockies (mounted in the right-shoulder wedge), you can get away with looking goofy.  The laser is, however, temperamental and expensive to maintain, meaning Crusher has to work all the harder to 1) land contracts and 2) avoid getting hit.

I was a little looser with this painting than the one for Challenger Jax, I tried some blending in the initial stages.  It wasn't 100% what I expected, but I liked part of the final result, and learned something.  Worth it.

Like Challenger Jax, Sunspot Crusher used to be unreasonably huge.  Crusher now would be a little taller than Jax, because it was built lighter, and could be built taller, all to give the pilot a better field of vision, and the laser a better field of fire.

Sketches 12/28/15: Mecha Fun Time

Soldier mech.

Casual sketches for possible Mercenary Mechs.  10% "serious consideration of role of mech in world" and 90% "this looks cool, let's try it".  It is by far the most enjoyable of any sketching.

Samurai mech with lightning/EMP super-sword-weapon.

Gunslinger mech, with extra targeting radar in the "hat" and shoulder fins.

Knight lancer mech with rockets.  Lots of rockets.

Stealth mech with its only (albeit extremely powerful) weapon stuck in its torso.

Mercenary Mechs: Challenger Jax

This is Challenger Jax, main mech of the Mercenary Mechs story I'm currently working on.  Piloted by a crew of two, it's built for assault operations and for taking on and repelling enemy mechs.  It is armed with reinforced fists and frontal armor, two laser apertures (one in each forearm), and twelve missiles, set in packs on either side of the head.

The original design for Challenger Jax was a little more ridiculous in size, as in 14 stories tall.  Like this:

Mercenary Mechs started out as "giant robots vs giant robots".  I developed it and thought things out for a while, and scaled the mechs down to 3-4 stories/15-20 meters high (capping one story at 5 meters tall).  It works better, and fits the setting better...but if I had the chance, I would paint the original pose again in a heartbeat.

Infantry Mech, Finished

So here is the finished Type 21 infantry mech drawing.  I've got more of an idea what I want for this mech now, and the characters associated with it (pragmatic, blunt, mercenary, survivalist, suspicious).  It's not the final design, but a step in that direction.

I started it with a ballpoint sketch, and colored it with Prismacolor colored pencils.  The lightest tones, from the primary light, feet, and reflected light were Cream, Beige, and Cloud Blue.  The midtones were mostly in Warm Grey 30% and Cool Grey 50%, with Cool Grey 70% helping out in the areas to be shadowed.  The dirt splotches and dusty tone around the legs was with Light and Dark Umber.  The secondary light was done with Blue Slate.  For the darkest parts, I used additional Cool Grey 70% and Black, and used Ultramarine to hint at the secondary light on the dark parts.

Infantry Mech WIP

This is the "Type 21" (working designation) mech from Mercenary Mechs.  While not literally an infantry mech, it is much less flashy, cheaper, and easier to produce than the other big (i.e. main character) mechs.  It is meant to be fielded in numbers, and to take losses in place of more valuable forces.  In this way, it is an "infantry mech" of a sort.

Medium is colored pencil over a pen outline on Strathmore smooth Bristol.  It's more of an experiment than anything else, I wanted to see how the two went together.

Sketches 11/9/15: Sniper-Mech

Not much to tell this week, testing out a new sketchbook that can fit the scanner.  This is the sniper-mech from the Mercenary Mechs story currently under way.  I hope to have something to present in a month or so, story-wise, stay tuned.

Developing Ideas: Sky-Ships

How does one develop an idea for an imaginary/fantastic/sci-fi picture or story?  I ask myself a few questions in one form or another when I want to take an idea beyond idea/sketch level:

1. What kind of story am I telling?

2. What is the theme (visual and narrative) of the story?  How is the idea connected to this?

3. Where does this idea fit in the story?  Whose side is it on?

4. Additional concerns? (Tech level, geographical location, materials...you know what, I'll link you this handy article by James Gurney, creator of Dinotopia, on "visual backstory" for sci-fi and fantastic art.  He explains it way better than I can.)

Whether these questions are asked and answered consciously (like a list) or intuitively (like arranging shapes and seeing what meanings or images or additional ideas they bring to mind), the point is they are answered somehow.  And this brings me to the point of today's post: how I developed these "sky-ships" and how I might develop them further.

So, the sky-ships.  Let's put this idea through the list above and see what we get.

1. The sky-ships in question are part of an action/adventure-military-sci-fi story that is currently itself mostly ideas and a few written fragments.  These ships are primarily intended for combat in the atmosphere of their planet.  Whether they can go into outer space I haven't decided yet.

2. The theme of the story with the sky-ships is partially complete; it would focus around naval combat (in the sky, of course) and typical air combat (fighter planes and such).  The tone is heavily slanted towards the "military" in military sci-fi.

3. The sky-ships in question–the shark-shaped ships and WW2-era ships with wings–are the good guys.

4. With these particular ships, I want them to have the clean, sleek, fiercely predatory lines of sharks (less obvious in the WW2 ships, way more obvious in the shark-ships).  I want them to look aggressive and threatening, no soft goody-two-shoes vibes here.  They're military ships, after all.  They kill to defend their nation.  It's their job.

Another concern is the tech level of the story; I haven't yet decided whether I want it to be "retro-future" with historically-inspired ships, or just out-and-out-distant-crazy-future-shark-ships.  This is just an exercise, however, we don't need to chase all the rabbits down their rabbit holes...not yet.

With this in mind, I can condense all this information into a few key points to describe the ships to myself:

- Sky-ships: need to look sleek enough to fly, powerful enough to force their way through the air, or both.

- Military sci-fi: matte colors, camouflage patterns, few frills or ostentatious decorations, use real-world naval vessels and vehicles for weapons and technical greebles, make obvious differences between different classes of ships.

- Good guys: ships in good/clean condition (with appropriate weathering), sense of order and discipline on ships, flags flying clean and proud and well-kept, use shapes that are appealing and are not unnatural and strange.

- Aggressive: sleek lines coming to sharp points, take inspiration from sharks and real-world ships, use basic shapes to create impression ship is lunging forward, mount weapons nearer to bow of ship, use basic and secondary shapes to evoke aspects of predatory animals or weapons, repeated use of triangular shapes (sharp and aggressive).

The result of these considerations, conscious and unconscious, were multiple pages of idea-dumping sketches, where I simply drew out any concept that seemed related to the project.  The two pictures above are examples of that.  After that, I had the chance to look over the various sketches, pick the ones that really fit my idea, and refine them.  And that's how I got two particular pages of sketches, one of the retro-future WW2 ships, one of the shark-ships.

The retro-future WW2 ships give the impression of being heavier, less advanced designs, vessels that have some streamlining, but mostly rely on sheer engine power to take flight.  They would be suitable for a retro-future setting, something I very much want to write.  

The shark-ships, with their sleek, modern lines and streamlined mass, have a more futuristic feel to them.  These are the ones I would more likely write up as being capable of spaceflight.

Most of the time, this process takes place semi-consciously or unconsciously, right when I'm drawing in my sketchbook.  I'll build up ideas I like, and if I can connect them to a story, or see a potential story in them, I'll take the next step and start consciously developing them to fit into a narrative.

I hope this helps you with creating and developing your ideas.  See you next week.