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.

Super Acrylic Nebula, Part 2

Made some more progress on the acrylic rendition of the "tracer bullet" nebula, I darkened the interior gases of the nebula and the open space beyond it.

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.

Reaper's Moon

Going for that atmospheric, bleak feeling only black and white ink can provide.  Not a whole lot else to this one.  Death is my go-to subject when I'm bummed...maybe not the best idea, but it's what I do.  You've got to grab the emotion while you have it, and get its form down on paper.

Dragun Knight

Credit for this idea goes to my friend Zach.  He had an idea for knights who were awarded or armed with pistols or rifles which had been spelled with the powers of dragons.  The resulting creation he termed "Draguns".

I like the idea, as you can see by my sketch of it.  It could fit a variety of scenarios.  The knights use the power of hostile dragons against them; the dragons have lent the knights a portion of their power; the mages stole the dragons' power and gave it to the knights, and the dragons are greatly aggravated because of it and declare war, and on and on.  Silly, but fun enough that it's worth the silliness.

I mean, it's a knight with a magic pistol.  What's not to like?

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.