I like some things about this battloid, because I realized I let engineering interfear with the art I decided I needed a new start with a different stratagy, and I did not want to pour more work into this one.

IMPORTANT LESSON: Develop the look first, then worry-about actual working or transforming.

IMPORTANT LESSON: For transforming battloids, draw out the fighter mode first, then build the battloid from that, otherwise your fighter mode will like Gundam! (Unrecognizable as a fighter.)

 

 

- End Mech Challenge

Back to Home Page

CONCEPTUALIZATION PAGE 2: DRAWING
MAKING MY OWN BATTLOID

STEP ONE: VISUALIZATION
STORY, MUSIC, INSPIRATION

I always have a few story ideas floating around in my head. I have been contemplating making a manga, several in fact, and all high tech oriented. I always come up with a variety of names for these, such as Dessert Flower: A story about a young man fighting a hopeless battle in the dessert, who happens upon a beautiful alien human woman who possesses technology to turn the tide. Another idea I have is called Eternal Empire: Beautiful warriors are the remnant half of a lost convoy, and traveling through space they happen upon Earth where a clever entrepreneur convinces them they must fight for Earth men. (comedy). Finally, a story specifically geared to battloids, I tentatively call Earth Force One (or U.F.O. Tech): A young programming wiz is abducted by aliens, and finds that a long existing Earth colony has been helping fight a universe-wide war against terrible and seemingly unstoppable monster aliens.

"EF1"

The setting for EF1 is a large colony of humans and aliens living together in a makeshift camp, which are a collection of people from many nations of Earth, and other planets. For the humans, there are recognizable military components of these nations, such as Israeli tanks, German tanks, Russian and American fighter jets, and so on, but the lead character, Hue, discovers they are the least advanced of all the technosavy beings recruited to the cause, and they are used largely as distraction and cannon fodder, while the advanced aliens conduct the real missions. Hue befriends a young Japanese man who has become the laughing stock of the Earth forces for his giant robot project. As you might expect, the project has unexpected results, including a dangerous romance with an alien princess, which might lead to the destruction of Earth. Join the force.

So, I plug my stereo into iTunes, and play my “Danger Rock” play list which reminds me of violent, glorious battle. I start to imagine what a cool battliod I could design, keeping in mind elements I would like to include. For instance, instead of the normal jet propulsion, I want to use U.F.O. technology, which is vastly superior in speed and maneuverability. If you haven’t seen it, watch the sci-fi channel special on Bob Lazaar and his short stint working at S-5 on captured flying saucers. He drew diagrams of cylinders mounted on little arms, which are located in the bottom part of the saucer craft, and pointed in the direction of desired propulsion. They generate so much energy that air particles surrounding the craft at night burn, causing the craft to glow in many instances. The cylinders are gravity nodes (which our scientists cannot understand), but allow for the instantaneous zooming described by UFO witnesses, as well as total inertial isolation, necessary to keep aliens from splattering against the hull in one of those sharp turns, or sudden jump to 700 miles per hour from a standstill. Cool no?!
UFO PICTURES: JET PROPULSION OUTDATED
The power is on high with this UFO, causing it to glow in broad daylight. Aliens have bases in our oceans. What, me worry?
Diagram of cylinder propulsion units mounted with directional arms. They create a gravimetric "down hill" which the craft follows. They also provide the power for the entire craft, according to Bob Lazar. So I want to make my battloid powered by gravity nodes (I'll call them gravinodes), and transforming into a shape more conducive to instantaneous multidirectionalism. This means I’ll have to risk a less recognizable shape than say an F-16 fighter jet for the fighter configuration, and without an animated series to show it in action it will not be as cool in some respects, but, I’ve decided UFO tech is the way of the future. The idea I have, is that Takashi, the battloid designer, uses a combination of parts from robotic forklifts, fighter jets, and saucers to make a transforming battloid, so the battloid will look recognizable as human made.
SKETCHING

I begin sketching using a technique I developed early in my digital art career: drawing out specific parts on their own sheet of paper, then scanning them in and assembling them in the computer. This allows for greater attention to detail being placed on each part, thus increasing the radically of the art. You can see examples of this in my vector works gallery, where most of the detailed figures were done drawing the head, hands, and body on separate sheets of paper.

Here are two sketches for the head. I liked the first one, but I wanted something a little more angular, and a little more Japanese looking. I like the second design because it kinf looks like a cross between an American Marine soldier, and a Japanese fighter pilot.

Here are some different leg designs. You can see I tried several designs, before I arrived at the last here. I like the idea for missile boxes on the side of the legs, but they make the designs above seem too bulky.

 

Have a cool battloid idea? Email me at nemai04@yahoo.com
Right: Here are some ideas I had for the nose cone. I thought after words I might try for something shorter, to keep with a more round object as a whole for the craft, in keeping with the multidirectionalism idea for the design. The problem is it will not look as cool without a recognizable fighter jet design, so I risk the whole design not being as popular. Still I like the revolutionary idea of the UFO tech (especially since it actually exists), and so I'm stepping out baby, taking the risk no one will know what the f@#$ I'm making here!
Designs for the body and arms.
Main Battloid gun designs. Here I wanted the clip to hold a massive amount of ammunition. I like the triangle design of the bottom one. My idea is that the battloid switches gun modes by hand turning the triangular shaft. The shorter clip you see is the long range sniper cartridges, and the long clip is the main projectile storage. Also, the main projectiles can be fired out of one, two, or three barrels simultaneously for greater hit ratios, however obviously it will drain ammunition more quickly. The aiming site is electronic as you can see, installed in the front area of top handle. It feeds a targeting image directly into the cockpit of the mech.

3D PROGRESS

Below are some screen shots of my 3D progress. Actually I am just getting started with Cinema 4D, after successfully creating a human character, so my speed will improve after this, my first major mechanical object creation.

Right: Some basic 3D layout of the mech. By creating basic blocks to start I can get a sense of proportion. If I use too much detail to start, I will lose this overview. I use different colors to help identify areas.

The key building blocks are cubes, cut in half and mirrored, then put into another mirror object to duplicate the part on the other side of the figure.
Right: Here is the top view. I was imagining in my mind a sort of four part wing with this octagon shape. I have made just a placer nose cone here, but the real thing will look a lot different when I get it finished out. The nose will slide back into the body for battloid configuration.
Above: Here is a beginning layout I considered for folding the legs up under the battloid for fighter mode. A design difficulty with this is the need for an extended double joint, which may look funky in battloid mode. I want this design to have realism in the sense that you could make a real model out of it, without too much variance from what you see on the screen.
Above: I get down to refining the shapes here, so I can get a real feel for the figure. I still want to keep it simple so I can resize, add and delete without work being wasted.
Above: Here you see a joint I created in a separate file for the arm. i want this to really work for real toy and model building purposes. Here is where the fun and challenging work of engineering comes into play. I want to be able to pose this battloid in all kinds of poses, so I don't too many restrictions on movement. I have to work this in with avoiding weak looking areas, which is a big challenge with mech design. Screw compromise! Hey wait, maybe I can compromise with a screw!

Left: I'm fairly happy with the head progress. It is looking pretty much like how I drew it out in pencil. Modeling in Cinema 4D is is just excellent. I really enjoy it, and the whole program from my perspective is nicer to use than others I've tried.

In the case of the head hinge, I had to work out the problem of mobility versus the thickness of the neck that I wanted. If the neck was too thin it looked weak, but I could move it 30° front and back. I solved the problem by moving the hinge to the back of the neck, and using a retracting throat guard and Adam's apple to make up the space. The result below is pretty cool.
Right: The head is near completion, but I have not added in the detail, again because I may want to stretch, add and subtract, or even change the design altogether later as I assemble the model.

Continued Below...

 

Okay, below here is the finished Battloid I came up with. Now it is not too bad, but I ran into several problems. First, I got too caught up in the engineering before I really finished the design. I wanted to make everything work and turn and so forth just at it would with the toy, but this prevented me from successfully completing the design. In other words, I got bored or overwhelmed with the project, and realized that it would be better to start over than reconfigure what I had made already.

The wings turned out too big for the battloid mode, so I shrunk them just to fit on the back.