Weapon and armour design

Designing weapons and armour is something I really want to practice, and this brief was the perfect motivation to do so.

When it came to designing weapons, I didn't want to make anything that was too realistic, but that wasn't completely grounded in fantasy either.

For the heavy weapon, I wanted to make one that was man portable and that fired bullets. It was originally meant to heat the bullets to melting point upon leaving the chamber, but this was scrapped.

The standard weapon was an assault rifle based on the design of the P90. This kind of design is more futuristic than conventional rifles, which helps it stand out.

The light weapon is a scout pistol, designed to provide firepower in a small package where carrying too much is a bad idea. This was influenced mostly by the Steyr TMP.

The hidden weapon is a drone mounted to the accompanying armour. Two of these drones would hover alongside the user and attack targets with internal weapons.

The armour is influenced by various powered armour suits seen in fiction, namely the Fallout series' T-51b and Tesla armour suits as well as the Zaku II mobile suit. I wanted the wearer to look powerful, but still appear to be agile.

Cullis: Design critique

My first design was based on a part of the Epilogue where Cullis thinks he is wounded when he is merely covered in wine. I was to pose him looking at his hands in astonishment.

This design was difficult to do, because of the position of the hands and legs. Hands are not something I feel I am good at yet, so I had trouble drawing them effectively.

The position of the legs means that it is difficult to give the artwork depth and the placement between the joints make the torso contorted; the right leg is in front of the left, but the torso's shape makes it look the other way around. The head is also not as large as it should be and has much depth to the length of his head.

The second design was a shorter one with a stockier proportion. 

This design is for a more rugged look, using a similar boot design to Treize, although these are too thin for his body shape. His head is oddly shaped, but the angle works alright. His hands are under developed and too small, the fingers not being able to grip the bottle or the pistol properly. There is a substantial lack of detail in the jacket.

The final and most detailed design took a lot of influence from the former research pieces, and has a lot of detail added into it. 

This design can be critiqued by noting the arm poses. They are too straight, making this pose really odd. The pocket on his left is smaller than the one on the left, and there doesn't seem to be any emphasis on his genous proportion, instead having Cullis tall, built and pudgy.

Cullis: Initial concept design research

Cullis is a character who is introduced early on in the prologue and is shown to be a large, clumsy red-faced drunk with an armoured eye-patch. He is described as wearing a field marshal's jacket that is a size too large for him, suggesting he stole it. He also wears an eye patch that covers a gun installed in his eye socket (!!)

When devising an initial design, I looked at pictures of real field marshal's jackets. However, this seemed to ground the design of the character in our reality, whilst he could be a fusion of another aesthetic and our own.

What I looked at was a combination of the following reference images and characters.

This seems to be a British Army field marshal's jacket. This jacket is from around 1918, and is thus more ornate than more modern battle dress uniform.

Operation: Anchorage's General Chase wears a  stylised general's jacket, which is adapted to the Alaskan environment. It features oversized lapelles, belt and pockets. It also extends to the shins.

Treize Khushrenada, like all other soldiers in the Gundam Wing  franchise have uniforms inspired by older  Navy uniforms. It has contrasting epaulets and knee-high boots with knee protectors.

The duffle coat is essentially a field marshal jacket, they show how a range of lining patterns can bring out the monotone materials.

                                                   

Use of Weapons: character notes

Due to the layout of the book, it will be read from chapters one to fourteen first, then chapters XIV to I. Notes on characters will be added as and when they are discovered.

Epilogue characters introduced:

Cullis: A large, red-faced man wearing a field marshal's jacket (A size too large for him, suggesting it doesn't belong to him). He had grey hair and only one real eye. Cullis is somewhat of a blunt instrument, although this could be because he is drunk.

The young man (Zakalwe): He wore a shirt and open general's jacket; this doesn't belong to him either. His appearance is not alluded to in the epilogue.

Chapter one characters introduced:

Maikiril: Diziet's major-domo. Appearance is not alluded to.

Diziet Sma: She wore a formal gown and a black chocker. Appearance is described as a pale-skinned woman with blue-black eyes and hair. Body proportions would suggest a stocky build, but she remains thin regardless.

Relstoch Sesspin: A tall, pale-skinned and thin man whose eyes to some would be too close together. Does not value self as highly as he perhaps should. Appears to be nervous, although this could be because of Sma's efforts to seduce him in this chapter.

Skaffen-Amitskaw: a small, grey suitcase-sized hovering robot, referred to as a drone. Does not appear to have any visible means of propulsion or manipulating objects, seems to rely on manipulating the space around itself and objects. Houses weapons known as knife missiles, which can possibly utilise their own field technology.

Chapter two characters introduced: 

Riders: Bandits who attacked the inn Sma was staying in at the time. All of them meet gruesome ends at the hands of Skaffen (Knife missiles!?), much to Sma's anger. Appearances appear to be a traditional desert attire, possibly western themed.

Chapter three characters introduced: 'Disgarb' No other name given, speech is distorted with a cold. Wears a jellaba.

Xeny: A drone that represents the Xenophobe to the occupants. Can take on many forms, like most drones, but chooses a small furry animal. Could resemble a mixture of Eevee, Teto from Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and Dobby the house-elf.

Task 6: Heroes and Villains

This task was to practice aesthetic, posture and colour to differentiate antagonists and protagonists.

I was unable to attend this lesson, so I didn't learn everything, but used my own understanding of the differences to influence my design.

My protagonist is a cyborg named Aaron who was abducted by the antagonist Doctor Mandeleev to prototype an army that could be controlled by him in secret. He was surgically fused into his armour, which gave him not only the ability to take a large amount of punishment, but allowed him to defy gravity and camouflage himself. He was meant to be desensitised to the outside world so that he wasn't aware of what he was doing or act on his own judgement. He woke up and escaped, crippling Mendeleev. Because he was exiled, he spent his days awakening or destroying the ungraded humans.

Doctor Mendeleev was a partly robotic scientist who believed that people like him were superior, and intended to create an army of robotic soldiers that couldn't act on their own judgement. These were to be distributed to countries to replace the state army and security forces. He would then throw a killswitch that would turn them all to his control rather than the countries who bought into the program.

Aaron was abducted and upon realising Mendeleev's intentions escaped, destroying the doctor's organic arm. He would go on to create more prototypes, each more powerful than the previous to disable Aaron.

Task 5: Sculpture

We were tasked to make a sculpture out of polymer clay, tinfoil and wire.

For this, I chose to do the mech I designed for the silhouette task, but for someone who is unskilled at sculpting, this would be difficult.

Whilst attempting this, I started to make a humanoid sculpture. I made a basic skeleton out of braided wire and then layered tin foil around it to create a base for the digital design. However, the foil was layering itself in such a way as to design itself for me.

 

This design would take advantage of the unique properties of the clay, where the clay will overlap over itself and make a bulky shape. The face parts were made with a piece of braided wire. When enough clay was applied, it started to look like my design. 

I thought that it lacked anything unique, so I added a top hat and bowtie.

Task 4: Silhouettes

This task was to test making a character with a silhouette and how basic shapes can define the disposition of a character.

We were taught that triangles show strength and are suited for a tall powerful character. Circles are suited for larger characters, and squares were for characters with a hunched posture or a shorter proportion.

This an opposing method to forming the skeleton we were taught earlier, where the shapes can be layered in a faster process.

I experimented with various starting ideas, and settled on quadrupedal robot tank.

This design was based on various conventions of mecha; pronounced armour plating, stocky posture and pronounced external weaponry.

My second silhouette was an organic person, with another image used as a skeletal reference.