KNight's Custom Commander Adventure

Aww man I love that artist, been following him on DA for years!

Mike

When you say that ball I thought something like this.

If I had the money during kickstarter campaign I would have. Would have been imperial class and the examples would have been RX-0 Unicorn (Gundam UC universe), YF-19 "Alpha One" (Macross), and CREST CR-C90U3 (Armored Core). Eva Unit-01 or 02 (Neon Genesis Evangelion, 1995).

Wait, so this is now the thread where we fantasise about being KNight?

I'm sorry I couldn't resist. Although it's going to be interesting watching the progress.

A floating ball is probably doable with the tank commander animations.

I'd really like to see some kind of Evangelion inspired Imperial Commanders, except for the giant gun

Fun fact about Gundam Balls, me and my buddy keep trying to one-up each other on finding cool Ball Conversions like this one;


In other news, No Progress tonight because TITANFALL.

Mike

Alright, back again, no "proper" work yet, but I did some prep-work in preparation for my weekend so I can crunch out some 3D work, so in the mean time lets go over the first concept I wanted to tackle, the Arc Gurren Lagann/Armored Core mash-up, henceforth referred to as the 'ArcCore' Concept.

So I went to my Magikal Bookshelf and pulled out some references I had, and pulled a bunch of pictures for Arc Gurren Lagann to kind of get things rolling and focusing on the main aspects I wanted to make use of.



So yeah, on the Armored Core stuff the heads are inset in a fairly standard way, but there are a couple where the area behind the head is more built up and is especially pronounced on Hogire(White with the Booster) and we can see that Arc Gurren Lagann takes this even farther by not only in-setting the head in the torso, but also in the 'spire/spine' itself as well and it's something I definitely want to experiment with myself

Then there is also the Torso itself to consider, we see on Arc Gurren Lagann, Aaliyah(Orange) and the Crest(Grey) that the torsos are quite pointed and that the shoulders area is generally more "built up" compared to the rest. On the other hand the Hogire and Nobless Oblige(White ACs) aren't as pointed and visually are more "even" in terms of where they're built up, or rather the shoulder areas aren't as prominent compared to the rest of the Torso.

For the Shoulders we see that we even have a fair spread on the types presented here, the Crest AC is fairly basic and small, minimalist almost while the Hogire and Nobless Oblige are a bit bulkier but still rather reasonable. Lastly we have the Aaliyah and Arc Gurren Lagann whose shoulders are very prominent and bulky. I'm not sure quite yet where I want to take mine, probably somewhere middle of the road unless something hits me that meshes really well with the rest of the model but I can't really comment on that kind of stuff until I get down to the nitty gritty of it.

That should give you guys a pretty good reference point we can use going forward as I get to really start into the mesh itself. I think I'll try to use the next couple of nights after work to maybe try and flesh out some other different concepts much like I did for this one, to try and see what more is out there and get some opinions rolling if you guys would like?

Mike

Alright guys! The work week is over! I've got 2 days off and I'm designating them Art days! I got some concepts to whip up, some Necrons to Paint, a Big Thingy I should probably try to work on and all kinds of neat things.

I'll be pretty active here as I work on things, if theres interest I could even stream when working on 3D stuff, I don't stream much(or at all really xD) but I'm sure I could still set something up in there was interest.

Mike

Wohoo! Paint those necrons!

That's gonna be for tomorrow mostly, I have a Triarch Stalker I need to finish xD........which will actually be the first model I "finish" but won't actually because I want to try and Magnetize the weapon and design a Better Heavy Gauss Cannon for it xD

Mike

Alright so first rough draft ready to go;



I basically wanted to just mash together as many of the individual aspects and see what the result was.

All in all, mixed results IMO. I like the overall bulky feel to it but I'm not sure all the elements positively contribute to that. I haven't done anything specific with the arms yet but from what I can tell the only thing I could change is the upper arm anyways so while I can work to keep the arms from looking out of place for being thinner but I can't actually modify the Gun/Lathe aspects of the arms aside from adding on the shield-type bits.

The shoulders I feel are a bit too large and while they could slim down as details are added in, they could also get bigger as well so I think the size they are now might work as a final size, but no so much as a starting point.

The Torso feels mostly awkward to me so far, usually I'd have already tweaked it be the point of this is to share the process and it's hard to do that if a bunch of steps are hidden because I already did them xD I think I'm just so far in too much of a composite of all the different types from my references and thus it's pretty unfocused, I need to try some variants with emphasis placed in different areas like the shoulder specifically for example. The 'spine' feels a little out of place right now, it just kind of rises out of a flat area and feels more like an after thought so I might also try to see about building up to it differently so it feels more like a part of the construction rather than an Add on.

The Legs are....interesting, in all honestly the Rig presents a hard sell to do things in proportions I like, and leg proportions are something I have a track record about being upset over after SupCom2... >.> So far I have a couple "favorite" ways to try and get as much out of the set proportions as possible and on top is the idea of Kneepads that extend upward to partially 'cover' the thigh a bit because in teh end, comeing from a Gundam/Armored Core background like I do I just seem to prefer shorter upper legs and longer lower legs. In fact if you look at Armored Core stuff the Lower Legs are usually twice as long as the Upper legs are and while on you level you realize that it's downright odd visually it comes out really well presented and works well along side the usually top heavy designs once you get shoulders and weapons involved.

Currently my legs are the roughest part of the whole model and might do with some slimming actually and just generally need more design effort put into them but I figured this would be a good start at least.



For the Next Version I think what I'll do is look to fixing the obvious stuff I left out like the upper arms and basic resizing on the shoulders, refine the legs a bit and take stock again. It might not seem like much but even small adjustments can make an entire design click so before I run off making huge changes I want to start with the small stuff and maybe save myself some time and effort down the road. Expect that later tonight.

Mike

Why would you need a triarch stalker when you can have Imotekh the stormlord, 2 troop choices of your choice, and 6 monoliths? Choose to play second, steal the initiative with Imotekh, and then just teleport in all your monoliths around the enemy army!

Or you could just play Tau!
By the way, the GWS links don't work because they just send you right to the "pick your country" page.

IMO, the feet should have multiple toes (2 in front one in back?) kind of like the alpha commander. That would give it a more mech-like appearance. IMO of course!

Because I can't grow a beard! ;p

Just in it for fun, but I do want want a Monolith at some point! xD Also damn GW links, just as messed up as everything else they do... >.>

It depends on what kind of "style" you're going for overall, I'm going for less of a Mechanical style and more so an "armored" look almost.

Mike

Lol. Maybe you should make your comm look like a necron canoptek device of some kind.

Guess so. The alpha commander pulls it off pretty well though, and as a result he has my favorite lower body out of all the imperial commanders, I'm just not so hot on the upper body. Good luck with your custom comm! Can't wait to see it come through!

Update time;



So lots of smaller tweaks, didn't do anything for the legs yet tweaked the shoulder scale and fleshed out he arms a bit more and tried something quick for the Gun/Lathe shield, tweaks to the torso and I tried to "bracket" the "spine" a bit more....some more kind of mixed results in all honesty, I think I'm going to try a spineless variant or two to see how it looks without that.

Mike

Looking good imo!

Hey KNight, I am planning to draw a commander in SolidWorks, is that valid? Can you turn it into your standard file using a SW drawing? I am not a kickstarter backer (I wish I knew such thing existed) and I am giving away this commander idea

Solidworks is more so a CAD program from my limited understanding, I don't see why you couldn't assuming it can be exported into an appropriate format. Like I said I'm not familiar with solidworks or CAD programs in general.

Mike