Golden Hemogeny mecha counterattack!

[ayeong]

New series of battlepods devised by High Lord Gold Conquorer to counter his increasingly hard to kill enemies.

“I need a blade to cut off this abomination…”

-High Lord Gold Conqueror’s muttering about the current situation of the invasion of his dimensions by Grand Arms and Grand Alliance forces.

Paladin Class battlepod

GA designation: Wakazashi
Length: 20 meters
Shielding: Golden Hemogeny shield unit level 4
Armour: Golden Hemogeny armour plating 1 cm thick base armour, Golden Hemogeny electric reactive armour plating outer layer
Powerplant: Golden Hemogeny power storage battery level 4
Top speed: Mach 35

Weapons:

1 x high-powered energy cannon, Anti-ship missile launcher array

With formal war declarations made by both Grand Alliance and Grand Arms forces, the Golden Hemogeny dimensions would feel the full weight of both of these armed forces.  Even with large numbers in battlepods they were easily brushed aside by the more battle optimised units fielded by their enemies.  With his forces in a full rout to the core dimensions Gold Conqueror had to figure a stopgap solution before his forces were fully overwhelmed. 

Thus the B.L.A.D.E project was born.  This acronym stood for: Battle Leader Actuated Destroyer Eliminator.  In essence these new battlepods would bravely lead Golden Hemogeny forces towards victory.  Made to stand toe to toe with the heavier units these battlepods made sure that the Golden Hemogeny forces were on a more equal footing. 

Covered in experimental electric reactive armour (ERA) these battlepods were far more durable then their regular brethren.  The ERA would activate when incoming rounds made it passed the energy shields, an electric charge would activate a charge, which would detonate plasma explosive.  This explosion would throw the refractory armor towards the projectile.  This would blunt and or redirect the incoming projectile; the wave of plasma, which closely followed this chunk of armour, would destroy solid rounds or neutralize energy rounds.  The unfortunate side to this armour was that once a section had ejected off this armour it would not have any ERA in this area.  The armouring and shielding of the Paladin was enough to stand multiple shots from even 120 mm rounds.

The weapons carried by this battlepod were heavy enough to destroy a capital ship never mind a regular mecha.  An energy cannon instead replaced the usual mass driver.  This would insure that the battlepod would never run out of ammounition.  The missile array was for close in anti-ship bombardment.

As always the speed and manuverability was quite high.  Though the range was limited by the energy consuming weapons and equipment.  The other flaw was that due to the complicated nature of this unit it could only be piloted by normal human pilots.   It was too complicated for clone troopers to pilot and the finesse required to use it was too much for super clone troopers.  This meant that a crash program had to be developed to train enough human pilots for the Wakazashi’s deployment.  Even with forced recruitment the numbers of pilots never got high enough to reach Warrior or Sentinel class battlepods numbers.  Also Golden Hemogeny humans were less bloodthirsty or combat hardened as the regular Grand Alliance and Grand Arms troopers.  This all meant that even though Grand Alliance and Grand Arms forces were held at bay the Wakazashi was ultimately not the wonder weapon that Gold Conqueror had hoped for.

Inner battlepod
 
Length: 6 meters
Shielding: Golden Hemogeny shield unit level 1
Armour: Golden Hemogeny armour plating 1 cm thick
Powerplant: Golden Hemogeny power storage battery level 1
Top speed: Mach 20

Weapons:

2 x quad barrel .0001C mass driver (500 rounds each)

The inner escape pod so that the precious human pilot had a chance to fight another day.  Was easily picked off but better then just turning over and giving up.

[ayeong]

Stats up!

[HanSime]

On the whole I must say I enjoy your designs a lot since you're using such diverse shapes for ships and mecha.



There's a couple of things about your drawing technique rather than your designs which I've noticed though. I think you could really (and easily) improve the quality of your art, especially since you use such complex shapes a lot already and got the basic principles of perspectives and 3D images down. Hopefully the following crits can help you along.


The first is that, since you use them a lot, you should work a bit on the technique of drawing your cilinders. Why? Because they sometimes look crooked, which lowers the overal 'quality feel', if you catch my drift. The thing with cilinders is that the circles which are drawn further back are rounder, while the ones closer are usualy more elipse shaped. If you draw both ends as the same circle, it'll look as if the orientation changed at one end.

You can practice/reference by holding a pen or pencil in front of you and rotating it, while playing close watch to the shape of all circles at any orientation. Also note that it's handy to draw the circle or elipse starting at the ends of the perpendicular center line with respect to the axis of the cilinder. Though you may find some good tutorials on cilindrical drawing which explain it better. ;P Getting some lessons in the technique last year helped me a lot anyway. ^.^

The second thing I've noticed, is that for example with the "Fighter Formation", your boxes aren't inline and seem offset with regards to one another. You can accomplish this easily by drawing the full shape rectangular box shape with a light sketch first. So basically, use some more construction lines. Btw, for Industrial Design concept art, you don't even always need to erase those as construction lines also convey information regarding shapes, size and positioning.

The third thing is your shading. Use more contrast between shadow and light (as in strength of shades). Once you've got that sorted, you may want to look more into different type of shades, "regular" opposed to "cast" shades. Your lighting is currently based on 'panel by panel' shading and highlighting, rather than looking at the whole shape for shadows. It means there is little to no interaction with shadows between different parts of the design. You can use shades however to express shape and position with respect to nearby parts. :

Lastly, colour choices. The colours you've picked contrast a lot between background and foreground. Though this may be intentional, in this case it gives a MS Paint feel to it, because they're such basic colours. >.> I'd personally keep the difference between background and foreground relatively small, since then they 'conflict less' and the foregound fits in better. For a design, blue works best with those white layout lines, but other than that I wouldn't advice it. In this case a softer yellow or brownish colours might have made it look more 'concepty'. I'd also keep your texts black, because red on blue reminds me of 8-bit games for some reason, an association which would be fine if you weren't trying to show off a complex design.

Again, hope these crits can help you along!

[ayeong]

Thanks for the advice!  I will try to use them in my next drawing.  Hopefully the next ones after will look much better.

[Imotion]

Thanks for posting, it is always a pleasure to read the description and enjoying your art work

[ayeong]

Next in line.  Guess Gold Conqueror needs a bigger B.L.A.D.E!

[HanSime]

Neat design, fits well with the previous designs.

There's a couple odd things going on with the perspective though. You may want to use a vanishing point (or two) to make sure the perspective is okay. The lines over the width of the vehicle diverge, rather than converge to a single point on the horizon. This makes planes and lines which you want to be parallel, appear to be at different angles with respect to one another.



Take a close look at the differences between the shape of your flatplanes and those in the perspective drawing. Especially with regards to the distance between two points on the same line and those same points on a parallel line.

It's quite easy to learn and a very handy trick to make perspective drawings look good. In some cases the main problem is that the points you want to use for the perspective can not be seen on the paper, then you just want to make sure they seem to come together in one point by making sure parallel lines converge slightly.

[Thomas]

 

[ayeong]

Hey HanSIme thanks for the advice and pointers you have been giving me!  It is greatly appreciated.  I'm always looking to improve on my technique.

The only thing that sucks is that all my older mecha are getting jealous of their better looking "younger siblings"

[HanSime]

The funny thing is looking back at your old work three to four years later and going "oh man...".

[Oscidaes]

The funny thing is looking back at your old work three to four years later and going "oh man...".

Or, in some cases, 3-4 months. D:

[ayeong]

Done (or as good as I could get it for now) just need the stats.

“I only hope they don’t have anymore of these guys!”

-Grand Alliance pilot’s comment on the new Golden Hemogeny battlepod.

“I just need a bigger blade…”

-Gold Conqueror’s comment on how to stop his enemies from encroaching any further into Golden Hemogeny territory.

Avenger class Battlepod

GA designation: Katana
Length: 40 meters
Shielding: Golden Hemogeny shield unit level 5
Armour: Golden Hemogeny armour plating 10 cm thick base armour, Golden Hemogeny electric reactive armour plating outer layer
Powerplant: Golden Hemogeny power storage battery level 5
Top speed: Mach 40

Weapons:

1 x Super high energy cannon, 1 x turreted .01C mass driver, 1 x .001C mass driver cluster, 1 x .001C mass driver gatling, 2 x anti-ship missile cluster, 4 x anti-projectile launchers

With the first successful run of the new B.L.A.D.E battlepods Gold Conqueror needed to keep the momentum going or his enemies would soon have him cornered again.  This new design was made to fight Grand Alliance mechas on an equal or better footing.  Able to fight whole squads of Haybusas off this battlepod was true threat to Grand Alliance forces.  This mecha was even harder to produce then the Paladin class and the skill needed to bring out the full potential of this mech was even higher.

The main gun was equal to power to a Dreadnaught class plasma cannon.  Taking 10 seconds to charge this gun was very powerful but somewhat slower then the Grand Alliance equivalent.  Gave the Avenger a very powerful pre-emptive strike capability.  Equipped with a potent .01C mass driver the Avenger could take out even the highly vaunted Viggen in one well-aimed shot.  Otherwise 3-4 shot were required, needed 20 seconds to charge.  For most situations the Avenger would rely on its two .001C mass driver gun clusters.  Either in a gatling gun form or as a gun cluster, these mass drivers could punch out a Hayabusa in one shot.  The anti-ship missile clusters could take out a lancer class and had multiple reloads.  Rounding out the arsenal were 4 anti-projectile launchers.  Made to defend against the Grand Alliance heavy calibre guns, micro-missiles, nano-missiles, and PARs these defensive devices were used before the ERA had to be activated.  Firing a large hail of ball bearings these would intercept and destroy any incoming shots.  Mounted on very mobile turrets these launchers provided a large degree of protection.  Unfortunately the ammunition was limited  and enough incoming fire could still get through. 

The speed and the manuverability of the Avenger was very high especially for a fighter of its size.  Able to match a Hayabusa turn for turn the Avenger could outmanuver any fighter in its class.  With incredible protection, good sensor range and good combat endurance this battlepod still had a few other suprises up its sleeve…


Length: 45 meters
Shielding: Golden Hemogeny shield unit level 5
Armour: Golden Hemogeny armour plating 10 cm thick base armour, Golden Hemogeny electric reactive armour plating outer layer
Powerplant: Golden Hemogeny power storage battery level 5
Top speed: Mach 45

Weapons:

1 x .001C mass driver gatling, 2 x .0001C triple mass driver gatlings, 2 x mini anti-ship missile clusters

The inner fighter of this massive armour was faster and even more manuverable then the base body.  With it’s own layer of ERA armor this made the Avenger a very hard to kill battlepod.  If this wasn’t enough it still had the base B.L.A.D.E inner fighter as an escape pod. 

Compared to the Viggen class this battlepod was better balanced and more manuverable.  Its speed might not be as high but its manuverability was in another class altogether.  The major flaw of this battlepod was insufficient energy reserves, lack of versatile weapons and low pilot skill.  Despite having the largest power storage battery that could be crammed into the slender frame there was not enough power to go around.  The shielding unit drew most of the power, throw in the engines and the heavy weapons and this just put too much load on the battery.  The pilot had to be very careful or he could find himself dead in space with no real effective way to recharge quickly.  The weapons were by themselves very powerful but unlike its Grand Alliance competitors they lacked versatility or function.  This was mainly due to the fact that these units had to be mass-produced at a quick rate and so mass standardization was used across the board.  This meant that the common mass driver was the favoured ordinance to be used.  The last flaw low pilot skill was extremely telling in the insufficient training of the Golden Hemogeny forces.  A fighter of this quality had to be piloted with finesse to bring out its full potential.  This meant that only human pilots not clone troopers had to pilot it.  The creativity and intelligence of the pilot was needed.  Unfortunately it was not uncommon for a mediocre Hayabusa pilot to take down an Avenger single handily.  This bespoke of the low pilot qualifications that Gold Conqueror had to work with.  A deadly fighter feared by rookies for more seasoned pilots it was only a minor annoyance that had to be guarded against.

[Heavyarmskai2000]

The avenger class battle mode is a little confusing.  Its hard to see how it relates to the cast off mode.  Other than that I like it.  I really need to get back to drawing ships and armors.

[ayeong]

Hopes this helps.  All that happens is that some armor is ejected off and the fighter activates.  Of course some components shift to accommodate the mode change but the transformation is both fast and simple.

[ayeong]

Stats up!