Progress
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Making some progress on the mech now. Last night I was able to sit down and really hammer out a bit more of the design. I had a decent idea of what I wanted and looking at some reference material really helped. I have the obvious Robotech and Gundam stuff to look at but I also have this weird roleplaying game called Mekton kicking around that's all mech based as well and has some decent pictures I can look at. The big advantage with Mekton is that a lot of the Mechs have the really old-school geometric look that's a lot easier to pull off in illustrator. Also, the art style has a lot less shading so it's much easier to look at for the basic shapes.
The other thing that I'm finding really helpful is if I mix up the work a bit. Working on just the lines and shapes gets a bit monotonous at times and it's hard to see how the final result will look. So I've been taking breaks from it to work on some of the colouring and shading. I think this is turning out fairly well and it means that I get to look at what the finished product will be and that helps pump me up a bit more. Last night I got the head, left shoulder and left arm mocked up with the head and shoulder shaded as well. My one complaint at the moment is that for some reason I see the drawing as more of a power armour suit than a mech, I'm not sure exactly why and it's not really a bad thing so I'm just going with it all. Hoping to get the chest, right shoulder and arm, and maybe the legs done tonight. If I could get all that done I'd be doing pretty well. That would get me the basic body done and then I could go back and focus on detail work to flesh it out. If I really make some good progress, I might add a 2nd mech to the scene as well. If I go for that it will definitely be based off of the same design but probably just different colours and a modified pose. That could be pushing it for Tuesday though. The other big advantage of working on the shading and colouring now is that if I don't finish then at least I'll have some of what I'm going for to show instead of it all being a pile of shapes.
The other thing that I'm finding really helpful is if I mix up the work a bit. Working on just the lines and shapes gets a bit monotonous at times and it's hard to see how the final result will look. So I've been taking breaks from it to work on some of the colouring and shading. I think this is turning out fairly well and it means that I get to look at what the finished product will be and that helps pump me up a bit more. Last night I got the head, left shoulder and left arm mocked up with the head and shoulder shaded as well. My one complaint at the moment is that for some reason I see the drawing as more of a power armour suit than a mech, I'm not sure exactly why and it's not really a bad thing so I'm just going with it all. Hoping to get the chest, right shoulder and arm, and maybe the legs done tonight. If I could get all that done I'd be doing pretty well. That would get me the basic body done and then I could go back and focus on detail work to flesh it out. If I really make some good progress, I might add a 2nd mech to the scene as well. If I go for that it will definitely be based off of the same design but probably just different colours and a modified pose. That could be pushing it for Tuesday though. The other big advantage of working on the shading and colouring now is that if I don't finish then at least I'll have some of what I'm going for to show instead of it all being a pile of shapes.