#brazenart

im SO sad i still havent really gotten to properly stress-test his build (yet) but this is perhaps one of my best designs. i loved trying to think up all the little ways i could incorporate the tabletop mechanics into his design so i will list a few of them here because im so proud of them.

the tail has backwards hooks to enable him to grapple opponents more effectively, and to get the ferrous lash into his design

the shield is extendable and can extrude spikes so he can take it off and chuck it like a disc to stun opponents. it also corresponds to the house guard ability that lets him treat allies from two spaces away as adjacent :) basically he makes his shield real big like that

the recuperative loop of his reactor corresponds to the part of the orchis frame that lets him run with allies on their turn

the black part of the terashima blade and the guard are shaped like that because i want them to be extendable/moveable to increase the size of the guard and length. this corresponds to the different stances of the terashima blade you can do.

also he doesnt have that much health but he DOES have evasion 18 :^) because i think im funny

some of his stuff can be swapped out with other licenses as needed, like the iceout drone, so they're not shown here

Can I say that I'm pretty proud of the arm joints? I wanted them vertical, but didn't want the bottom arm to hang too low. But if they didn't, they'd get in the way. Now the joints can move side to side/up and down within the shoulder for extra space! Yahoooooooooo

Okay now I have quite a few things to say about the journey this design is because hooooo boy,

After my epiphany I initially wanted to make something that looked close to Canti from FLCL, but I couldn't figure out how to make the head in a way I enjoyed. In the end, what stayed was really just the coloration - fun fact, Canti's angular panelling is pretty close to ye olde gundam and patlabor, which was fun to find out. It's something I've always enjoyed, so I had to include it.

for a fun insight into the evolution i recommend opening Okawara Kunio's wikipedia page and taking a gander at his pre-gundam works. Quite interesting how you slowly see him grow into it.

In a way the serpent is biting its own tail here because these works are also partially derivative of the era that came before them, which I also picked a lot from: retrofuturism. It, too, loves those broad swathes of colors. So nice for the eyes to rest on...Normally I break up my coloration when it comes to robots! But perhaps I should tweak that more in the future.

Oh, and Dieter Rams is also in here. I've always admired his electronics design.

Sexy! This also played a role in the font choice, since Rams follows a similar "form follows function" philosophy as bauhaus. And bauhaus, in turn, has influenced many things....... including retrofuturism. When I'm done with this post we'll be at the Cambrian Era, boys!

Just kidding.

Lastly, I couldn't fully abandon my old sona CRT. I still feel they are closely connected to me, so I had to lift some design parts like the blue color and the crack in the screen to make this new guy feel like home. I've also realized I've sort of ended up with my very own robot design aesthetic after years of working on my Faraway Parsecs project, and I simply couldn't resist letting that seep in here too, in the form of the organic panelling of the neck and the antennae, hehe.