#thylo

A selection of possibly never before seen behind the scenes images kindly provided to me by Bob McCarron of his work on Philippe Mora's Howling III: The Marsupials (1987)!

I don't think I posted this yet.

Ohh thank you~!! ✨✨

The biggest advice I can give is to study the functionality! That’s the most interesting part of robots to me, and influences all my designs. You definitely don’t have to understand the mechanics completely, but getting an idea of the basics, and knowing what the function and purpose of the robot is, and what parts help to carry out that function, is always a good starting place!

Here’s an example of how I was mostly focused on the saw mechanics of the shoulder, because that’s what was important to the story, and made the rest mostly aesthetic driven.

Whereas with Thylo, I had an idea of how I wanted his legs to look, and built the mechanics around that, to serve the aesthetic, but it also plays into his motion, and how he stands, and his balance.

For Snap, both her new and older designs are more personality driven, and wanted to keep her more ‘human’ elements more round and approachable, and her mechanical parts sharper, to sell that they’re weaponry, and that she’s both kind and a fighter. But even her sharp aspects are never perfectly straight, keeping it fun and light-hearted.

Her’s is also a transforming design, and every little piece serves that function, especially the head area, and I consider how the panels will fall or open, or attach. Again, it doesn’t have to be mechanically accurate, but if you’ve got a solid idea of how the physics work for the character, it really sells the design!

Even for less humanish designs, you can give a clear idea of the robot’s function through decals, or how it affects the environment/other characters.

Here’s a little example: let’s say I wanna make a robot whose purpose is to lift boxes on top-shelves, and bring them down to a pallet. It would need a way to see the box, a way to reach it, and to push it onto the pallet.

So, I’ll play with the idea of his functionality first. I could go with some sort of scissor lift, or hydraulic system, but I settle on mostly a telescoping mechanism, and build a little warehouse, or dock worker aesthetic around him.

Oh I know you belong inside my aching heart~! ♥

WAHH THANK YOU!! ✨ So nice of you to say, I appreciate it!!

And I may or may not have a ridiculous amount of characters haha but here are my main ones!

Yulis is a driver-for-hire, employed by Paul’s company to get him to work on time. He’s volatile, quick-to-act, but pretty dependable. Paul writes articles for work, but wants to be his own author, so he overworks himself writing, and is late because of it. He’s frazzled, constantly nervous and stressed, and Yulis is pretty much his only constant in his life.

Here’s their introduction, and their latest comic!

Then there’s the Metropolis Cocktail bunch! I’ve had each of these characters for a LONG while, but they’ve changed a whole lot over time. Lou’s an alien bodyguard, Cap’s his partner and a schemer, Pepperell’s a carefree-clown-type, and Brunette’s a researcher (and a nervous wreck.)

You can go through any of their tags, and there’s literally YEARS of drawings, but here’s a good intro for Cap & Lou’s relationship, a little comic about Brunette & Pepperell, and their lineup!

(I did also start a bigger comic with them all, but I didn’t get it out in time, so it’ll only like a quarter-way done haha I do plan on finishing it next fall! )

Honorable mention is Thylo, I haven’t posted a whole lot about him, and I only made one comic with him, but his design is still one of my favorites, and I would REALLY love to continue his comics at some point. He’s a flyweight fighter, a bit of an underdog, quick-to-anger, impulsive, but has the best intentions to stay cool under pressure.