I finally have the Archer to the assembly stages. I had a couple
of the rubber bushing sets that I could use for the legs and that meant I could
leave it poseable. That made me happy. I also magnetized the
shoulder so the arms have mobility as well. I would have preferred
ball-and-socket joints, but I don’t have any of them on hand. I’ll try to
get some so I have a stock to pull from should the need arise in the
future. FCY swears by them and uses them often. The last bits
to make still are the shoulder armor “pauldrons” and then the top Medium-laser
turret. Those are basically just add-on pieces though, which leaves
me to get chewing on putting it all together and then starting the hard
part: Painting.
That part makes me ask the question: Is it arrogance or
idiocy (or just bad writing) that causes a famous Mercenary Leader to paint his
BattleMech with a colo rscheme that is Blue and frakkin' gold!? I started
to work on giving the Archer the base coat and I really, really, really hate
the way it looks. The more I look at it, the more I hate it. Yeah, I know I still only have the base coat on and I haven't yet finished making it all uniform, but I still hate it.
I was partway through this whine, trying to figure out how I
can add some better realism and look to the design and it struck me, the
description of the 'Mech happens twice in Wolves on the Border, but I don't
recall having read more of it. I'm sure there were in other books that I
haven't read, but since I haven't read much past the first Trial of Refusal,
and the raid on Strahna Mechty, I'm going to go with what I have.
So. The description is simple: "Distinctive Blue and
Gold."
So why not Blue camo? I am thinking of going with a
blue/light blue/grey or black camo scheme instead of just straight blue.
I figure that will help break up the lines on the mech, and help with making
the paintjob look better. Highlighting and shading will be more straightforward
after that, and I have a feeling that the whole thing will end up looking more
like a war machine much more than it would if I just went with straight blue
and gold with highlights/shadows. It might even be fun to put a
gold/white/tan camo on the Yellow highlighted parts, just to pay back to the
arrogance of the Leader of Wolf's Dragoons.
I'm going to take one of the failed shin castings and try the camo spec on it and see what I think. For now, this is how far Project R has come.
Edited to add: camo options using Mechlab Hmm.. I think I like the tigerstripe
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