Monday, April 11, 2016

Project R. Starting to come together.



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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