Invasion

Scroll down to see the process.

Mechs and robots have always been a favorite subject of mine. The favorite child of technology and destructive power, armed to the teeth with a full panoply of devastation; mechs tower above the battle, striking awe and fear into those below. I have been drawing them since I first saw them in games like Mech Warrior, Lost Planet, and Titanfall. In many ways this was a love letter to my younger self from an adult who could finally bring these beings into life with a paintbrush and canvas.

I started this one based on a painting I had done a while back. I wanted to take a second shot at it with my matured skill set and see if I could develop it into something more interesting. What started as a standard issue bipedal walking tank grew and changed as I toyed around with the story and shapes that lay beneath. Sprouting a third leg, trading an arm gun for a black hole cannon and a metal fist for a dual flamer unit. Before long it had evolved into an alien war machine, receiving major changes to its form and design language as well as a technological step into a realm past human understanding. I placed it into the environment of a destroyed human city, shadowed by its mother ships in orbit and laying waste to any that dare oppose it.

In the end I was quite happy with the final product of this redesign. I had taken the craftsmanship up a few notches and turned the story telling and design into something I felt was unique and interesting. It was a fun challenge to my creative thinking and design skills as well as a nice opportunity to measure my growth as an artist against some of my earlier work.

-Sam Bogits

Process

I started this one based off a painting of a Mech I did a few years ago and painted over it a bit. From there I started to play around with the story and design to push it beyond being simply a generic mech/robot. I noticed the initial design already had a bit of a crablike appearance, so I decided to give it three legs and thin them at the bottom instead of a standard bipedal design with feet. Looking at some references of crabs, I continued to mold the shapes and decided to make it an alien mech to go along with the crustacean vibe. This gave me the idea of it being sent from outer space to destroy Earth.

I then played with two lighting options, one during night time and one during the day. I decided to go with the daytime option because I wanted to show a sky choked with dust and smoke, blotting out the sun and enforcing the idea of devastation.

After I had painted in the details and main shapes, I experimented with a few color options inspired by palettes from movies; namely Children of Men, Star Wars Attack of the Clones, and Blade Runner. I liked the orange haze in the sky the most so I went with that one and tweaked it a bit more in the final to my liking.

Here is the painting process broken down into chunks. I started by refining the shapes of the armor into a cohesive design language that combined organic curves into harder edged angles. This gave it a flowing organic feel that still felt military and robotic, but otherworldly and advanced. I fleshed out the mechanical elements and weapons, looking at an all time favorite film of mine: The Iron Giant, specifically when he activates his battle mode and it is revealed he was sent to destroy the planet. I also refined the head/cockpit area to mimic the details of a crab's face, detailed the destruction in the background, and added in more robots in the background and ships in the sky to show a full invasion scene.

Lastly I did a final round of detail painting to really sell all the surfaces, materials, scale, and general fidelity of the image and tweaked the colors again slightly.

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