It might remind you of a jumping spider, a cuttlefish, or a Cylon ship, because it reminds me of all those things. This is just the main structure — OK, think of a head — plus a few of it’s extra apparatuses (eyes, guns, and ailerons]. It will get more weapons, a grill of sorts, four legs, and tools on the ends of each leg. The legs will go out sideways rather than vertically, though they can move in a variety of ways. It’s a bit crab-like. It may operate a lot under water, and not just in space (hence the weird cuttlefish front flipper action].
This will make more sense with my ballpoint pen concept sketch:
The function of this droid is to disassemble/disable enemy machines. On the bottom will be a device it uses to attach itself to a ship, robot, whatever machine, and then it uses its various tools to wreck havoc. Ya see, it’s harder for a ship to fight an enemy that’s attached to it. It can’t fire on itself, or have smaller ships firing at it. I’ll flesh out the explanation later.
I’m going with smooth, rounded surfaces, for a more alien feel. I can achieve the look with a comibnation of boolean operations (to cut odd shapes) and subdivision surface modifiers (to create rounded angles). I may not stick with the slick silver. That’s just so I have any texture at all on it while in the making. I may go with a more scratched, painted metal, if I can pull it off.
Above, without texture. Note the 6 spider eyes on top. The upper compartment can swivel left and right, but not up and down, so it has extra sensor eyes on top, which are not as powerful as the main eyes in the front.
I’m starting to get decent enough at 3D modeling that it’s loads of fun. There’s a lot of work left to do just on the model, let alone rigging it, and possibly animating it.
And now for a closer look:
Several hours later, and I update the guns, put red glowing pupils in the eyes, and added the basic shape of the big guns container (planning an array of guns on the periphery within the front plane]. Also altered the front propulsion opening to make it smoother. And there’s an inset circular pivot for the front “flippers”.
An hour later and he has a grill, and is looking more anthropomorphic, and like a droid rather than a spaceship.
Check back in to see how it develops
~ Eric Wayne
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Art & Crit by Eric Wayne 