Nearing the end

The semester is coming to an end and even though Full Metal Tactics didn't make it through to next semester i am very proud of the progress that we made this semester. We started out with a bunch of ideas and learned a lot about our game, the way we work together as a group and ultimately about the kind of people we are as individuals and team members.  

So i realized that i have been bumming a little since we found out that FMT wasn't going forward which is why i haven't really looked at my blog, for those of you who follow it (if anyone does at all lol) that i have neglected you but here i am once again and i wanted to show off the final progress that i made the weeks before FMT got cut.

Lets start with the main character because i finally came up with it. I wanted the Mechs to feel like mechs in terms of  scope and grandeur but also the challenge was to make these mechs look organic. I started out looking at plants and animals for reference, i was going to go in the direction of plants however i wasn't convinced and i don't think the rest of the team was convinced with the direction that professor Crispel and Pile were proposing. Instead i went back and looked at the human body, i wanted to give the mechs a fleshlike feeling but keep it mechanical at the same time. First thing that came to mind were the Geth from the Mass Effect universe. In the lore the Geth are biomechanical robots created by an alien race that eventually evolved their AI into a consciousness. Art wise they have mechanical parts but the arms and legs are much more organic. This got me thinking and i ended up looking at the anatomy of the human muscles, i thought to myself "why not make this mechs have musculature encased in metallic parts?" So i got to work i looked at references from games such as Crysis, Mass Effect, and Deus Ex human revolution because they all dealt with organic looking suits, robots, and augmentations.

What i came up with was this: 

The idea was to make the shoulder pieces part of the shoulder weapon. Each the shoulder weapon would be connected to different armor pieces thus emphasizing customization more and give the player a more distinctive mech.

I also re designed the first batch of weapons i had made to make them look more dangerous and out of control here is a picture of the final weapons, sadly i never got to unveil them to the team or the class as we found out that FMT wasn't going to make it through right after i finished them.

It would have been awesome to see the mechs and different weapons in action and to see what the players would have chosen for their mechs in terms of looks and abilities. Perhaps we will take another look at FMT in the near future...... we can only hope.  Regardless it is time to turn the page to Crisis of the Super Verse the new project i got assigned to, this is going to be a great experience we are now a 10 person group and Ryan Hill got assigned to it to this is going to be a blast. More to come on that so keep reading later installments of the Cuadra Blog!!!!