ShimmeringSword

Mad Cat Mk II Concept

I've been itching to show this one off since I finished it, or even earlier when it first came down the assignment pipe.

The Mad Cat Mk II. One of my favorite mechs that we hadn't gotten to yet.
I was a big fan of it in MW4, and the Matt Plog lineart has stood the test of time also. Even the old IWM sculpt looks grea...

Fulcrum Hover Sculpt

Ok here's starting the rest of this months catch up posts. I took a couple days pause and that teleported me forward 3 weeks.

Resuming with renders of the Fulcrum hover tank sculpt. Modeled by Alan Blackwell.
Still quite a funky little tank visually, but it has a fairly solid weapons load out while zipping about. I'm...

Grand Titan Concept

With the release of Big Red 40tech's reveal and deep dive video, here's my design sketch for the Grand Titan that went into it.

You guys asked pretty regularly when we'll be getting one of these, now you can thank Big Red for twisting Randall Bills arm about it and making it happen. He wanted his video art to be based o...

Thunderbolt IIC

Here are the final renders for the Thunderbolt IIC.

It came out looking excellent in my opinion, with Eliza Gibbs handling the 3D modeling task. It's so chunky and sturdy looking.
I was very tempted to make this my main Masters and Minions mech for GenCon this year. It is an extremely hot build though and I feared ho...

Ostwar Concept

Here's one requested, the Ostwar. Designed by Eldon Cowgur.

The continuation, completion, and historical origination for the ost line.
A bit less elegant than the Ostroc and Ostsol, but still intended to look cool, we combined favorite features from previous art iterations and evolved from there. I had a preference f...

Wendigo Sculpt

Here's the Wendigo sculpt by Alan Blackwell, who also worked on the design stage.

I think the shapes came out really nice on this one. It's got both heft and sleekness to it.

With a very serviceable weapons loadout I wonder if we'll see more use of this one now that it's in plastic and a bit more elegant looking. ...

Shiro Concept

Here's the final concept sketch for the Kurita force packs, the Shiro.

I recall doing this one before the Rokurokubi to establish the visuals a bit, then I could pull them over to use on both. The most similar parts being the legs, especially lower, and the arms.

As with the Roku, I wanted to maintain the overall ...

Peacekeeper Sculpt

Ok back at it! I'm going to try and cram October full of posts to catch up on my ghosting of Aug/Sep. Apologies again.
Feel free to drop special requests in again for things I can whip up past the usual "sculpts being worked on".

Here's the Peacekeeper sculpt from Ray White. One of the last few to post from the Star ...

Downtime

Hey patrons! I believe I totally missed posting anything in August. Whoops! But embarrassingly not my first time.

After gencon I've been in a whirlwind of out of routine errands, primarily, buying a house! We closed on the purchase last month, and got the keys this month. It's been a big stack of cleaning, painting, pac...

Leopard Concept

The Leopard is one of the first items I jumped on when the orders came down to finish all redesigns needed for TRO 3025. I wanted at least a few of the new redesigns to go through the usual full 3D process, and this had to be one of them.

There has been a lot of variation in Leopard renditions over the years. Some are m...

Union Concept

Now onto the drop ships! The Union.

Along with the Leopard, it was really important to get this one right, being so prolific, popular, and appearing a lot in art already. I have always been bothered with how rare (almost never) the weapons and external equipment listed for dropships and warships actually matches on the ...

Transgressor Concept

This was a fun one, the Transgressor.

Right at the finish line for the project we realized I'd missed 2 pieces from the needed list. This was one of them. Marco was going to handle the concept and lineart for the Transgressor, but after leaving me with a basic sketch to check over for the night, I sat down and ended up ...

Stingray Concept

Here's the Stingray. Had I not posted this one before?

This concept was done quite a while ago, along with several others to fill the need for more aerospace reference designs for artists to use in illustrations. Can't only have Shilones everywhere :D

It definitely took the edge off the work rush on this TRO by ha...

Riever Concept

I wont be posting every sketch for every fresh (to current BT art) unit in our 3025 re-release, as many have been done by other artists than myself, but I'll start with at least the ones I handled.

The Riever had an issue that many aerospace fighter art suffers from. The implied scale within the art being at odds with ...

Phoenix Hawk LAM Concept

Before I ship off to Gencon, how about I drop some concepts for the imminent TRO 3025?

Let's kick it off with the Phoenix Hawk LAM. To push a little variety, I took up this one as the basis for the 3 in the book, then assigned the other two to Marco Mazzoni (Wasp) and Patrick Wagesreither (Stinger). Some of you may know...

Rokurokubi Concept

Here's a fun one, the Rokurokubi. Along with the Shiro, it was our entry into Dark Age Kurita totem samurai mechs. The Hatamoto-Chi is no longer alone.

I really like the head concept on this mech, but the MWDA and IWM versions didn't quite pull it off for me. Either too oversized or not feeling integrated into the mech....

Excalibur Sculpt

Here are the 3D renders for the Excalibur.

Some visual features include the fake right hand, and including arm pods that can work as sensors or lasers depending on variant, and opening up more wysiwyg options for future refits.

I hope the mixtures of curves and cuts lead to some nice paint applications. Though it ...

Avatar Concept

I believe Bishop Steiner has had this posted over on his patreon page for a bit, but I wanted to drop it here too for more to see. The Avatar.

Definitely one I've looked forward to our team getting to, with IS omni's in general. It's definitely a looker, and had room to get that little bit more pretty.
There are so m...

Savage Wolf Sculpt

It's been a year and a half since I posted the concept sketch for this one. Now here's some 3D renders. The Mad Cat mkIV, Savage Wolf.

The IWM model has been out for quite some time now so plenty of you might already have one. Hopefully the Star League pack plastic version isn't too far off from release. In a perfect wo...

Chimera Concept

Time for more MW4 nostalgia mechs. The Chimera.

Here's another one that at least for me, has that perfect ugly industrial look that I like. It's got a lot of nonsense shapes, but they work. Of all the previous concepts and looks I liked the MW4 concept art version the most, so I referenced heavily there. After that some...

Malice Sculpt

Why can something look so good and be so bad? The Malice is a primary contender for that. I'm probably still going to play it on the table despite that.

Ray White worked on the sculpt for this one and it came out looking solid. The ankles even kind of work now, almost! :D

If you were to oversee a new variant creat...

Venom Concept

Here's one I know people have been wanting, the Venom.

This one is fairly straight forward, being built up from a Spider I dug up that sketch and worked from there. Beefed it up to represent the gained tonnage, working in Venom details while maintaining links to the new Spider for lineage.

The question is not if y...

J-27 Ordnance Transport Sculpt

Everyone's favorite work commuter, the ammo carrier J-27 Ordnance Transport. Thanks to those that pointed out that is indeed a different word to Ordinance :D

As alluded to in recent product packaging. The tractor and trailer come as different parts, allowing you to put just the tractor on a base for compact play, or mou...

Peacekeeper Concept

Forgot to post this one. The Peacekeeper from the final Star League box. Redesigned by Dale Eadeh and myself.

For me this is a pretty funky looking mech, but it has grown on me a little since working on it. We decided to make the arm PPCs share the same barrel shapes, and have the shoulder SRM launcher hatch closed to m...

Hammerhead Sculpt

This isn't so much a new design or sculpt, but going into the Star League packs I decided to give it a little sprucing up. Seems to be a very positively received mech so I'm happy to see it coming in plastic, as I believe it's only available in "premium mini" siocast form.

Who's been running this one?

Akuma Concept

Here's a fun one I'm sure many have been looking forward to, the Akuma.

I remember way back enjoying the color illustration Alex Iglesias did with one in it. Maybe a bit skinny but great looking. I wanted to make sure this one had a good demon mask head.
I also initially designed in the stock loadout, then reread my ...

Jackalope Sculpt

This unholy mech has arrived, the Jackalope.
It's not a bad mech stats wise, but it sure does look funny. Harri did a nice job updating the look a bit. I'm sure those that use it enjoy being a menace with that combination of high jump and clan weapons range.

Who's a fan of this one? Show yourselves! :P

Fulcrum Concept

Here's a funky one, the Fulcrum. It's going to show up in the first Aces box.

A nice high speed large laser zipping around the map. And uh, an LRM hair cap :D
Like many of the oldschool hovers, it's a bit of a blob covered in lines, so I tried to clarify shapes some. Though I also let this one retain a bit more of t...

Kintaro Sculpt

I know some have been waiting for this one. The Kintaro. One more for the scrappy mediums that aren't optimal killers, but still desirable.

I think a nice balance was hit on this one between the old classic looks, and the quite blocky but otherwise nice MWO version we've had for some years. Sorry funky hip flair lovers,...

Excalibur Concept

Ok lets get this one kicked out the door. The Excalibur.

I'm still not quite sure what led management to want this mech in our modern lineup, but here we are despite my groaning haha. It did and still does look funky, the ugly step brother of the Black Knight. It also has pretty meh stats, somehow feeling under gunned, ...