Rate My Robot.

I was going to call this post ‘I (drew a) Robot’ but I just couldn’t bring myself to make a pun so bad.

I said a couple of posts back about having to draw something that I’d never really been called on to draw before. Which (as seen above) is a giant robot. And I mean giant. Think Mechagodzilla size wise. The last couple of weeks I’ve just been trying to do my research on all things robotic as I felt I could pull it off as long as the effort was there. I’ve got a couple of ‘big robot comics’, Patlabor probably being the best but not many. So I went into town on the hunt for more and quickly realized it was slim pickings. I found a Transformers graphic novel but sadly they were all the CGI movie version design and after a quick flick through I wasn’t really seeing many great giant robot shots I was after. I headed to the Manga section figuring they’d be my best shot and couldn’t find even one. I was going more for a big Japanese robot look so this was a big disappointment. At home I figured I could just order one online. Let the big robots come to me. I ordered a copy of Robotech which when it turned up was pretty much like the Transformers book, a lot more lacking in big robot shots then you’d think. Plus it was just a load of American artist trying to do Manga looking art in the late 80’s. Another swing and a miss. I mean I had a small amount to be getting on with but not nearly as much as I would have liked. My Patlabor comic was the only real good bit of reference I had. So I went with my back up plan. Like most artist looking for reference they don’t have I turned to the net. I hate to draw from a computer screen but I really wanted to get started by now and I felt it would help if I knew what this giant robot look liked in my head. The net is both great and terrible for looking up certain things and over the next couple of days I pretty much found what was missing so I could start on my design. I also came across such websites as Erotic Transformers and Dinosaurs Fucking Robots.com You have to wonder what else is out there. It’s one of the good things about doing research. It gives you a chance to come across all this weird, funky stuff.

So by this point I’ve done all this research but I still hadn’t been brave enough to put pencil to paper yet. I started small just doodling in a pad. Playing with the couple of ideas I’d already had. I kind of liked the way these small doodles were going but I was still a bit nervous about having a proper go until looking over my rough thumbnails of the story itself when it occurred to me that I was doing a lot of research and sketching considering how little screen time (or whatever the comics version of screen time would be… ‘page time’ I guess) this giant robot had. A lot of artist would just try and blag it and to be honest a lot of artist would probably get away with it to. I had a few tricks to fall back on thanks to all the research I had done in prepping for this story so I worked my sketches up in to the above character sheet. It’ll be good fun hopefully to draw this guy moving about on a page. It both scary and exciting times trying new things. I’m hoping when it all done it’ll come off looking a bit like this> But knowing my luck it’ll probably look more like this>