Hello TFW, I've not been circulating these threads often, but this community has been particularly good to me and pretty much kicked off my interest in toy design, something I get employed to do now. But I've been feeling particularly creatively drained, so I've created this little side project for myself. This thread will be dedicated to updates regarding taking concept art to a 3D model and toy. Additional art for this series, new designs and sketches, will be posted in the fan art section of TFW: Non-TF: - Custom Art Series- Archon Armor We'll kick things off with Design 1: The Leach Armor Final deliverables are expected to be 1 fully articulated figure scaled to be piloted with a 3 3/4in figure. The figure will be fully painted, textured, and detailed appropriately. LED lights will be installed in the head, cockpit, and engine. My goal date for completing the first figure will be 10/31/21 (spooky!). Geometry updates will start next week so stay tuned!
Update 04/22/21 Laid out articulation guide. Currently aiming for 27 points of articulation if I counted correctly. I will largely lean on balljoints as they will have the most success with my printer. However, I will have swivels on all limbs. All joints will be either hidden by softgoods or a soft plastic covering.
Update 4-23-21 Did some exploration on the cockpit interior today as its the first area I'll need to build. I dabbled for hours trying to integrate medieval furniture and architecture cues before eventually landing on the "inside the heart" look I ended up going with. I promised myself I wasn't going to spend too much time on this, and ended up spending too much time on this.
Update 5-17-21 Oof, where have I been. Setting aside time for this sort of project is not my strong point. Some boring housekeeping- I bought a blank figure from Boss Fight Studios for scale and some GI Joe rope ladders as purchased goods for this set. The idea will be to have the rope ladder store inside the cockpit and be able to be released to leave the armor. Speaking of cockpit, I'm starting to work on the cockpit since everything else will be built around that. Do you all love chairs? I do----n't. Somehow what seemed like an easy task of designing the place the pilot sits turned into a much larger form and aesthetic exploration. At a certain point I wasn't happy with how this was going. I had specifically chosen for the interior to look like the organic insides of this machine, but was messing around with trying to add panels similar to the exterior. They just didn't mesh well. So it was back to the drawing board. A quick overlay sketch helped guide my hand a bit more. I wanted to focus on some of the rounder shapes of my original mecha sketch. Combined with continuing the pipe motif, I was ready to get back into modeling. The final geometry ended up being exactly what I wanted. For design notes, I've been pushing the boundaries of Solidworks' "Flex" and "Taper" tools to help make the sculpt look more dynamic. I was pretty happy with where I ended up. Weirdly a single interior chair ended up being more of its own character than I expected. I'm particularly proud of the "guts" hanging from the front and the "spine" behind the seat. Let's hope the rest of the interior won't be as demanding.
Update 06-01-21 Non formal update, just wanted to give those following this thread an update. I went out to start making the cockpit for the armor, but I ended up beginning to model the torso as I needed to figure out how much space I needed for the cockpit. Still a lot of ways to go, but it was a bit of a happy accident that the spine of the figure lines up perfectly for where I want the head to be! While I do have some experience with soft modeling softwares like Zbrush, I'm trying my best to work within Solidworks in order to focus on the engineering elements of this toy. That can be a little hard when there's almost no flat surfaces on this figure so far!
Thanks! So do I! It's certainly a balancing game between this, my real job, and all my other hobbies!
