Month: September 2020

Greetings y’all,

The time has come! I can now reveal the artwork I produced for the Tex Talks Battletech Mackie episode! I’ve been a long time fan of the BT universe and Tex’s work. As such, I reached out to Tex to offer my services. He and the BPL team graciously accepted my help. What followed was several weeks of Battletech art fun! Now, I will share it with you!

This is the first Jacob Cameron piece I produced for Tex. At this point, I had never indulged in creating BT artwork. Had a fun time researching the uniforms and gear. Had to ask Tex about the fancy way SLDF soldiers hold their laser guns.

Charles Kincaid is the first man to pilot the Mackie. Sadly, There is no previous artwork of Charles; not even a description of his appearance. I went with a rather generic, “fresh out of the cockpit,” Chuck Yeager look for him.

This is the second Jacob Cameron piece. I went a bit nuts with the Vincent redesign. In retrospect, I should have stuck closer to the “smoother” original design. ( It looks like it comes from the Expanse show rather than BT. ) HOWEVER, as with a lot of old BT artwork, old designs get associated with all sorts of vehicles. The art I referenced was used for multiple warships. ( The original art has no specific weapon mounts. I suspect the art for the Lola is just the stern view of the Vincent. ) The Sparrowhawks are pretty close to the original designs.

The first crack at my “version” of the Mackie redesign. Tex needed something showing Jacob worrying over Mackie schematics and productions figures. Rather than a boring conference room, I thought it’d be more fun to show him on one of those sleazy “suits in hard hats” factory tours. Originally, I wanted throw in some more hoists, lifts, and scaffolding for the BPL team to animate. I had to drop that idea quickly. The composition was already too busy for superfluous visual elements.

I’m overall pleased with how it turned out. Adding space-ridges and straps to future clothes is fun! Jacob Cameron leaves a bit to be desired in my eyes. He has a real Seto Kaiba thing going on with his trench coat and his head, left shoulder, and chest highlight make everything look wonky. ( Personal note: Work on hands! )

I opened the post with the finished version of this art. Thus, I’m going to drop this version in for the fifth piece of art produced for the video. This would be my redesign of the Mackie going forward. I wanted to marry the modern BT aesthetic to the older Mackie “spaceman” design. I actually love the modern, revitalized mech designs done for MWO and the Battletech games. ( Thank you, Alex Iglesias ) But, I also want to honor the efforts of the artists that initially brought the setting to life. So, I kept the front and dodads largely the same. My biggest adds are the separated torso and the suggested feeding apparatus and shell ejection port on the AC-10 arm. ( It’s always been strange to me how mechs can have ammo caches all over their body with no visible suggestion of how it gets from the location to the weapon. As Tex would say, It’s space magic. )

A few more notes about the image. First of all, the book title and overlay. While creating this piece, I reflected on how much it looked like an old paperback novel cover. ( I laugh at dumb stuff like that. ) As a joke, I threw this version together to send Tex. I guess merriment was had. Also, that Harasser up front is supposed to be an older recon hovercraft called an Asher. Digging though old BT lore can be confusing. It wasn’t until this piece was almost complete, that I noticed the reference photo on Sarna was actually that of a Harasser. So, yeah, oh well…..

The first of a series of narrative pieces created with the intention of animation. This was not originally what I had planned for the composition or camera angle. I really wanted to avoid the old cliche of “BIG SHIP SHOOT DOWN.” After some sketches and much deliberation, I went with this low orbit perspective. ( Get some dimension on those clouds. ) This version would be way easier for the BPL team to manipulate and animate.

I kept the TAS Dreadnought pretty faithful to the old art. ( I tried to avoid going overboard like I did with the Vincent redesign. ) Although, the angle of the old drawing left plenty of unseen space for me to play. The fore of the Dreadnought was a pain to render at this angle.

Yes, I copy pasted all those missiles. Sue me.

The second narrative piece and the flip side of the warship scene. I’m largely happy with this set. My eyes doth see a few flaws and inconsistencies that drive me nuts looking back. But on the, whole, it’s fine. ( Pro tip for the art kiddies: Know when to move on. Cause most people are not going to perceive the flaws you do. )

I created most of the art for this project using Procreate on an Ipad pro. The problem with this is that Procreate puts caps on layers depending on image size and resolution. Thus, working on these larger scenes consistently became layer management. This, in turn, was trouble because I needed to leave plenty of layers for the BPL team to work with. What a hassle. The price of convenience I guess.

The final piece of artwork depicting the 801st Heavy Armored Regiment stomping a Draconis armored column on Styx. There are multiple versions of this finished image. ( This vintagey looking one is my favorite. ) Not a lot of info on this battle for the first deployment of Mackies in combat. That leaves a lot of gap filling for me do. The tank designs are rather generic. ( Again, researching old BT lore stuff can be a pain. So, I fudged it. ) I went with red for the Draconis vehicles to make them stand out from the BG and Mackies. The tank crew uniforms are close to what’s depicted in the old material.

Please note the cartoon turtle on the foreground Mackie; I’m very fond of it.

Annnnd….another early joke version!

And that is it for now. Hopefully, there will be future collabs with the BPL team and more BT artwork to come. I hope you enjoyed this glimpse behind the arty curtain.

Until next time!

-Eldon