Greetings all,
Your Patton is indeed very tall and you may want to look at bringing the road wheels up some.[adding weight] Currently you have the center hubs below the lower hull height and may need to change this distance, without a scale reference to just how large are the road wheels the "under belly" clearance could be 2 feet or more. Lower the hull body to either the hubs or midway between the hubs and bottom of the road wheels, shorten the shocks by half. (I know, no one would see them anyways, but their compression distance should only be about 6-8 inch's, so set the length with that factor.)
I still see (in my opinion) way too much height on the idler and drive sprocket wheels which causes the entire track system to be very tall. The image that you posted showing a bare suspension layout was from a M60 body, one of the tallest tanks ever. And that proved to be a problem for that tank. Your initial drawing concept only has 6 road wheel, the original line work has 8 wheels and may be a factor, reason for the tank appearing short. (I know, artist discretion but may be a factor?)
For an additional idea on indicating vehicle weigh and setting scale may I refer to this: [Staging Area by Spooky777]
The tank styled vehicles are set very low to the ground with armoured covers extending nearly to the tracks which provides protection for the vehicle carrying components. I don't want to highjack the thread but I'd like to reference another artist showing tanks, armoured vehicles and Mech's for his scale comparison. This image is available at another site. The large scale tanks are in the top left corner of the image and appear to be at least 15 feet or more in height. (it's a very large image, so you can really zoom in, 3Gb size.) I had to copy and past the image from a saved source as the original is not allowed in this forum.
This is just for another impression and view on how other artists capture the size and scale of these battle vehicles.
Great work on your rendition of the Patton.
9erRed
Edited by 9erRed, 18 August 2013 - 02:32 AM.