So, given that I was involved in this pack end-to-end, I figured everyone here might enjoy a bit more of what went into it. But first, I found that old creepy clown banshee jack in the box we talked about in the vlog.
I had started experimenting with some ideas for this skin very early, I think at the time all that had been set was that it was going to be clan 'Mechs. We'd done skins related to Battletech:The Animated Series before, with the Mauler and Bushwacker heroes, but I wanted to try pushing it a bit more. I'd loved this show as a kid, and had been into battletech for a couple years already. The computer generated scenes had particularly attracted my attention, and it's stuff like this show and Reboot that had really gotten me interested in 3D modelling to begin with.
When looking for reference from the show, I also found the animated timberwolf's colors rather interesting, and I did some experimenting using those colors as well. Later, as planning on the pack started, I gave these test images to Alex Iglesias to start creating skin concept art from. As you can see, we went through several iterations, and eventually abandoned the brighter colors in favour of something that felt a lot more like the 3D outlines, as well as feeling like the enhanced imaging look in MechWarrior 2 (which is just black meshes with colored wireframes).
I can't recall the exact timing of when I'd gotten the idea to do Elemental bolt-ons for this pack, but they'd been in the back of my head for a while before. When the variants were chosen, it just seemed to fit. A pair of Clan Wolf chassis, both having Wolf in the name, and that's also the clan that develops Elementals in the first place. This is exactly where you should see them! So I got Alex to rough out some sketches, and we went from there.
Later, once I'd gotten going on them, I did some scale tests, to see how big they should be. I wanted to make sure they wouldn't overwhelm smaller chassis, nor feel too tiny on large ones despite only being used on these two special variants. So once I had a rough 3d model, I posed some up for review.
After that, modeling. Knowing I wouldn't have time for anything but the simplest posing rig, I knew they had to have a really big range of motion. Testing how far you could get without the geometry clipping on itself proved a bit difficult, given how chunky the armor is. I used some techniques I'd learned making gunpla, which really helped, like having 2 joints in the knee instead of only one.
The materials for them came along rather quickly, as it's the exact same setup as the 'Mechs, and yes, the Elementals are colourable.
The exciting part, getting them all working together! I originally had a stretch goal of trying to put some idle animation on a few of them, something subtle, where they'd stay still for a while, then move a little bit. It was ambitious, and while I really liked the idea, I knew it was unlikely I'd have time to do that before the deadline. As I expected, there wasn't time, and so they remain static.
I hope you all enjoyed this, and I'll be watching this thread for a couple days, answering as many questions as I can, so please ask away.