54 replies to this topic

[Ravn]

I for one love the redesign. When I took my first look at the centurion way back when I was like WT-? Centurion of what, a JV soccer team with those skinny legs? This fits much more nicely into my mind of what a mech named centurion should look like.

Edited by Ravn, 31 January 2012 - 11:45 PM.

[Shalmyan Moonsong]

HanaYuriko, on 31 January 2012 - 11:42 PM, said:

I agree, it could be slimmed up a bit.

Though I didn't read anyone say that they want the original design back, but that this revision goes a bit too far. The other designs are easily recognizable at a glance. This Centurion revision is not. Otherwise more people would have seen it in the Hunchback cockpit image that was posted prior. Instead, describing the 'mech design was speculative at best.

I do agree I hate the F-ing head.

[Alex Wolfe]

ethnic minority, on 31 January 2012 - 11:00 PM, said:

Don't get me wrong I love FD's centurion. But retroactively describing mechs as vehicles that make sense and 'dont have business turning their heads', is kind of a moot point. The mechs we all love are designed to carry some sort of non-sensical motif, whether having a bird's beak or having a roman soldier's helmet plume, let alone even having hands or standing tall/upright like a human. If we use conventional reality-based logic to determine our preferences for fictional designs, then we might as well do away with mechs themselves. Being fiction, battlemechs are allowed to have some sort of seemingly-absurd design cue because it exists in a seemingly-absurd universe.

Now, this wall of text isn't primarily about the heads or fingers or whatnot, I just take issue with the approach you're postulating. Your argument basically allows everything. "Mechs make no sense so it's anything goes, because conventional logic need not apply". So, what's next? Tentacles? Flying robot unicorns? The Force? Magic (phantom mech, how I hate thee)? Mechs running around like Robotech mecha, shooting volleys of hundreds of missiles in mid-air? Orcs and goblins piloting Mad Cats? Mech pilots being exclusively kids, like in Evangelion? Accepting one thing doesn't automatically mean accepting the other, it blurs the lines of the franchise and ultimately drives people away. For science fiction, you take a defining element that enables the universe, then work with conventional logic from there. Accepting FTL and walking fusion-powered tanks doesn't mean said tanks can look however the artist felt at the time, and no one has the right to bat an eyelash when Valkyrie has a jetfighter's nose as its crotch and Ares has three legs. Or a protomech appears and looks like a succubus C3PO. It basically gives the people behind the franchise carte blanche for not caring.

Well, what I mean that there's a fine line between the "functional" look of the mechs with a few flair bits (like centy's plume or Kodiak's claws) and full-on-nonsense like proto-mechs. I won't speak about what "we all" love, but what I love about mechs is precisely that machine-y look that sets them apart from running, jumping, flying robots of anime pedigree. That says "it's a vehicle, not a robot". Not that there's anything fundamentally wrong with the latter, it's just not what I love, so I'm merely speaking my mind, not pretending to know others' opinions. Mechs I love have this rugged, utilitarian, machine look with a few acceptable flair bits, harmless like a pin-up girl on the nose of a prefectly functional plane.

I accept that mechs make little sense, but like the idea of fantasy huge walking tanks so I "run with it", so to speak. But a moving head isn't flair, it's a design flaw even for a huge, fantasy walking robot tank. It would have no practical use, and no way to really incorporate in the game if you got a "neck mech" in MWO. Stretching the suspension of disbelief too far. I really like the franchise, just... not all of it. There are some things I wouldn't mind gone, so that it can be a consistent whole rather than a disjointed "bag of tricks" with many people each dropping in their ideas (or others' ideas, hello Unseen) just for the sake of coolness. That sets the franchise apart from all other huge robot merchandise in my eyes. Nonsensical builds like protomechs, LAMs, Battlemaster's "rifle", and yes, movable heads blur this image.

I don't like moving heads or mechs holding guns in their hands, because it seems entirely pointless. It makes no sense even within the already established outlandish paradigm. It was sort of proven entirely pointless when introduced in games such as Mechwarrior 3 (Pirate's Moon expansion had Centurion and Clint IIC). I'm glad to see it go.

Props to FlyingDebris for the steps to unify mechs' design into a coherent whole.

Edited by Alex Wolfe, 01 February 2012 - 04:38 AM.

[Brakkyn]

Aaron DeChavilier, on 26 January 2012 - 03:24 PM, said:

the A\C arm has been corrected

"Corrected" is an objective term. I am hoping that Dragon image was not changed because people were whining about it. Otherwise, FlyingDebris loses his "artistic license" to every jackanape with an alternative opinion.

[Aaron DeChavilier]

Alex Wolfe, on 01 February 2012 - 03:45 AM, said:

Now, this wall of text isn't primarily about the heads or fingers or whatnot, I just take issue with the approach you're postulating. Your argument basically allows everything. "Mechs make no sense so it's anything goes, because conventional logic need not apply". So, what's next? Tentacles? Flying robot unicorns? The Force? Magic (phantom mech, how I hate thee)? Mechs running around like Robotech mecha, shooting volleys of hundreds of missiles in mid-air? Orcs and goblins piloting Mad Cats? Mech pilots being exclusively kids, like in Evangelion? Accepting one thing doesn't automatically mean accepting the other, it blurs the lines of the franchise and ultimately drives people away. For science fiction, you take a defining element that enables the universe, then work with conventional logic from there. Accepting FTL and walking fusion-powered tanks doesn't mean said tanks can look however the artist felt at the time, and no one has the right to bat an eyelash when Valkyrie has a jetfighter's nose as its crotch and Ares has three legs. Or a protomech appears and looks like a succubus C3PO. It basically gives the people behind the franchise carte blanche for not caring.

Well, what I mean that there's a fine line between the "functional" look of the mechs with a few flair bits (like centy's plume or Kodiak's claws) and full-on-nonsense like proto-mechs. I won't speak about what "we all" love, but what I love about mechs is precisely that machine-y look that sets them apart from running, jumping, flying robots of anime pedigree. That says "it's a vehicle, not a robot". Not that there's anything fundamentally wrong with the latter, it's just not what I love, so I'm merely speaking my mind, not pretending to know others' opinions. Mechs I love have this rugged, utilitarian, machine look with a few acceptable flair bits, harmless like a pin-up girl on the nose of a prefectly functional plane.

I accept that mechs make little sense, but like the idea of fantasy huge walking tanks so I "run with it", so to speak. But a moving head isn't flair, it's a design flaw even for a huge, fantasy walking robot tank. It would have no practical use, and no way to really incorporate in the game if you got a "neck mech" in MWO. Stretching the suspension of disbelief too far. I really like the franchise, just... not all of it. There are some things I wouldn't mind gone, so that it can be a consistent whole rather than a disjointed "bag of tricks" with many people each dropping in their ideas (or others' ideas, hello Unseen) just for the sake of coolness. That sets the franchise apart from all other huge robot merchandise in my eyes. Nonsensical builds like protomechs, LAMs, Battlemaster's "rifle", and yes, movable heads blur this image.

I don't like moving heads or mechs holding guns in their hands, because it seems entirely pointless. It makes no sense even within the already established outlandish paradigm. It was sort of proven entirely pointless when introduced in games such as Mechwarrior 3 (Pirate's Moon expansion had Centurion and Clint IIC). I'm glad to see it go.

Props to FlyingDebris for the steps to unify mechs' design into a coherent whole.

I asked somewhere on these boards, try imagining other mechs that had swivel heads -imagine them now with their heads crammed into their torsos, and many of these designs do not have a unique thing on the end for such. Imagine the black knight which is literally knights armor as a mech, how does the head-cramming work?
commando, javelin, spider, firestarter, panther, clint, hermes II, whitworth, vindicator, enforcer, trebuchet, dervish, quickdraw, grasshopper, victor, cyclops, banshee

just from TRO 3025

TRO:2750
thorn, mongoose, kintaro, lancelot, black knight, highlander

TRO:3050
wolfhound, wolftrap, hatamoto-chi, annihilator

you're saying all these designs will look fine with the head crammed down? every single one?
sure some are more workable than others, but still.

Im all for redesigns, but I hate hearing this 'it doesnt look machine-y' junk from people, a true battlemech would be a angle-armored brick on thick stumpy legs with some guns on a some sort of turret. YAWN
who wants to fight in various colored bricks on legs?

FD's redesigns are just as fantastical as the originals it just so happens that you like them, so to you they look more 'realistic' regardless if what he's actual drawn is 'realistic' at all.

i just don't want 'Modern Mech Warfare 5' where everything has to look like it exists now instead of a more futuristic setting where things would undoubtedly look different. Best example: compare an Abrams tank to a French St. Chamond tank from WW1 to each of these generations, these respective models were 'modern warfare.' ergo compare an abrams with hypothetical designs from a universe 1,038 years from now....yeah gonna look maybe a little different. that's the metric I use for btech designs.

Edited by Aaron DeChavilier, 01 February 2012 - 12:20 PM.

[Alex Wolfe]

Aaron DeChavilier, on 01 February 2012 - 12:14 PM, said:

you're saying all these designs will look fine with the head crammed down? every single one?
sure some are more workable than others, but still.

Im all for redesigns, but I hate hearing this 'it doesnt look machine-y' junk from people, a true battlemech would be a angle-armored brick on thick stumpy legs with some guns on a some sort of turret. YAWN
who wants to fight in various colored bricks on legs?

Et tu, AdC ? Are you out to make me look like some sort of head-cramming fetishist, whatever that may be? I never, ever postulated anything like that. In the very post you quoted, most of what I was saying was that accepting a certain fantasy paradigm doesn't mean waiving your right to disagree with the subsequent design decisions of its copyright-holders, that was the broad point of it. Heck, your sig is referencing George Lucas, so surely you understand my stance. Actually the opening sentence is "Now, this wall of text isn't primarily about the heads or fingers (...)"... why quote it if you don't actually reference it?

This poopstorm starting with one mech having its head lowered and me liking it doesn't mean that I want ALL mechs from now on looking simian. Where did you get the idea? I really like some flair on mechs (which, incidentally, was said in the post you quoted as well: "rugged, utilitarian, machine look with a few acceptable flair bits, harmless like a pin-up girl on the nose of a prefectly functional plane". I don't much care for how "real mechs" would look, especially since the most likely answer would be "automated flying AI drone".

It's cute that Kodiak has claws, and H-C has a samurai-flair head... however, I object to things that stray too much from the most common image of a mech, like protomechs (with "function following form" rather than the other way around) or too-obvious-unseen (them being in the first BT be damned, when the franchise crystallized their different pedigree started to stand out like a sore thumb, what with the Battlemaster looking like a robot cockroach with a gun, and Valkyrie/Phoenix Hawk being too obvious "transformer" mecha from Macross). If someone likes them, it's his right, I'm just hoping that the "cool walking tank" image (including humanoids like Atlas - loving the Death's Head it's sporting, very classy!) will eventually win over the "bi-to-quadripedal metal anything".

For the record, I really like MW4 Black Knight, which had an upright stance and head and all that good stuff, but it was immobile, like every other neck (or lack thereof) of every other mech out there. It did look like a machine-made-to-look-sort-of-like-a-knight (although to me, the most "knight-looking" mech is the awesome Nova Cat... the double jointed knees only add character to the design!), without looking like a Voltron knockoff - the best of both worlds, very nice compromise. In fact, one of the thing I liked about those redesigns was that they looked coherent, had the same style while retaining different design and identities (and it's readily apparent if one has the MekTek Mercenaries installed, with "unchanged", "original" mech designs grating horribly against the somewhat visually coherent original cast.

I was initially happy for a new Mechwarrior game being made, but I've come to positively love how FlyingDebris is bringing mechs together visually, rather than PG just modelling the same bad art in 3D and calling it a day. On a separate note, I like the new Centurion. That doesn't automatically mean that I want ALL mechs to look like Centurion, no? I'm just... not offended by it, should one or two get similar treatment, or something else like that.

Aaron DeChavilier, on 01 February 2012 - 12:14 PM, said:

FD's redesigns are just as fantastical as the originals it just so happens that you like them, so to you they look more 'realistic' regardless if what he's actual drawn is 'realistic' at all.

About the "as fantastical as the originals" bit... About the originals, there are many bad apples there in my opinion. Just because it's classic doesn't make it good. Maybe the artist had a worse day, or just our tastes differ, or something, but... I'm far from either liking or hating them unconditionally. Same with FD - while I love most of his work so far, and most of all - I really appreciate that he's redesigning this old crap in the first place, as the flak from the "purists" who know the code name of every mech of their youth by heart, may be quite fierce in this case. Still, it's not an unconditional "fanboyish" love, and I'm not too keen on the recent Dragon redesign, for one.

As to the realism, just because they're implausible from the modern "realistic" standpoint, I don't paint all the science fiction with the same brush. To me, battlemechs as a whole seem a bit more realistic than, say, Voltron, and Appleseed landmates seem more realistic than battlemech (they're smaller, for one). It's a matter of proportions, means of operation, how reasonable certain solutions seem. It's all subjective, but I simply happen to think that FD's works seem way more "plausibly" proportioned than the original 80's designs. It's easier for me to imagine how a mech like that would walk, run, fight. I appreciate adding the "waist" to Jenner (based on the functionality of a "waisted" design) and lowering its cockpit a bit so that it's no longer poised to shoot itself in the back of the head with SRMs. I dig the extra mass, shorter frame and wider stance of the Centurion; and that the Catapult now seems to have missile rack arms rather than Mickey Mouse ears. I like that mechs now have articulated feet that aren't flat, looking like something a humanoid could get some traction with. It's subjective, but... well it does seem somewhat "more realistic" to me, nothing more to be said. I just "feel" them more, that's all.

Edited by Alex Wolfe, 01 February 2012 - 05:59 PM.

[Leetskeet]

Old design that was drawn in MS paint that couldn't function no matter how much you wanted it to - vs. - New design that was professionally created that looks militaristic and functional.

I have no idea which one I'd prefer.

[HanaYuriko]

Leetskeet, on 01 February 2012 - 03:02 PM, said:

Old design that was drawn by talented artists using professional drafting tools more than two decades ago - vs. - New design that was professionally created that looks militaristic and functional.

I have no idea which one I'd prefer.

Fixed that for you.

[Punk KMSD]

HanaYuriko, on 01 February 2012 - 04:02 PM, said:

Fixed that for you.

Damn you're sexy when you are skooling newbs.

[Leetskeet]

HanaYuriko, on 01 February 2012 - 04:02 PM, said:

Fixed that for you.

As if two decades ago magically means that art was primitive lines.

They hadn't full fleshed out the concept of 'mechs so they looked ridiculous. Trust me, I understand.

[Aaron DeChavilier]

I apologize if I came off too condemning, I also realize how contradictory my response was - I'm working getting better with those
I can see where you're coming from, and have indeed come around to liking the Centurion, venting fanboyism usually helps this.
I do look forward to the next thing FD puts out and would really like to see his take on the Banshee or Orion. Again, sry for the cold shoulder, there's still a diehard btech guy in me somewhere.

[Damocles]

I dig your revision ideas Aaron, especially the torso and lower legs.

Currently I keep thinking the Centurion is spending all of his time on ab and calf workouts to keep his PUMP when hes not out strutting the battlefield.

[Alex Wolfe]

Aaron DeChavilier, on 02 February 2012 - 08:31 PM, said:

I apologize if I came off too condemning, I also realize how contradictory my response was - I'm working getting better with those
I can see where you're coming from, and have indeed come around to liking the Centurion, venting fanboyism usually helps this.
I do look forward to the next thing FD puts out and would really like to see his take on the Banshee or Orion. Again, sry for the cold shoulder, there's still a diehard btech guy in me somewhere.

Heh, certainly no hard feelings there.

I'm slightly prone to nerdragi taking part in heated disputes as well, from time to time... Paradoxally, although I've been a fan of the franchise for some 15 years and a long-standing fondness for some other fantasy universes, it's usually the "old guard" approach of seemingly treating the canon as some sort of unchangable, enlightened gospel (rather than the work of talented men, than might sometimes still be hit-or-miss) that brings out the BoardWarrior in me

Edited by Alex Wolfe, 03 February 2012 - 03:35 PM.

[Chembot]

I'm in favour of redoing the Centurion closer to the original TRO and aesthetically appropriate to the 3049 era of level 1 hand me down mechs. The new look would be dial as a Solaris or NAIS prototype 'Centurion X', & include both, old style and new.. Everybody's happy!

[Tremor]

I agree. While I like the new Centurion artwork, I'd actually prefer it slightly closer to the original. I'd also like to point out that a more distinguished head/face could be designed without a rotatable neck.