Collide was mad. Just completely crazy. Both the show and the actual unit. And the fact that they had to be done at the same time (if you're as crazy as I am). I'll talk about the exhibition later at some point. But this is about the actual project.
As I was bouncing around ideas for Collide I would frequently get distracted and do some more work on my robot drawings. One of the times this happened Jonny Lindley spotted me doing it, and suggested I do a huge one for Collide. Nick shortly followed up with the same idea. But as much as it's an area I have expertise in, I wasn't sold. I've done huge robots before and they're not fun. They burn me out and I always run out of steam. But thanks to a quick chat with Tracy and some already-forming ideas in my head I found the solution. Rather than doing the whole robot in fineliner I would split it up into seven techniques. This way it would deal with the problems of getting burned out of different techniques, as well as ticking the boxes for collide more. It also allowed the unit to become an exploration of my past as an artist.
The first step was planning the design. One of my key ideas here was to keep the feel of one of my regular robots about it, as some of my big 'bots are a little over-designed. So to achieve this I decided I would stick rigidly to my original sketch for the whole project. So one night I began sketching out a quick idea, and before long I had a design. Well half of one. The legs came later. I also plotted out the original list of media I wanted to use.
The first part to be made was the upper torso. Doing it first gave me options about where to go next. For this I used Cinema 4D. This was the single biggest task I'd undertaken in C4D, as Daily Mail Dystopia was a relatively simple process. This was far trickier. I had to convert a 2D sketch into 3D and make it all match up as well as possible with the detail of the original sketch. Some parts of this were far easier than others. The large jagged plates were a genuine nightmare, both in placement and construction. I also had a lot of trouble finding the right places to put all the gas cylinders (it's kinda funny that there are a bunch of gas cylinders in hindsight). It taught me a lot about my drawing process and that my technique of 'shove all the detail around the back' doesn't work so well in 3D. Thankfully some things went really well with this. I discovered sliced torus shapes make brilliant pipes which saved me so much time. Also the Bridge tool is my favourite thing in the world. Finally it was textured up. I went through a few ideas here, including the toon options and wireframe renders before settling on my current look. I found a great tutorial about realistic metal textures and used that for most of the torso, breaking it up with a few different variants as well as glass and lights.
After that I dived into the fineliner arm. This was a fantastic one to work on. Only having to do one part of a robot is nice as it means I can throw all my good ideas at one place. It also allowed me to make some super complex workings and focus on things like negative space and inking a little more. These are both part of my current interest within the robot field. Somewhat astonishing is the detail level here. Without a doubt it's the most detailed thing I've ever drawn. I didn't even intend it to be! I mean it rivals Bigger Chris for detail and was drawn at half the detail level. I have a couple of nitpicks but they're both rather small. Firstly it's missing some of the more interesting detail I put into pictures. Due to time constraints I didn't have a chance to stop and think about interesting things to add into it. There are a few fun points though, and I love the ones I have. It also allowed me to make the thing in just a week. Secondly it's the least cohesive part of the robot but that also works to an advantage here as it gives a great focus point to draw people in.
Next I made the other arm. This one was far more problematic. Coming off the biscuit project I thought this one would be easy as pie. But whilst most of the detailing on the biscuits was done with brushes, that wouldn't work here. All of the details are actual 3-D looking parts of the robot so had to be done properly with sharp lines. This was not a fun process. At a few points I tried to add photoshop stuff to it to help ease the process but it never worked. In the end though, I am fond of it. Whilst there's perhaps a bit too little contrast in some of the shading, it works as a great counterpoint to the fineliner arm, by being the least detailed part of the robot. It's a fun play-off. This was the first time I had to come up with colours properly so I went for a heavily desaturated green and shades of brown and grey. The latter two are standards with my robots but the green gave them a nice flavour.
After that disaster of a week, I learned that I wasn't experienced enough with digital painting to use it
for the crotch. After a few different ideas bounced around my head including blending it with the torso in C4D or stealing one of the planned techniques for later, I decided to use fineliner again. Rather than my crisp, detail-heavy style, I decided to use the scratchy rendering technique I had discovered recently in one of my robot drawings. This was a really strange one to work on as the other techniques were ones I was fairly experienced in or at least knew the possibilities of, whereas I had only ever used this exact technique once before. All things considered though, I am delighted with this one. It's one of my favourite parts of the robot and I'm so happy with the technique. It's a pretty harsh techinique to work in as a huge amount of pen strokes are needed but I feel it's completely worth it. Also I'm amazed by how the water turned out. Drawing water in a technique I barely know is something I'm quite proud of.
Moving down I decided to add a little more to the process. As I finally designed the legs, I realised how to robot's proportions would look. And he's a leggy one. This meant that the two leg techniques would take up half the picture on their own. In order to combat this I decided to split the legs, and add another technique to the mix. Originally one of the legs was to be done in pencil but I was doubting that plan, so I took the opportunity and used the technique for both sets of upper legs. For a process that involves drawing the same thing twice it was surprisingly fun. Mostly because it was very quick. Pencil is such a speedy technique. One of the interesting things I like is the paper. One of the legs was accidentally drawn on cheap cartridge paper and the other on my usual drawing card stock. Theres a nice bit of variation as the cheap paper has far more of a grain to it, whereas the card has a really smooth finish to the shading. They look great together. Plus it proves I didn't just copy/paste them.
The next one is Collage. This one was another tough one. I've done some detailed collages before, but those didn't have to be precise. This one needed to match up to the design as closely as possible. It proved to be quite a task. Thankfully I have a steady enough hand and enough of a head for logistics to make some decent solutions to some rather problematic parts. The majority of the scraps came from Which? magazines we scavenged from recycling along with a couple of NME magazines (after they became terrible) and some calendars. A few extra pictures were printed from the internet for specific purposes such as the masses of wiring. I feel like this limb is one of the most visually interesting parts of the robot. It also provides a really nice contrast to the last limb.
For the last limb I was faced with a bit of a problem, as I had run out of techniques. All of my original ideas had been used up or scrapped, so I was in a small spot of bother. Thankfully I found a solution lying around in Google Drive. Pale Before - a short-lived robot comic project idea between me and two of my school friends. Artistically all three of us worked on it. Eli did the initial pencils and panel layouts. I did the inking, and applied my robot magic to make the pencils pop. Vivian then tackled the colours, using a fairly stripped-down technique of block colours with two shades of highlights and lowlights. It looked rather good. So for this limb I decided to borrow that style, except that I would be doing all of it. This limb was such a blast. The pencils were pulled together fairly quickly, putting together a crisper, more detailed version of the original design. Next came the inks. Using my full collection of fineliners I finally got to put some attention into lining and detailing something without the expectation of turbo-detail. As I expected, the linework was really solid. I finally coloured it, using photoshop and a combination of vectors and brushes. For both of the legs I decided the colour scheme beforehand, and opted for a yellow scheme with touches of the greens, browns, and greys from the arms. I can't remember exactly where that scheme came from.
The final part was the big one. The head. For this I collaborated with my dad, because this required some serious welding, and I'm terrible in that regard. For this part I wanted to build it as a physical object. The first thing that needed doing was parts sourcing. I started by taking the head design up around my dad's various workshops (he's a builder) and started scouting for useful parts. Amazingly I found the main part within a few minutes. An ancient gas cylinder. It was big, heavy, and a crazy idea, but it was perfect. That afternoon Dad managed to find me a second one in my granddad's garage to work as the lower jaw. From that point onwards we were in business. Over the next week I pulled together the last parts we would need, such as torches, pipes, and aerials. Then the build started. The first task was cutting apart the cylinders which was done with a grinder. The bigger cylinder was then tapered inwards using some really smart cutting and welding. Sadly that one was dad's idea. We then attached the two together using a hinge and a platform to keep everything together without filling up the inside with workings. Then using a huge cutting drill we made the eye holes, and stuck some pipe into them. The backs of the eyes were made from the pieces of metal the drill sliced out so it matched the head. The torches were mounted using strips of metal and rubber bands. For the mouth we used a small offcut that we ground teeth into. The hair was a large quantity of wire threaded through a whole lot of holes in his head. That was quite a task. They were secured using a fibreglass seal. That worked incredibly well but smelled for weeks. The stand was made with a series of metal struts leftover from a job and some internally threaded pipe.
The head was sprayed with Rust Oleum Painter's Touch Copper, some silver car wheel paint from the garage, some leftover black spray paint from another project, and some Citadel silver for touching-up. The copper paint proved problematic as the cans were small and I managed to scuff the paint before it was dried so we had to track down another can and spray it in my university room.
The final stage was assembling the parts. The original plan was to build a workshop setup inspired by a famous picture of Transformers Devastator. After a good few days of construction the idea was scrapped for a few reasons. Firstly the computer was slowing down considerable from the process and C4D was lagging itself to death. Secondly it wasn't playing nicely with the colours of the robot. And thirdly, I just couldn't find a lighting setup that worked. At that point I pulled it back to the drawing board. For some reason I decided to try and make a desert setup for him instead. This worked like an absolute treat. It allowed me to use some of the workshop assets as debris scattered around, and made the C4D section of the torso look spectacular. It also played really well with the colours, and made the yellows and greens fit in perfectly and look like reflections of the sand.
The assembly was done by using the original C4D model of the torso, then adding the other parts into the stage as camera-facing planes. I used C4D for this because it made the torso look dynamic, and allowed me to set up some shadows. The shadows were really hard though. I had to set up a version of the robot behind the actual parts to cast a shadow. I did this by using a basic figure shape and posing it like the robot, before adding to various sections. I replaced the head with a sphere to match the design more, removed the torso as I already had one, and bulked out the legs by extruding the leg design. The feet proved very tricky though. I had to lay out a set of objects that loosely resembled the foot design without being visible behind the leg at all and still looking natural. It was a tough process. Getting the camera set 'just so' was hard too, as I kept accidentally moving it. Finally, it became time to render it, and this was a massive task. because of some screw-ups I had to render it at ridiculous resolution in order for it to look good as a print, and C4D would not cooperate in the slightest. It was a nightmare. But I got there.
To wrap up what has become an incredibly long blog post, Gestalt was a massively ambitious project that managed to be completed on time and that's worth celebrating in itself. But the work itself is the real triumph here. As a set of highly precise, beautifully done pictures, the whole project is a success. But as a finished robot it's something I never expected. It's cohesive. It fits together so well that at first glance it's hardly noticeable how it was made. At first I hated this but now I really like it. It makes it more than simply the sum of its parts. It isn't just a pile of different pictures mashed together. It's an actual robot. And I think it looks great. And he's called Gus.
