Masterpost for edits I’ve been doing whenever I felt too exhausted to draw anything original. I love elaborating on technical details and in-depth concepts sooo here’s the result.
In no way do I intend to “fix” or claim the original designs. The goal is to explore various visual hints and appreciate the art a little bit more. It’s the biomechanical aesthetic that always spoke to me in MG series, I just couldn’t find a similar experience in any other title, especially the excitement of “what ifs” applied to it.
First of all, there are as few outline deviations as possible. I tried to stay in sync with what’s already been shown in concept art, using snippets of information as landmarks. Some original drawings proved to be extremely useful, such as armorless versions of Raiden, Blade Wolf, and (partially) Sam’s arm. It was fun to look for similarities such as materials, mechanisms, and utility parts. For instance, Sam’s prosthetic is almost identical to whatever plating is used on Sundowner, so I could pick it up from there and apply the same logic to the rest of Sundowner’s body. As for Mistral, I noticed a bit of standard muscle tissue under her arms, so it was safe to assume Raiden’s muscle design would fit her well.
I’d say they all have a sort of unified anatomy, as expected for military cyborgs. George’s concept art was of no use at all – as codec convos state, medical prosthetics are of different compounds. Military bodies vary mostly in armor designs or layers quantity but underneath share the same CNT structure. Obviously, the more layers there are, the more I feel an urge to dissect and analyze the practical use of each. As my tutor in college used to say, it’s crucial for engineering to separate\isolate layers, and this way of thinking is simply enjoyable. Sure I’d love to flay every character down to the bone bbuuut well maybe another time. I could only imagine how time consuming that would be.
The milestone was to get rid of the layers that have “blade proof” marking on them, i.e. black coating. But I couldn’t resist removing at least some silver plating off Sundowner, as well as making a lighter version of Sam’s exoskeleton without the white armor. Didn’t touch his arm though, but the same visuals of muscles under the plating apply here.
I’ve also made a small compilation of references used for specific parts. 90% of the source material is MGR itself, and the rest is MGS4 or human anatomy to back muscle placement and such. Honestly, sometimes I couldn’t make any sense of what I had to deal with, but it’s a fairly small part of the process, a few bits of unclear visual info. Mostly it’s been a pleasure to dive into such established biomechanical lore.
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