Ica's World - Tumblr Posts
Onto the next character as I get things settled in. This is Ica, a little fellow who's young by the standards of his robot society. He's a mechanic by trade, but is also trying to prove himself in combat using a self-constructed battle mech he dubbed "Marchica." He's gotten pretty good at making repairs—not just because his mech gets dented up, but because he does, too.
Marchica—and Ica by extension—are one of my oldest OCs as it turns out; that drawing on the left up there is one from my elementary school days. A few years ago I redrew it, and provided a name to the pilot in the process. The design of Marchica itself still shows most signs of being a childhood redraw, though maybe in the future it will become more distinct.
Ica, on the other hand, was designed from the ground up since he was naught but a silhouette originally. He's proven a rather fun character to do poses with, and I've designed a few weapons for him to wield outside the mech—like a massive wrench and a blaster cannon. Given what dangers await in his world, he's going to need them...
Here's a little view of the desert wastes that Ica calls home. Not the most homely, and every so often they have to worry about mutated creatures intruding from across the horizon... but, come heck or high water, he wouldn't trade it for anything.
Behold, a buggy!
LEGO's been a passion of mine since I was young, and though I don't often have the free time to build with it nowadays I still dabble in it from time to time. The physical buggy above is an old model, but the drawing's recent, of course.
I wonder if it would fit well in Ica's world, a nice way to move about the wastelands...
Self-care is important! Here we see Ica going through his usual diagnostic routine. Helps when, as a robot, you can check logs of how your various limbs were functioning to see if anything was off.
Happy Valentine's Day! I knew I wanted to do something to celebrate it, and I also wanted to add onto one of my characters' worlds at the same time, so here's another look at Ica—alongside his girlfriend, Lia! Her design's not 100% finalized, of course, but this is the general look I want to go with for her; Green to contrast Ica's blue, rounder body shape, and spring-loaded hinge legs as opposed to tube legs, to help with gaining ground quick when exploring. As for why there aren't springs there, well I forgor let's say she removes them from time to time, to keep them from getting worn out too quickly. At least when they do wear out, she knows who to trust to accompany her through the wastes in search of replacements...
If there's one thing I'd like to add to my artistic repertoire, it's 3D modelling. So over the past week, I decided to work away with completing a full 3D model in Blender—and my choice for modelling was the wrench Ica wields (Partly to make it easier to draw it at various angles in later art). For a first go at modelling from start to finish, I'd say it turned out pretty well, and Ica thinks so too! The main thing I'd say I learned from this is to trust the scale—I resized the guide image I made to 3 times its size when modelling, and when putting it into Clip Studio Modeler I had to shrink it down a lot to be of a more reasonable size. But hey, now I know for next time!
And as for fun, I looked to see how it looked with a subdiv modifier, and it looked kind of amusing—though he was a lot less appreciative of this version. I've made a timelapse of the model being made, though it's not been edited down yet. But for the moment I can offer up Ica's reaction shots, separate from the renders!
(For those curious, the gradient on Ica's censor bleep goes from #667563 to #6B213F. As for why I made it those colors... Try messing around with them, in that order.)
"Hah! Would you look at that, a pitiful little robot. I bet we can take him easily!" "..." "...Why do I hear boss music?"
Here we have a time before I deemed Ica worthy of either a big ol' wrench or a hand-mounted blaster, where he was rather pitiful in battle. Luckily, being a robot means you can summon your more-powerful battle mech easily, with your would-be assailants none the wiser until it's too late.
Blaster cannon, full power...!
Full speed ahead! Now here's a character I all but forgot about until a little while ago, a robot-turtle-car hybrid! I believe his name was Tort-3, and as you'd expect he's a bit of a speed demon. Below are some more sketches of him, of his whole body on the left and just his head on the right.
With his shapeshifting abilities (and cool floaty hand- and feet-wheels), he'd fit in pretty well into Ica's world—a rivalry is born, perhaps?
Another Art Fight character reference down! This time, it's Ica. Got his body, his wrench, the underside of his foot in case it comes up, even the interior of the sockets his joints plug into. And some expressions, of course! Admittedly, while making this, I found myself confusing all the purples and oranges I used for his eyes and other glows. But I got them all sorted out eventually.
Welcome to the Outer Wastes. Please enjoy your stay, take any scrap metal you find, and... keep an eye out for any mutants, will you?
Here I've made something of a video game mockup, along with showing off the wasteland Ica calls home. If he had a video game, I could see it being something of a dual-gameplay style: The first half, travelling around the world in your monobuggy gathering up materials for quests or enhancing your Marchica mech, from either the environment or the mutated beasts that continue to roam it. The second half, taking your mech out into an arena to battle other robots, earning money for equipment to bring to your next wasteland excursion! I think it'd be a fun gameplay loop, only hurdle would be having to code all of it :P. (Also, no prizes for guessing which game series inspired that HUD in the corner. I enjoyed playing those when I was younger, though I haven't bought or played any recently.)