Vehicle Design + Pilot

Straight off the bat I knew that I wanted to have a big bad ass helicpter gunship of sorts with a slightly futuristic look to it, possibly dodging missiles and returning fire etc. Similarly I want the pilot to also look like as if he could take care of himself in a fight if he was ever shot down, although I don't want him to look too heavily armoured or anything.

Here is the gunship in an early stage of it's life. I've opted out of the action shot as it was my impression that the vehicles were going to be presented in a manual or something so I went for a very precise factory blueprint sort of look.

Initially I wanted the gunship to have propellors similar to that of the gunships in Avatar, but the wings were proving difficult as it is really really unclear how they're attached onto the gunships in the movie.The other problem I was ahving was that the gunship's cockpit made it look really unbalanced and front heavy so it needed improved.

Here it is finished.

The finished gunship sported a heavy machine gun turret with auto-tracking and 2x 44 "Reaper" missiles, which looking back at it now does seem a little overkill. Now for the pilot.


Initial sketches showed the basic figure with a helmet, with flip down range finder sights and some light armour along with some movement, which actually looked really well, which only saddens me since never got round to doing the legs.

After my sketching a did some silhouette work on the helmet since I really didn't know what I wanted it to look like other than a cross between a storm trooper's helmet and a space marine's helmet. What ensued was master chief's helmet somehow but never the less I liked it and also discovered how useful silhouetting could be.

After quickly sketching the helmet I then looked up some reference as to where the body armour should go across his chest. I also changed the background from pink to grey as it really didn't befit the pilot.

And sadly this is the finished pilot. I really liked the look of him and was especially pleased with the tonal work on the helmet, but it turned I wish I had more time to work more detail on to his chest plate and to do his legs. On another note, creating something original is very very hard. Just look at the spartan helmet clone.. subconscious, I'm blaming you.