Character Design Critique Request: Bird Mech

AlanKCarter

Hey all, this is my first post. I'm a Second year 3D art student from Melbourne Australia. 

I'm working on a character design project for uni at the moment. The model will be high poly, right now I'm working on the concept and need some critique.



 My idea was for a mech with bird-like attributes, like riffing on the feather articulation in crows/ cockatoos with metal panels moving as the mech detects something, enters an alert state, etc.

I like where the design is heading, but certain parts seem awkward and I'm not sure what to do with them. The arms/wings in particular as well as the abdomin. My original idea for the wings was to have them more mechanical, like blades the fold into the body, but that may be too complex.

What do you guys think? Thanks

EricElwell

There are elements from each of these drawings that in my opinion would be worth exploring some more. The feet and the shoulder/head of the digital drawing strike me as interesting and have potential. The plated wings in the pencil sketch could be interesting, but could go through a few more iterations to work out both the aesthetic and function. The digital sketch seems to have some organic elements. Are you going for more of a cyborg with mixed elements, or 100% mech? (Of course a mech can have elegant/organic forms, but it is unclear if it 100% mechanical. Something to consider.)  

Side note: I might recommend looking at some bird reference for body/wingspan ratio. Especially if your mech begins to feel bulky, you'll want to maintain the suspension of disbelief in the physical proportions. You want those wings to appear to be able to handle the load. 

AlanKCarter

Thanks for the reply Eric, and sorry for taking so long to reply myself. I took your feedback on board and have updated the design a lot. I spent a while fleshing out the bird idea, exploring a more "bird of prey" silhouette. On advice from tutors at uni and inspired by a piece by Anthony Jones i dropped the mech and the design became a sci-fi Harpy. Here's the result:

 Again any feed back is great, it helped loads last month