[WIP] Doctor Octave's Battle Organ

Raymond Arnold

Originally this guy was a funny boss in a tabletop RPG I ran, in which the players faced a bunch of evil musical robots. Their leader was an inventor/musician named Doctor Octave, who sat in a giant-walking-spider-chair from which he played soul-crushingly terrifying melodies. I thought he was interesting enough to make a model out of. I spent several months struggling with how to turn the core idea into something workable. I'm still a little dissatisfied with the silhouette and am looking for some feedback before I start worrying about gears/pipes/etc to flesh out the underbelly and make the thing look like it can actually move.

Here is the newest version (8/1/10):



And the original version I posted, for comparison:

Raymond Arnold

Some notes about the intended functionality of the vehicle:

The front section of the vehicle is a piano, which simultaneously controls both the organ and the legs. (i.e. there's a particular repeating melody that can move it forward, another for backwards/sideways/etc, with additional chord combos that make it jump, grasp with the mandibles or fire the hook).

The hook is intended to represent the "spider silk," and is connected to a long cable, to be used as a grappling hook (or possibly as a projectile weapon).

Eventually there will be 4 lamps in front (right now there are two, and it may not be clear they are supposed to be lamps). The ones currently in place are supposed to be "headlights" that illuminate the area in front of

So with all of that in mind, does anyone have thoughts about how to make the thing read better? I'm not sure how to communicate the "piano-ness" of the front section, and its hard to make both the legs read as legs without obscuring the central chassis.

Ferg

lookin solid man, this concept has a lot of potential. It looks like you've thought it through pretty well already, the main thing I noticed is it's kind of lacking in visual character/style. This guy's the lord of a horde of minions, yeah? Super evil, awesome, badass, musical? I don't think you'll have to worry too much about making the piano read like a piano from the front view, the organ pipes and the character's pose should take care of that.

I took some liberties with the model in photoshop just to toss some concepts around and see if I couldn't stylize it a bit and maybe give you some ideas. I probably took it way too far away from what you had in mind, but it kinda looks like some sort of vatican spider thing the future pope would ride in... thought maybe it could do with some eviling-up. Hope it helps.

Raymond Arnold

woah, that's pretty cool. I definitely have been concerned about the lack of "character." I have some rough sketches that were somewhat similar to what you have there, but I'm not very good at translating rough sketches into workable blueprints. I'll see what I can do to capture that, or something similar.

Raymond Arnold

Okay, latest version:





Still not satisfied with the side silhouette.

n88tr

now that is original! spider organ weapon...

Vailias

heh Im heavily reminded of spore.
Nice original idea though. The new version is a big improvement over the old one.

roosterMAP

the organ pipes should bend more. its not lookin cartooni enough in some areas.

ihour

i like the front part ( the head ) the design is cool.
one comment though..the legs dont seem to be plausible enough in the sense that they dont look like they can move. Wheres the machinery that makes it look like it can bend, etc?

just my two cents

SSquir33

looks good! maybe needs a more menacing stance, lower to the ground?
keep it up