Drunkard's Walk Forums

Which is more offense versus defense, do you think, a tiger or eastern dragon? I'm chewing on a combiner design using turtle, crane, tiger, and dragon, and the latter two form the arms. Still not sure what to do to keep the sentai pilots from being an even number, though - maybe have an independent robo that isn't part of the gattai, or forms arm/leg/chestplate armor parts, or who is a multi-shapchanger and becomes various weapons for it to use. Anyway, I'm waffling over which arm should be on which side, leaning slightly to red/dragon right and yellow/tiger left, crane being white/blue head and wings and turtle being green chestplate and legs, and having the most solid transformation of the set so far.

- CD

Thread edit: turning most of the images into links rather than inline
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

An Eastern Dragon isn't really noted for fighting really. Controlling the seas and being all mystical, but not for devouring things.

Looking at from a functional basis, having the dragon on the left so its antlers catch attacks aimed for the neck or head over that shoulder would make sense, and would also allow for a longer tail if it could fold or curl up into a shield on that arm. If not particularly known for fierceness like the tiger is, that would also fit...

- CD
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

Yeah, the Dragon/tiger split is far more one of magical/physical, rather than offense/defense.  I'd say go with dragon on left, tiger on right.  In close combat, the tiger does the melee assaults, while the dragon projects a shield of force.  In ranged combat, the dragon reconfigures to some sort of semimystical ranged weapon (if you're straight tech, then flamethrower or beam weapon) while the tiger parries.  Have the reconfiguring and/or shield charge-up take a few moments, so you can explain why it doesn't just hop back and forth between ranged fire and force shield.  Alternately/additionally, it might work well for the dragon to be more powerful, but have a somewhat limited battery that recharges relatively slowly.  Tiger should be more generally durable and physically stronger, but dragon should have more finesse/techniques.  That sort of thing.

Random thoughts for fitting an additional critter in
- relegate the turtle to just legs and possibly hips, reduce the amount of body the crane covers (perhaps having it be a somewhat smaller mecha overall) and have something else (horse/pig/ox?) form the chest.
- Have the last animal be snake, and have it move around the body, reshaping itself to attach to and reinforce individual pieces and supercharging the effect of that piece.  Attaching to the turtle gives you armor and durability.  Attaching to the crane significantly ups the flying ability (perhaps giving it the ability to fly in the first place, perhaps increasing speed/duration/maneuverability/whatever).  Attaching to each of the arms significantly improves the attacks or special abilities of that arm.
- switch up the arm and weapon thing.  Have three arm forms (dragon, tiger, and snake, say) and have each of them also have a weapon form.  Thus, every time it transforms, the pilots pick which arms and which weapon, and you can have the bit in midbattle where they struggle to reconfigure so as to bring the correct powers to bear.  It also lets you have some cool moments if/when the robot gets disarmed, where the weapon changes back into robot form and goes back into the fight.  As another potential cool bit, have the left arm be a defensive configuration, and the right arm be an offensive configuration.  Each arm serves the role of offense, defense, and weapon in somewhat different ways, giving a number of interesting permutations to deal with.  It also lets the characters slowly figure out/develop/enable their various transformations, which is always cool, and it lets you bring the fifth pilot and robot in a little later in the series
- As a bit of an aversion of the traditional, have the fifth robot be separate from the gattai - but have it be *tiny*.  Make it a rabbit or something - reasonably durable, but depending far more on agility, not entirely weak, but depending on being able to get up close and personal with the enemy's vulnerable spot in order to do any real damage, and often most useful as a distraction.  Have it not be strongly associated with the gattai - just something that was put together out of much the same personality, and piloted by the team Smart Guy (he put it together himself).  Possibly female (to fit in the Wrench Wench bit), and enough younger than the rest of the cast to serve as little sis.  The cool thing about this is that when it gets down to humanscale combat - well, a lot of times the rabbit can join in still in the mecha, at which point it's by far the toughest and strongest thing on the field (but is, amusingly, not that maneuverable, because the hops it normally uses are too long to use for normal mobility, and imprecise enough that she can't jump into the melee for fear of hurting her friends

Got Genbu's model done aside from figuring out connection pegs for combiner mode, and possibly fiddling with the hips a little more. I might darken the green of the shell further as well since he's supposed to be a black turtle, and as the combiner leg panels hint I decided to go with the traditional colors for the others as well. I am happy to state that while there are a couple of places I' like to have a ball joint instead of a hinge (neck-to-head in particular) this is amazingly articulated for a super-sentai, both as a separate unit and as a component for the larger form.

Turtle mode:


UFO mode fore:

Lasers!

UFO mode aft:
http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/8174/genbuufo2.png
Rockets! And a big, tinted window into the habitable volume inside the forward shell. There's another cluster of four small rocket nozzles inside the fins on the underside, which end up on the back of the calves of combiner component mode.

I Have Feet mode fore and aft:
http://img857.imageshack.us/img857/421/genbugattai1.png

The tiger/dragon arm units attach not quite vertically as the sides of the central torso and arms, with the heads as shoulder guards, then the crane, which is basically just bird bits attached to a head, comes on and its kibble becomes a backpack with wings.

Look out below!
http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/5920 ... attai3.png
Where those rockets get to... I'd like to figure out another gimmick to add instead of/behind the plain blue and white panels, but nothing good comes to mind so far.

- CD
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

Suzaku jumped the queue... oh well. He's still a little square and blocky in places, but I'll do some more refining as I get the other two components done.

Flying:
http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/3489 ... flying.png

Standing:

Yes, you could actually put the toy in this configuration. Good luck balancing it on that little foot, though, especially with it attached via a chain of small ball joints on long legs (ie levers.)

Weapons:
http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/9448 ... eapons.png
Suzaku is an unabashed kippleformer, and comes apart into a sword, bow, and clawed staff, plus the helmet and face the I left attached in this image.

Combined 1:
http://img543.imageshack.us/img543/5865 ... attai1.png
Front view, with rough blanks for the arm/torso units

Combined 2:

Rear view, which means "mainly Suzaku" for this mecha

Headshot 1:
http://img850.imageshack.us/img850/7729 ... attai3.png
with default face

Headshot 2:
http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/1945 ... attai4.png
with empty hollow-lacking-a-face, for Super-Imouto-Chan's super-little sister robo to pop in and power up the whole thing to Golden Emperor form.

- CD
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

Seiryu and Byakko's designs are kind of intertwined, so Seiryu took a day and a half to get to posting stage. Here he is in a typical eastern dragon knot, grinning at you:

I still want to gribblify the black segment to make it look more like he's wearing a vest, and hopefully make the connection posts less obtrusive. The two doors on his back and the hollow under them are the closet thing he has to a gimmick, and wil propably be made into place for Super Imouto-chan Robo to ride when not serving as a combiner face.

He folds up like so to combine:
http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/8044/seiryuarm.png
Getting the various angles right for the tail to curl up compactly was harder than it looks now that it's done.

The state of the robo:
http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/9051/g ... gattai.png
For all the time spent messing with it, all that's visible for Byakko's development is the finished arm sections and a blank representing his hind legs on the right arm, echoing Seiryuu's tail on the right. D'oh.

Note: Longdragon is looong.
http://img828.imageshack.us/img828/7995 ... dragon.png
At designed scale, this toy would be close to two feet from nose to tail when stretched out - this is somewhere around actual size on my screen.

- CD
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

Byakko gets his turn. Unfortunately, due to the limited space to fold him into, he's kind if the runt of the poseability liyyer out of this set - he can crouch down like a stretching cat, or kind of half-sit, and look up and to either side a little, and there's therr double joints in the tail, but that's about it. Of course, given the standard of most super-sentai components, that's still amazing, and it's enough to do a walk cycle.

http://img809.imageshack.us/img809/7779 ... ntform.png
To combine, he basically turns inside out...


The combined form with all four members. I really need to come up with a name for this unit. Anyone have any ideas?

And for a schoolboy giggle... One of the tings I really dislike is robot junk hanging off a transformation, but sometimes it just cant be avoided, as with Byakko's hips taking up part of the right forearm, leaving too little space to fold the fist entirely away. At least it resembles something that's legitimately part of a tiger...
http://img710.imageshack.us/img710/536/robotjunk.png

- CD
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

Thanks to T. Binh Vu of the Mekton Zeta Mailing List, I now have a name for this combiner: Jinzoushin Jyu-Oh ( ????? ) or Artificial God Beast King. The components I decided to just call by the name of the mythology figure with the animal type appended, despite this making Seiryuuryuu a member of the Redundant Department of Redundency Department. The others are then Genbukame, Byakkutora, and Suzakudzuru. I've also converted many of the inlined images in the thread into links, to save load time when connecitons are slow or flaky. Super Imouto Robo is not yet modeled, because deciding on a form aside from Golden Emperor(ess?) Jyu-Oh's face took a while. At this point, though, I've pretty much settled on just being a winged power armor, probably about 3-4x normal human size, which she has the power to grow to when merged with the guardian spirit who bonded to her during the Super-Origin event.

- CD
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

I want to add some gold to Byakkotora to match the other three. Any suggeestions for where it would look good?

- CD
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

After Little Locus pointed out a critical omission in the deisgn, I made sure to correct it at the same time as I added a Liefield armband to Byakkotora, for the desired balance of gold trim.


ROCKETTO PANCH!!

- CD, respects the classics
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows