NPCs Rebaked - Bach
The cover I did for Kai Tave's new Lancer release, NPCs Rebaked. It's an overhaul of the base Lancer npc frames to make for more interesting encounters in your game. You can check it out at his Itch page.
https://kaitave.itch.io/lancer-npcs-rebaked
For the cover, I was initially tasked with drawing an original design meant to represent a generic npc frame, including an x-ray breakdown of its internal components. I'm sure we've all seen that style of mecha illustration or those series of Star Wars picture books. Despite traditionally not having much in the way of formal mechanical education, I've always loved the ways in which artists have tried to sell the fantasy of a real engineered machine. Some attempts are cruder or less believable than others, but the end result is a desire to make something feel like a real piece of machinery.
Mecha has always occupied this interesting space of real and unreal. Giant robots aren't particularly realistic, we all know this, but nothing makes most mecha fans happier than when a work does everything in its power to convince you of its tangibility. It's a tantalizing paradox, and part of mecha's allure I think. We know the giant man sized robot shouldn't be able to jump like that. But when you see the pistons and servos whirring into action, its hand picking up its pilot like an artificial god, how could we resist its undeniable allure?
For the cover, I was told to pick from a number of npc frames considered the iconic representatives of Lancer enemy encounters. Because I'm uncreative and basic, I picked the Assault. That's as standard-issue as it gets right?
Sidebar: NPCs Rebaked includes Kai Tave's design notes on each frame. The Assault's is a fascinating explanation of the inherent issues surrounding the Assault as a mechanical package and the somewhat deceptive nature of its name leading to some incorrect notions on how GMs are meant to use it. For example, he cites that the Assault is actually kind of ill-suited to being a generic all-rounder grunt due to its access to Reliable damage and its available weaponry giving it a fairly defined mechanical role in combat encounters. Really interesting stuff.
But generic can mean a lot of things. God forbid, if you've read my lengthy blogpost on how I approached designing the Everest G Type for Solstice Rain, you already know I'm a weirdo who overthinks everything. Thankfully Kai had a great visual library and picked a few frames of reference to start with. Gasaraki, Heavy Gear, and the real robot designs in Bravern were all very solid picks. Despite the surface level disparity, all three are unified by a desire to evoke a specific kind of mil-spec design language. I'm especially a big fan of Gasaraki, which features the design works of the legendary Shinji Aramaki. Something I've always loved about his work is his utilization of extant technologies to communicate a particular kind of feel, even if the machine itself is vastly more futuristic. The inclusion of pistons, hoses, and cast metal forms all give his work a very believable automotive quality.
Some proportional experiments to dial in the general profile of the Bach. Maybe not this time, but Overture Labaratory will get its due some day.
The original concept I started with for the Bach was to communicate a mech in the Lancer setting relying entirely on conventional material technologies. No barriers, electronic interference fields, paracausal defenses, or anything else that would imply material advances beyond the 20th century. Obviously it's still a giant robot but I wanted it to feel like its fundamental technologies haven't evolved past the first gulf war. This means a lot of thick metal plates with generous bevels and slight curves. The Bach is the kind of design you'd see beating up LL0 Everests for their lunch money before the protagonists arrive on the scene. Somewhat similar to my Vestan design for Solstice Rain, it's meant to have a "bully" visual profile. Though unlike the Vestan design, I wanted the Bach to feel much more mechanical. I wanted viewers to look at it and feel like they could imagine how to put a Bach together.
Once I had the design figured out, I had to figure out how to actually composite the damn cover. Thankfully, Kai has always operated on a similar creative wavelength so when I suggested evoking the aesthetics of cold war era military advertisements, he was game. The cold war was a wild time. You could just advertise stinger missiles in magazines. Sure, the unchecked hubris of arms manufacturers was probably a bad thing, but at least they had a sense of style back in the day. Maybe the F-35 would have more groundswell if they put out a bus stop ad with it in front of a cool retro cyberspace grid and a ridiculous tagline like "AIR SUPERIORITY FOREVER" and the plane is bombing bionic mongolian steppe archers in the aftermath of WW3.
Telling you man, this shit was a vibe
Anyway, from there it was fairly straightforward. The distended cover with some light wear and tear to give it that used field manual vibe. The head lineart to make it feel more like a technical document. If I wanted to flex, I'd say it was light work. More accurately, I'd say it's because the cover was right up my alley, I couldn't have asked for something better suited for my particular interests.
The theming probably becomes a lot more obvious once you put it all together.
On a final note, the Bach and Galliard Applied Systems names were purely inventions of my own. Often when I do design work like this, I like to do a bit of worldbuilding to get myself in the right headspace. Obviously the client gets final say on if any of that gets to stay canon but hey, even if they didn't want it, nobody can stop me from eventually making the Field Guide to Galliard Applied Systems right?1
The Bach name came to me after I settled on the company name of Galliard. I wanted a manufacturer with a music theming. I love it when factions in mecha have a theme to their naming scheme. For example, the Redguns in AC6 all being named after rivers while the Vespers take their names from famous writers. It also lets me geek out a bit about Classical composers, a topic I don't get to talk about much. For those curious, Galliard's future rollout includes the Wagner, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, and Schubert.2
1Capitalism is stopping me, I need money to live. But perhaps you dear reader, could contribute to that great and noble cause? Aren't you curious what the Galliard Applied Systems GKW-02 Wagner looks like?
2If someone has 400 dollars on hand, I will design the Galliard Applied Systems CL-06 Debussy. You will cut to the front of the line of my current freelance schedule.
#gee_art #design_notes #mecha #lancer #Galliard_Applied_Systems