Intro

Hello, this time I have prepared a tutorial on the design of super robots, mecha or meka, which were very popular in the 1970s and 1980s.

 

One of the main characteristics of a super robot is that the movement mechanisms are not so complex. In that respect they resemble a wooden drawing mannequin.

Basic Structure

To begin, I will draw using square geometric figures to make an outline of the body, based on the human body.

 

We will start by detailing each part and then we will see the result by putting together everything we have learned.

 

Head

The basic shape of a head is the oval, but we can also draw it using a square or a circle.

 

The ears, nose and mouth can be omitted or substituted.

 

We can even replace the head with everyday objects such as an alarm clock, a camera, a light bulb, a TV or whatever

anything that bears any resemblance to a head.

The eyes are based on three basic shapes: triangles, squares, and circles.

The mouth can be represented in two ways. One is to consider the figure formed by the lines that connect the nose and the mouth, while the other is to see the mouth in relation to the complete structure of the head.

The nose can be drawn in three basic ways, triangular, rectangular, or inverted triangle.

 

The ears are generally round or rectangular, they can also be replaced by antennas or some decoration such as horns, screws, nuts or similar to headphones.

Joints

The joints are one of the most important parts, since if we do not represent them well, the possible movement of the robot will not look natural.

 

The most important joints are: the neck, shoulders, elbows, waist, union of the legs to the waist, knees and ankles.

The most used way to represent a joint is the circle or in any case a sphere.

 

It can also be represented as a hose or series of flexible cables, as in an adjustable lamp.

Torso

The torso can be a single piece combining the chest, stomach and waist, or two or more separate parts.

The basic forms are as follows:

Cylinder

Box

Inverted triangle

Sphere

Hips

The pelvic wall can be drawn as a brief or an inverted pyramid.

T shape.

In this way the joints must be parallel.

Arms and legs

Generally the arms will be cylinders. The forearm can be a cylinder larger than the arm, or an oval sphere,

in addition to wearing certain decoration.

In realistic robots it is usually very complex, but we will keep it simple.

 

The hands are structures with many details. For this you can be guided by my other tutorial on the subject.

Being a robot, the fingers should be a little square and the joints should be a bit noticeable.

You can be guided by images of armor gauntlets.

They can also be replaced by mechanical claws, drills, or some tool.

Legs

The legs carry the weight of the robot, so they must be strong, they will also look better if the knees are placed

slightly taller than humans, making the thigh short.

If you draw the legs wide, they will have a sense of stability. If you draw them very tall and thin it will seem that the

robot will fall at any moment.

 

Foot and ankle.

The foot can have articulated toes or simply be a figure resembling a human foot.

The ankle will be similar to the joints of the shoulders and elbows.

 

Putting it all together.

This is the canvas settings.

The sketch is made with the pencil sub tool, real pencil in light blue.

 

Here we will start with a sketch using the cylinder as a base for the torso, arms and legs.

The unions will be spheres.

 

The head will have a design similar to that of a medieval helmet. A plate will cover the mouth and the eyes will be in the shape of a trapezoid.

 

In the part that corresponds to the nose, I will put a band from top to bottom, in addition to some detail on the forehead.

 

The side fins will replace the

ears, these resemble horns.

 

The hip section will be a half sphere.

 

On the forearms and legs, place some diamond-shaped spikes as decoration.

 

The feet will be like somewhat spherical discs at the top.

 

This is how the line art made in a vector layer will be, using the figure sub tool, straight line, curve, ellipse

and rectangle.

Colors

First I will place the base colors by selecting the area with the automatic selection sub tool.

A good idea is to create a layer folder for each color. So we will place the layers with details such as brightness, shadows,

etc, within each folder.

The basic color will be like this:

The final color will represent the metal, for this I will use the airbrush sub tool, soft airbrush and the

color blending sub tool and blur to blur the colors. We must take into account the origin of the light to

all parts look good.

For this I have used the following 3D model as a guide:

Here is an example of a metallic sphere.

On the base color we apply the darkest parts and the light, then we blur with color mixing.

If we have practice with the airbrush tool and we have the pressure sensitivity activated, we can do it only with it.

Final drawing

It looks very metallic, doesn't it?

Fist detail.

Drawing with background

Apparently he's in his spaceship, so he's an alien robot.

I hope you like it.

Final words

Thank you for reading this far.

If you like robots I wish you can start drawing them and it is my hope that this guide will serve you a lot.

This has been the first tutorial I have done in three months, these have been difficult times.

It is dedicated to my father who is no longer with us.

 

Thanks again and see you in the next tutorial.