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Description
A while back, when I first started uploading art here, I posted this: tamashikiri.deviantart.com/art…

The zero of you who actually saw it may recall that I said that the two characters in that image were going to be the main characters of a mecha comic project I was working on. Well, I've finally started making progress on that, in no small part thanks to Pacific Rim putting me in a mecha mood. The plot is basically that two college students in Toronto end up roommates but can't stand each other at all. But just when they've about had it with each other, the city comes under attack by an army of giant robots and, after a crazy plan to steal a pair of enemy mechs actually works, they become the city's only defense against this scale of threat in what I can only describe as the unholy lovechild of The Female Odd Couple, The Big Bang Theory, Scott Pilgrim, Megas XLR and Gurren Lagann.

The one idea I had in my head about designing these mechs was to have them reflect their pilots' personalities and skills, and since the character of Liz Laurier was originally created in a project to design a character that was me in all but gender and appearance, she has a similar personality and skill set to me, which was the directive I took on designing the mech on the left, Tomo-e. Since I practice kenjustu and am an artist, I gave Tomo-e a samurai-like design with minor art elements... but the only way of combining those two elements I could think of and still have it look recognizably mechanical was having sketch pads for shoulder and waist armour and have it wield weapons that are part tanto, part mechanical pencil (since this is a first draft of these designs, I can still add more art-like design elements later on, but I'm still disappointed I couldn't think of any more up to this point). The arms and legs are basically simplified Gundam limbs, with the added wrinkle that the soles of the feet are based on those of a Japanese geta sandal. This mech's main ability is to use the aforementioned "tanto pencils" to literally draw any weapon the user can think of into existence, a power that is less useful than you might think, since Liz tends to consider whether a potential weapon is awesome, more than if it is practical.

Since Alexandra is much more feminine than Liz, I had Valkyria Masquerade reflect that. Taking design cues from the G1 version of the female Autobot Arcee and the Virturoid VR-014/HD models of Hatsune Miku, the body is less blocky and more human-like than Tomo-e's, with an actual human face instead of a Gundam-style mouthplate. The helmet is based on a Japanese hime cut, mostly because it's a feminine enough hairstyle which is nonetheless helmet-like enough to work for a machine's "hairstyle". My main idea for this mech is to have different sets of armour attach to it, each representing an aspect of Alexandra's character giving it a different power set and weapons. I'll post those once I've got the design for each figured out (especially in regards to how they'll each fit onto the core robot) and drawn.

So, that's it for now. If you think these mechs can be improved in any way, please feel free to say so in the comments.

Description
A while back, when I first started uploading art here, I posted this: tamashikiri.deviantart.com/art…

The zero of you who actually saw it may recall that I said that the two characters in that image were going to be the main characters of a mecha comic project I was working on. Well, I've finally started making progress on that, in no small part thanks to Pacific Rim putting me in a mecha mood. The plot is basically that two college students in Toronto end up roommates but can't stand each other at all. But just when they've about had it with each other, the city comes under attack by an army of giant robots and, after a crazy plan to steal a pair of enemy mechs actually works, they become the city's only defense against this scale of threat in what I can only describe as the unholy lovechild of The Female Odd Couple, The Big Bang Theory, Scott Pilgrim, Megas XLR and Gurren Lagann.

The one idea I had in my head about designing these mechs was to have them reflect their pilots' personalities and skills, and since the character of Liz Laurier was originally created in a project to design a character that was me in all but gender and appearance, she has a similar personality and skill set to me, which was the directive I took on designing the mech on the left, Tomo-e. Since I practice kenjustu and am an artist, I gave Tomo-e a samurai-like design with minor art elements... but the only way of combining those two elements I could think of and still have it look recognizably mechanical was having sketch pads for shoulder and waist armour and have it wield weapons that are part tanto, part mechanical pencil (since this is a first draft of these designs, I can still add more art-like design elements later on, but I'm still disappointed I couldn't think of any more up to this point). The arms and legs are basically simplified Gundam limbs, with the added wrinkle that the soles of the feet are based on those of a Japanese geta sandal. This mech's main ability is to use the aforementioned "tanto pencils" to literally draw any weapon the user can think of into existence, a power that is less useful than you might think, since Liz tends to consider whether a potential weapon is awesome, more than if it is practical.

Since Alexandra is much more feminine than Liz, I had Valkyria Masquerade reflect that. Taking design cues from the G1 version of the female Autobot Arcee and the Virturoid VR-014/HD models of Hatsune Miku, the body is less blocky and more human-like than Tomo-e's, with an actual human face instead of a Gundam-style mouthplate. The helmet is based on a Japanese hime cut, mostly because it's a feminine enough hairstyle which is nonetheless helmet-like enough to work for a machine's "hairstyle". My main idea for this mech is to have different sets of armour attach to it, each representing an aspect of Alexandra's character giving it a different power set and weapons. I'll post those once I've got the design for each figured out (especially in regards to how they'll each fit onto the core robot) and drawn.

So, that's it for now. If you think these mechs can be improved in any way, please feel free to say so in the comments.