Things are looking decent, we've got a pretty good rough mold of the shape of this guy, but there's room for improvement. The space underneath the cockpit is rather empty, it creates a negative space that leave the cockpit "floating" in front of the frame without any real support. Let's try and fix that...
So what I've done here is replace the cheese wedge on the front of the pelvis with a 1x2 slope and a cheese wedge (and as the keen observer has probably already noticed, slightly changed the shaping of the top of the frame as well). These changes fill out the torso much better and give the frame a beefier look. Now let's take a look at those feet. As a few people pointed out, they sit pretty far forward and the toes look pretty spindly for such a beefy frame. Luckily, there is a quick fix for both of these issues.
By rotating the "ankle" taps to face the other direction, I've set the center point of the feet back about a stud, and by replacing the mechanical claws with some modified plates, I've given this guy a much more stable (and stompy) look. This is where I noticed another problem however...
These guys are supposed to be larger and beefier than the Hoplites. While I have achieved the beefier aspect, I seem to have failed on the larger portion as they are in fact pretty much the same height. Again, there is luckily a pretty easy fix to solve this dilemma as well.
Instead of putting the ends of the taps directly into the travis brick pelvis (first picture) we can attach them via a couple clip tiles, giving the frame about another stud of height. That little bit might not seem like much but...
As you can see the frame seems much larger, even though it is in fact only slightly taller than it was before. For the most part, things are looking pretty good here. But I'm still not happy with the body shaping of the torso. The size is good, but it's, well, boring. So let's change the orientation of some of those cheese wedges around and see what happens.
There we go. This orientation gives the torso a much more defined shape. It shifts the girth of the frame more towards the center mass and centers the cockpit a bit more, making it stand out without "floating" like it was earlier. Also, the lower torso and pelvis section now flows into the rest of the frame much smoother, making it harder to distinguish the two from each other, which creates a more believable look. That's all for now. Until next time...
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