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Neutralzone - Modeling session — Description

Absolutely a color practice. No other reason. Really! This be an artistic rant here in the wall, so beware! Or skip entirely! xD
Arcthes got to be my target, and only for the reason he has these cables attached to his head and I could make them flow like 'hair' because darnit where's all the fancy arse robot coloring tutorials and guides?!?! I've tried a few and those haven't been what I'm after. The tutorials have been about how to make the flat surface interesting looking and shiny by adding lights and shadows in a manner that doesn't make that much sense. At least not to me. Looks good as is, but the end result is chaotic in a wrong way, and suits more for poses for the pose's sake, not story telling, or mood, ect.
(Am I thinking too complicated here?)
The few reasons humans are "the target" for all the tutorials is because there's hair, there's clothes, there's all sorts of organic things one can add to fill in the piece. Leaves, petals, feathers, paper, whatever wind can blow away.
(and by the overall complaints robots and mechas are hard to draw and I agree)
THAT IS... COLORING IS HARDER WITH ROBOTS. My coloring practice pilgrimage is pretty much me trying to wrap my braincells how to get all the fancy into my robot art. Yes, dynamic poses is one thing, except to me if I draw dynamic without any story behind it, it will just look silly.
This also made me realize (or finally admit) how STUCK I am in realism with colors. Like wowwee! Gotta have them right colors, the proper shadows, ambient/bounce light, shininess per material, proper cast shadows, you name it.
So this piece, especially the bright pink eye burn one, is me trying to just let go and go to the extreme end of "I need to fix the lighting in my works" and go with what looks aesthetically pleasing without caring too much about realism. For that I think I did pretty darn well, and I like it, even if my eye balls are crispified. One of my realizations was a "glow" effect. The art I was/am studying has these specific areas that are, in no realistic logical sense possible, emitting light in areas that should be DARKER instead. Those areas exists ONLY to add variation and airiness into the art.
How could I add that to my bots? Atmospheric effect in a microscopic scale at a close distance between armor plates, because bots lack clothing folds and hair strands, so it has to exist somewhere in 3D space.
And that's just one step in this journey.
Anyway, colors go boom!
Transformers © Hasbro
Arcthes © @pika aka me!
tools used: Clip Studio Paint Pro 4, XPpen Artist Pro 16" Gen2