Variety, Hacking, and Trends

CB, we need to talk. You make an amazing game, your models are often the best on the market. You are very good at making varied poses for HMGs, missile launchers, TAGs, heavy infantry. Your female models are a bit too 'sexypose' too often, but I understand why...

...But there's a problem. You don't seem to know what to do with your hackers! With most other categories of soldier in the game, you have a firm grasp of varied poses, and the idea that just because they're for a combat game doesn't mean they need to be in-that-moment shooting. Why, then, do you entirely forget that when it comes to making interesting and varied poses for perhaps the most important models in the game?

Not certain what I mean? Let's look:

 Look at this: These are all hacker-specific models, produced recently in the timeline of Infinity, that are every one of them AT THIS MOMENT hacking by waving the magic hand. In the most egregious cases, their poses are identical! The fusilier, Morat, Hac Tao, Govad, Ragik, both Interventors, Ghulam... all legs slightly wider than shoulder-width apart, all actively hacking off to the side. For some, like the Nisses, Naga, Dasyus, or Hellcat, they're at least in motion as they hack, but hey, let's compare that to the non-hacking right? Could be a coincidence:

Hm, whereas we had 18 'hacking' models, of which arguably 11 are in a nearly identical pose, there are 9 photographed (another two unphotographed: Valerya Gromoz and Isobel MacGregor). I include the Ninja in this group because arguably she could be slicing someone, adding some variety. In this group is also the Alguacile, because though he's depicted in pics as hacking at this moment, I would argue the pose doesn't require him to be.

Otherwise, one firing the gun she was equipped with, one tossing off a sassy salute, three with hand-on-hip basic pose, and two 'other'. The unphotographed pair are kneeling and lifting goggles, and turning to fire at someone for interrupting a hack in progress.

That's really boring. There are other ways I must assume to depict that a soldier is a hacker besides "See? They hack!" that can fill some more models. The thing that finally made me decide to post about this is this month's releases, which saw a Nisses Hacker in "I WILL GRAB YOUR FACE" hack pose, the Hac Tao in spread stance, AND the Govad in spread stance all in one go. The Hac Tao is HOLDING the big scary sword! Why not have him in an active sword-brandishing pose that also has an 'empty hand' that could be hacking? Make it look like he's reinforcing an attack on an enemy HI (say, a Father Knight) by messing with his armour systems in combat? He's a CC 19, WIP 14, BTS 6 dude, he can probably pull off the split attention!

Now, there's one model I've not included here because I've complained about her before, but you can look at a previous post on this blog to see an example: The Mobile Brigada hacker is just painful. She's equipped with a combi rifle, a pistol, and a close combat weapon, and is depicted with the pistol? (And for some reason is minus her suit's power plant?)

Please vary up the poses more. It actually turned me off buying the Hac Tao Hacker this month.

Crates!

A friend and I have been trying for a while to create our own set of terrain, tokens, etc. You've likely seen some of the previous posts involving laser-etching things, but here's a new neat discovery.

I wanted to make a personalized USB for my brother, and accidentally discovered basswood. It's a kind of balsa I think, and it is amazing. Acrylic can warp under the laser, cut strangely, and is immensely temperamental when it comes to trying to print anything out consistently. Basswood on the other hand, is consistent, cheap, surprisingly durable, and smells a lot less harmful to breathe in during cutting.

So I went to town on some ideas. Initially I tested on regular rectangular crates, but after the first run of those, I had to try something more Infinty-fitting. For my first test runs, I mocked up a few different Nomad-style crates: Tunguska Secure Transportation (A well secured crate for important documents); Corregidor armaments (no words, just warnings on the side); and the basic Nomad Shipping and Freight (for all other concerns).

This is what they look like assembled! The pattern is loosely inspired by something I saw another company doing to mitigate the angles, since laser cutters cut mostly at 90 degrees, which means you can't put two angles flush to one another without a lot of post-cut bevel work. This over-under solution still looks like an interesting intentional design, and removes the weird gaps people would have to fill in.

They're rather sizeable, but I did want to make them big enough where some detail would register. I'll have another post soon about round two, where I fixed up the measurements and started crafting my own corporations, rather than the CB-trademark ones. The nice thing about this design too, is if one doesn't want the pre-etched logos, reversing the end-caps and two of the plates entirely hides them!

I'm running through painting tests now, to see how visible the grain is after painting. I can say so far black primer (vallejo surface) works a lot better than white.

Staging an Intervention

With the Create Your Fate contest over, I'm able to return to more just-for-me pursuits, and so I have decided to show off my Interventors!

These two are the supreme hackers in the Human Sphere. Not necessarily scary combatants, but with a Hacking Device Plus, and Fast Pandas (shown soon) they are able to make any tech-advanced enemy quake.

They are both dark skinned, a practice I am refining. The one has a bright flame-coloured yellow-orange hair to contrast their mostly black appearance.

I figure Interventors are about as pure Tunguska as one can get, hence their almost exclusively black outfits. The slinky armour is highlighted a bit heavier to seem perhaps grey, and just to provide some contrast, their shoulderpads and gunbelts are Nomad Red, with white featured on their gloves.

Their outfits of course scream "TRON", so I had to decorate the one's personality disc glowing blue, and that led the charge for them to glow blue from a few places. This time it's not an ODD or Thermoptic Camo, but perhaps sensors, HUDs, or indicators that they're not meant to rush in to the front line!

Last but not least, the FastPandas! The photos are slightly oversaturated, but it's really tough to balance the light so their bright white bits and dark black bits both show! I decided to slightly differentiate them, in part by accident, and gave one spats (He's the dapper gent) and both were carefully posed to seem as agressive as a non-combatant plump robo-panda can be!

That finishes all the models I've had painted recently, leaving only a super-fun project to go before I need to start taking all kinds of new pictures to put up! I've decided that as I paint my newest attempt to win a Mayacast Masterglass, I will set to work converting a PHR force so the mechs feel a bit more appropriately dynamic than just "I am here, I am a mech." Sadly, not much I'll be able to do about their infantry.

Enjoy!