Do you prefer your mechs to be sleek and minimal or ornate and

Bit of column A, bit of column B. My philosophy is that a design should be recognizable by its silhouette, so details that break up the outline along with the body language of its neutral pose are very important, even if the design itself may be critiqued as overdesigned.

A mech (especially the lead mech) is as much a tool as it is a character, and you can tell quite a bit about a character from their body language.

>>14545934
I think an ornate design can be fine, but it needs to still be functional.

That GGG design, for example, seems like an absolute clusterfuck to try and move around with. Imagine what happens if it falls over. If it ever gets knocked flat on its back, I how are you supposed to get back up? Even ignoring the balance issue, the wings make it impossible to roll over/ onto your side, and there is not good place to use your arms to push yourself to a seated position without the wings getting in the way.

On the plus side, getting knocked face down will let you get back up, presuming you don't break your knees in the fall.

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>>14545934

I prefer option B. Just like a good painting, a good mecha design is one where you notice and appreciate new details upon multiple viewings.

Of course there is a bit of a balancing act as this anon mentions >>14545948
Which Fujita's designs manage to pull off in spades.

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>>14545934
Minimal for me. I can enjoy certain wackier designs like Getter Robo, my favorite being New Getter One, but when they have a ton of spikes and shit sticking off of them they get obnoxious. It's never the color scheme for me really, it's the silhouette.

>>14545948
Like he says..

Both design styles can be good, but what really matters is the color.

Just like with cars, a good paint job can make even the dumbest looking mech impressive.

>>14545946

I'm with you, I like both. Eva 01 is sleek and menacing, while Genesic is bulky and busy, but really does give the feeling it's a beast because of the claws and hair and just general bulk of it's limbs.

>>14545948

Why would it need to use it's arms when it has thrusters all over it's body it can use to right itself instead?

GaoGaiGar would shit on the Eva 01/

It's in the context. I want contemporary weapons to look clean and ancient relics to look half-cathedral.

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>>14545934
I love them big.
I love them powerful.
I love them punching the shit out of everything.
I love them regal.
I love them flamboyant.
I love them winged and flashy.
Go super or go home.
I love sleek and minimal ones almost as much, it's fine it's fine.

>>14545946
>My philosophy is that a design should be recognizable by its silhouette
Good philosophy.

A nice balance of both. Having some flourish doesn't hurt as long as it's not overdone, overly simple ones can be really dull.

>>14545934
>Eva
>mech

>>14546269
really makes you think...

>>14546286
2D4me

>>14546286
That a shitty ultraman clone covered in armor isn't a giant robot?

>>14546269
If you start the whole Biomech debacle you'll invite Attack on Titan fagets in.

>>14546302
You can't ruse anyone here with that bullshit.

>>14545934
Both

>>14546301
woah...

>>14545934
I like reasonable proportions

>>14545934

I like GaoGaiGar a bit more than Eva-01, but >>14545948 brings up a good point. I don't doubt the makers failed to consider this at one point or another, but I don't remember too many situations where GGG was on its back to be sure. It would definitely be an issue, though.

As for my preference: A bit of both, leaning toward less flashy. While I do like GGG, I don't think making the robot so gaudy that it can't move outside of a cartoon is good at all. Simplicity is good, and ensures that a design is easy to remember, as apposed to being a vaguely man shaped mass of greeble and frills.

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Somewhere in between. Too little detail and you end up with something really boring. Most of the combat armors from Dougram are like this and Tetsujin would also be like this if Tetsujin's silhouette was used as a template for creating designs of anything other than more Tetsujins.

On the other hand, designs with too much overwrought detail, like Demonbane or Valvrave, often look like shit, and those two don't even have all that much going on with the colours. They'd be even worse if they did.

I don't really care about anything being practical or having a purpose or even about anything being actually possible, so long as it looks fucking good. Pic related is one of my favorite designs because it manages to look both minimalistic and flamboyant at the same time (at least so far as Braves go). Only thing I can fault it for is having a few too many colours going on, but even that's acceptable to me since it's combined from two robots, it picks a few colours to use more heavily than the others, and it draws your eyes to its one big feature anyway (that chestplate, like all other Braves)

>>14546379
The Valvrave fleet runs the entire gamut. Hito is tame as hell what with showcasing the standardized frame with few bells and whistles tacked onto it versus its sibling units, Hiasobi gets into questionably busy territory, and then Full Impact Hito goes all the way into "literally slapped shit onto it like it's Full Armor Unicorn."

Really though Full Impact is a good showcase for how dumb it looks to put clown shoes and hulk hands onto a design, even if it makes sense in context. The Impact Boosters on their own look fine in the bird form they are supposed to take, but turning them into hands and feet makes them look super stupid. More to do with proportions than actual detail level though, come to think of it...

But that's just my opinion.

>>14546430
The familiars look great with just one so they look like a power fist or kicking-with spike, which they are. It's when you slap four of them on that they look silly.

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I like them like this.

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Good silhouette with distinct details up close.

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sleek, but complex enough to be distinct

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>>14546450
Or if they roosted on a shoulder or something; mind you they also functioned as heat sinks and general purpose drones.

The legs on the Valvrave primal frame are just too spindly and ballerinaesque to look good wearing ravens as long term slippers, though. The mass distribution feels more in favor of trying to get them to wrap around the upper thigh rather than dock with the foot proper.

>>14546462
It occurs to me that this design would actually look alright if they hadn't drawn white borders on every surface. I think that's the primary culprit in making it look so busy

>>14546122

you sure showed anno.

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>>14546668
It's not really busy, busy is when you have a robe of green sense nerves covering your design.

And even that's not as busy as people like to make it out to be.

Then again up until each frame was activated in-show, the color scheme for Valvraves had white in place of the black, so the white trim blended in with the rest of the design. But the trim is a crucial part of reinforcing the outline so that it isn't confused with an amorphous blob of red/yellow/green/blue/violet.

Now, if you want to call it something, at least when it comes to Hito I'd say call it edgy. It gives the impression that every surface is razor focused like a sharp knife's edge.

Bladelike.

Cutting-edge would be a pun to field in the description.

lol unit 01 is hardly "sleek and minimal" and GGG is hardly overdesigned when compared to the shit in gundam seed or other super robot shows.

Definitely sleek. GGG was way too bulky.

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>>14545934
Angular and militaristic designs like armored troopers, tactical armors, or most "real robots" are neither sleek and minimal or ornate and flamboyant. I wouldn't say they're a mixture of either. They can be gimmicky, but any bolted on kibble actually serves a purpose. There (usually) aren't a whole lot of overlapping plates like more flamboyant designs but they aren't really rounded like sleek designs.

>>14546872
Alright, just because you can show me one that's even more absurdly overdesigned doesn't mean that the first one isn't. It looks like it has three knees, for christ's sake

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I like them sleek. Robots designed by Kawamori Shouji, Takeuchi Atsushi, and especially Yutaka Izubuchi and Tsutomu Nihei are the best by a mile.

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>>14547085
Not really, unless you look dead head-on at them it's easy to tell that the lower is shin armor plating and the upper is plating for the hip/thigh area.

I'll give you that the knee is absurdly well camouflaged by the sculpt of the armor, though.

>>14546302
How is Zeta gundam related to this?

>>14546668
This,I like the valverave silhouettes but because of the cg that went crazy on the color schemes.
The red units white colors were already pretty good, then it goes full edge mode and loses any consistency.

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>>14545934

>>14546183
What show is that webm from?

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>>14554280
SRW OG The Inspector.

It depends pretty heavily on the context of the show for me. I like the Eva and GGG designs both a lot because they both perfectly fit the shows they represent. GGG is huge, bulky, and heroic. Like a lot of "super" robots, it evokes superheroes. It's cartoony and fun, fitting for its show.

Eva is basically the converse of that. The Eva units are not cool (well, they aren't in the context of the show at least) and they're not heroic. They're more like monsters. Unlike the more human face of GGG and Gundams, they have beastly maws with sharp teeth and the way they move is much less robotic and more organic, creating a sort of uncanny feeling.

So both styles are fine, what matters most is execution and consistency with the show's tone and style.

>>14546462
God those designs are shit. Bad proportions, terrible colors, overdesigned tryhard shit. The epitome of bad design.

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Sleekly Ornate