How the Leopard breaks down

Often it helps me to see how I've broken down parts by colouring them so I can see if something might be too unwieldy to cast. There's a physical limitation I have to consider size of my pressure pot which I use for both degassing the silicone and pressure casting the parts.

I had it before where a mould was just too big to get the lid on lucky it was just case of trimming down the top of the mould box (usually you make it 2/3 model 1/3 expansion room for degassing)

As you can see there's lot of parts. The more parts the more the silicone cost go up since you need a few CM of silicone around the part to give the mould strength the more it costs to make so the dome turrets for example are up for debate where they rotate or not. I think there's about 40ish part so far lots of long flat pieces with honestly are an unknown casting wise for me. So there be a bit of research on the best way to break this down and cast it.

More 3D work done on the Leopard

• All the exterior detailing is done.
• Turrets have had their articulation added (T peg for the big turret and dowels for the smaller dorsal and engine turret).
• The body has been sectioned for casting just adding locating lugs 
• The upper doors have some trick hinges to hold them open while the lower doors will be dowels, when the doors are closed the upper door clasps the lower to hold it shut (in theory).
• Interior I'll add some simple details but nothing too mad, bulkheads, cargo door or two.
• I'll also thinking about adding some reinforcement to the spine for the ship

• The door bays are 6cm high and 4cm wide enough to fit the Atlas re-sculpt (inc base) with a few mm spare.
• Over all dimensions are approx; Length 33cm  -- Width 38.5cm(wingspan)/16cm(body) -- Height 13cm (might be subject to change)

My concerns are keeping it TT friendly size but I also want it too hold 4/5mechs.

TT scale Leopard - Maybe?

Working on this at the moment. It would be table top scale (should take 4 TT mechs inside) just the back end to finish detailing and then the interior to make then work out all the joints/hinges for the doors and how to break it down for casting.

Its still up in the air to produce it, might be too tricky to cast or to expensive to print.

About scales and battletech - definative guide.

So I'm sure many of you guys know battletech is very light on details on exactly how tall mechs were. That makes them a scaling nightmare. I've spent a lot of time trying to find the right balance its not something i start blindly and hope I get right its something that's worked out beforehand and build too.

lots of things effect the height of a mech;
- Leg design

- Mass
- Bits that sick up above the design

Armorcast(AC) got to 1/60 scale mech first so everything is based off their 3 designs.

AC Atlas is 26cm,
AC Madcat is 20.5cm

So those are the base lines that everything else needs to fit into. The AC atlas is tall to the point of its head which stick up a cm from the main body and part of the lore mentions it was designed to be tall than other mechs. This is where I think a lot of builders go wrong they see the atlas and they try to match its height but the fact is they should consider it to be 25cm and even then only for Humanoid 100tonners.

The madcat is a much better bench mark to start from since it sits more in the middle of the tonnage range (20-100). Taking its height and the height of the tall atlas you start to get a range and you can work back from there;

Lights; 13cm to 14.5cm
Mediums; 15cm to 18cm
Heavies; 18.5cm to 21.50cm
Assaults: 21.50cm to 25.5cm

Its not a straight line for height since lights can only get so small before they look out of place same with assaults they get a bit more because other wise their bulk starts to look out of place.

- Then you have to factor in centre mass which is the highest point in the mech. This is what i scale too it can be seen here (I made this infographic years ago);

- Then you have to allow 10% artists judgement to see by eye if the mech looks right. This takes into account bulk, leg design, if the centre of mass isn't so clear cut.

Once that's done I like to print out a too scale silhouette just to be sure;

After that then its design. For the hand builders its important that material growth doesn't creep the height up +1mm soon can add up when you have 5 subcomponents stacked up.

Finally you should end up with something bang on like so;

Bang on