Changes

Basically, before you start anything you should have a pretty good idea of the general location, size, look, feel and workings of all the major components of a character's propset. For me since I'm doing Furutaka kai ni, I needed to be able to visualize what her arm cannon, shoulder cannon, exhaust backpack thing, torpedo racks, boots, etc all looked like, how they aligned with each other and how it all worked cohesively as a unit.

Basically, before you start anything you should have a pretty good idea of the general location, size, look, feel and workings of all the major components of a character's propset. For me since I'm doing Furutaka kai ni, I needed to be able to visualize what her arm cannon, shoulder cannon, exhaust backpack thing, torpedo racks, boots, etc all looked like, how they aligned with each other and how it all worked cohesively as a unit.

[[File:Furutaka_Kai_Ni_5.png|thumb|500px|left|Seeing this many adorable Furutakas across so much screen real estate is definitely bad for my heart]]

[[File:Furutaka_Kai_Ni_5.png|thumb|500px|Seeing this many adorable Furutakas across so much screen real estate is definitely bad for my heart]]

Once I got an idea of that, I started sketching out some diagrams based on official art to get a reference for size and dimensions of all the major components I'd need. I haven't finished doing this step yet, but I've made some progress on the arm cannons for now. For the cannon, I did a combination of tracing as well as just visualizing test dimensions and seeing what seemed to "work" best. Eg, when I look at the official art I know that the front cannon should have a certain feel with its shape and size. That said, I guesstimate what kind of proportions/dimensions would look appropriate on me (my arm) and visualize these dimensions and shapes on my arm. I keep adjusting until I find a visualization I think works well and write them down. Another important point is that with anything you trace, assuming you trace well, the proportions of the trace will technically be the most "accurate" and "official", so just make them proportional to your own body as it is to the character. Eg, I measured my should to the first knuckle on my fist to be about 26 inches. Since I had a trace of the entire arm cannon which started at the first knuckle and ended at the shoulder, I just set that as my standard. The trace was almost exactly four inches long so I scaled it so that one inch on my scale trace was approximately 6 inches in real measurements. From here, everything else worked out via proportions to get a rough dimension estimate for the rest of the arm cannon.

Once I got an idea of that, I started sketching out some diagrams based on official art to get a reference for size and dimensions of all the major components I'd need. I haven't finished doing this step yet, but I've made some progress on the arm cannons for now. For the cannon, I did a combination of tracing as well as just visualizing test dimensions and seeing what seemed to "work" best. Eg, when I look at the official art I know that the front cannon should have a certain feel with its shape and size. That said, I guesstimate what kind of proportions/dimensions would look appropriate on me (my arm) and visualize these dimensions and shapes on my arm. I keep adjusting until I find a visualization I think works well and write them down. Another important point is that with anything you trace, assuming you trace well, the proportions of the trace will technically be the most "accurate" and "official", so just make them proportional to your own body as it is to the character. Eg, I measured my should to the first knuckle on my fist to be about 26 inches. Since I had a trace of the entire arm cannon which started at the first knuckle and ended at the shoulder, I just set that as my standard. The trace was almost exactly four inches long so I scaled it so that one inch on my scale trace was approximately 6 inches in real measurements. From here, everything else worked out via proportions to get a rough dimension estimate for the rest of the arm cannon.