I'm posting this with the commercial tag because I definitely have a financial interest in this book selling, but honestly, I'm posting this purely as a "Look a the cool thing I made!" kind of deal.
For the past 5 ish years I've been working with my friend Emerson Tung on a dieselpunk mecha art/setting book. We were lucky enough to find a publisher willing to produce it so we now have a 230-page full-colour hardcover brick of a thing choke full of very very silly robots. He has done all the amazing art, while I've done my best to create a setting and story that does the art justice.
Emerson insisted on making the cover a homage to classic plastic scale model kits, which I love. I only had to convince him to use a somewhat common scale for it.
The book is written like a encyclopedia of vehicles from the "Neverwar" period. A supposedly never-ending war that ended up lasting 50 years. There is a fairly even division between art and info, giving a rundown of the machines specs as well as some background info. We also often feature variants derived from the machine, alternative camo patterns and things like that.
The core element of Tankhead are naturally the titular Tankheads, walking counterparts to our real-world tanks.
To answer the first common question, recoil? Tankheads use a gyrojet like system where the shells are semi-self propelling rockets reducing recoil significantly. Of course, this does reduce impact range and payload, but that is the price you pay for a walking tank. And we find the reason for walking tanks to be self evident; they are bloody cool.
We do also have more grounded redesigns of military vehicles. Mechs are at their coolest as part of combined arms, so you still need normal tanks and armoured cars. To create an interesting and distinct divergence from the real world, we've decided that tracked vehicles never really took off in the Tankhead universe. Hundreds of tiny hinges on each vehicle, and if one breaks you cant move? That sounds like way too many points of failure.
The technology that allows for walking tanks also spreads out to naval warfare, where oceangoing titans are created in the Shipheads. These monsters can only move outside the water for a limited time before their systems start to overheat and wear and tear takes its toll.
The world of Tankhead relied heavily on dirigible airships before the war. This also meant that there was an extensive network of high-calibre flak AA defences designed to deter attacks with these machines. There were prototypes and experiments with aircraft during most of the war with limited success, but none of those reached a point where they could reliably outrun the established AA systems which meant that air combat lagged behind compared to our world.
Eventually, Jet and Turbine based systems were developed and the Jethead was born. These agile machines used the articulation already very developed from tankheads to create truly bizarre flying vehicles.
And of course the war also extended bellow the waves with all nations developing devious Subheads, which were adapt at ambushing from shallow waters and raiding harbors from unexpected angles as their legs allowed them to traverse shallow and treacherous waters impossible to normal boats or submarines.
We also take a look at how some real-world technologies may have developed in the Tankhead world. When HEAT becomes more common late in the war all sorts of skirts and spaced armor is developed. Where the real world had wiremesh skirting on tanks, in Tankhead there were experiments with "cloaks" made from the material.
For each of the 3 great powers we also have a couple of environmental pieces. The line art of these was done by Ryan Barry and coloured by Emerson.
And there are a couple of more specific accounts of important historic events such as the Zeehond Expedition which inadvertently set of the development of Tankheads. These also gave us room to lean more into the pulp adventure side of the world.
Ok, I've barely scratched the surface or described the world, but I think that is enough for one post for now, I was just very eager to share this pet project of ours.
PS. If you are thinking to yourself "That sounds interesting but the writing here doesn't inspire much confidence" Please know that 3 professional editors chopped and patched my ramblings into shape before it went into the book itself.
05 March 2007, 05:28:46 PM