#I like her anatomy to be a bit unique but how bend what bend?? I've never tried making a skeletal deconstruction of her design haha

[sysig]

I somehow forgot how fun Spider Bites is to draw ♥ (Patreon)

[paniniprince]

Do you have any advice on drawing omnics? I've been seeing a ton of cool omnic OCs (including yours!) and I was wondering how you design them and such.

FIRST OF ALL THANK YOU SO MUCH!! im glad you like my designs enough to come to me for advice its super nice of you!!!

but as for ur question: be ready . long omnic design musing under the cut. im very passionate about character design lol

personally i think omnics as a whole are a ton of fun to design because of their simplicity: they have just enough guidelines so you have a solid base to build off of, but are malleable enough to be fun to play with. especially with all the canon omnic designs we have so far, even if you cant come up with a lot, its very easy to pick and choose from bits that are already available, and to make yourself a very original omnic from just those!!

case in point: look at all these wonderful, canon omnics

this isnt all of them i dont think, but its a good enough sampling to start to see some patterns in the designs as well as the variety in them. you can see a lot of them have a similar :3 sort of face, the forehead optics, the angular arms; a few of them have much sleeker and more organic lines, like the carekeeper for the children, or the two single-eyed ones, so thats a good starting point to see where your design can begin. a good way to make them very recognizable as an omnic is to keep those neck pistons, the prominent chin, and the optics.

now the way i make my ocs is that i get an idea for a concept first, and then design a body around it. (its absolutely not the only way to do things but ive found its easiest for me as it gives me sort of a starting point!) for instance rose is made to be a field model so shes like. bulkier, stronger, looks tougher and less humanoid, and looks like she was made for practicality rather than design. czar is an artist and a music producer and he’s meant to stand out, to be loud and flashy and fancy, so hes one of the newer and more unique looking models, and has vivid colors. salome is supposed to be big and intimidating so i kept her more angular, used colors with more negative connotations (black, gold, red) and tried to make her look fancy. i personally like designs that reflect how a character is in general

now for 93, the idea i had was an assassin omnic who disguises himself in crowds by being a very generic-looking kind of model - and if we look at the omnics above, the more angular, silvery, blue-opticed model comes up the most, so since i wanted him to look as “generic” as possible, i tried to stay within that design.

if u look at the crowd in the alive short, youd be hard pressed to pick him out of it quickly. which is what i wanted design wise!

now if you want something a little more visually interesting (and really, who wouldnt. common omnics are cute but they dont make for the best characters, usually), you can either take some canon elements and change them to your tastes. for instance: you can take that :3 face humanoid omnics have, and just change it a little bit to make it really yours. like this:

just by changing a few things on their faces you can immediately give an omnic personality. just how zenyatta looks nonthreatening and friendly because of his downturned eyes you can do the same to yours: angling them forward (like in the 2nd row) makes them seem happy and friendly, keeping them straight (like this: -_-) might make them seem a little less approachable, and giving them “open” lit up eyes can either make them look friendlier or more threatening, depending on the size, the shape, and the color. (see how rose, in row 1, looks more awake, more open, than salome in row 3, who looks tired bc of the eye shape?)

you can also play around with face plate shapes; compare zenyatta and mondatta’s if you want a good example. zenyatta has a smooth round face which makes him look younger; mondatta has sunken in eyes, prominent cheekbones, an angular chin. he looks older, more tired, more wise. all that from just adding a few more angles!

now for color its all up to you. a few design elements i feel are very interesting to play with in omnics are body lights, contrasting joint colors, colored jaws, and wire placement. but again its all up to you what you decide to do with those, and what you personally like to draw. going with what you think is pretty rarely turns out badly so just go nuts!

as for drawing them; i personally am absolute garbage at drawing non-organic things, lmfao. a good way to hide that fact is to use the bends and shapes already present in omnic designs and pushing those to the max; omnics are meant to look humanoid, so dont be afraid to use human bodies as reference and just exaggerating the shapes! make an omnic meant to look sleek and organic! add wires or synthetic muscle! give them inhuman feet, or claws, or extra limbs! fuck anatomy. youre here to have fun, not to figure out an actual working robot, right?

some good guidelines for omnic bodies are these:

(again, this is just the base stuff. you can easily expand on it and modify the basic shapes to get a more interesting silhouette or more interesting elements.)

other than that its pretty much all up to you! experiment with lines, strip them of their plates, add pistons, put holes in the silhouette, try to figure out how it all fits together; its all about experimentation and throwing stuff at them and seeing what sticks, lmao. ocs are there for fun!

a good way to get ideas too is to gather up some research material. i have some tags on my main blog that are just for that: robots, mechs, and technology. ive gleaned design elements from a lot of things that way (but make sure not to outright copy. make it your own, yknow?)

otherwise just have fun!!! and id be glad 2 help design if u need any assistance ocs are my shit i lov 2 talk about them ✌️