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Goldfish Mecha Walkers

Well, if we want to make walkers, we want to see what is inside them, otherwise they're just big robots. So for this project we will start off with a few basic parts. The mechas are Mechwarrior clix, which you can get for a buck each (or less), and will provide their arms and legs to the effort. The capsules are from gumball machine toys, and will make cockpits.

But we also need some drivers. I looked around for small fish, but finally gave up on finding ones that would fit in the capsules, so I decided to make my own. These are a pretty simple sculpt, so I will use a glob of tape on the end of a piece of floral wire as the armature. In our case, we want high tech fish that are controlling the walkers, so I will leave the wire in as a control wire. And I'm going to have the wire go in through the forehead.

Fins are hard to sculpt, so I just cut some out of thin cardboard, and I'll stick them in.

Here are the sculpted fish. Pretty simple blobs of Crayola Model Magic clay with a mouth pulled out of them. The fins are held into the clay with a bit of glue. Eyes are also a bit of a pain to sculpt, especially if you want them to be the same size and shape. So I glued some small cheap plastic beads in for eyes. All in all, I think it is a nice effect for a small bit of effort.

Now, I've added them to some cardboard circles that will serve as bases inside the capsules. I also added a couple miscelaneous mech bits to the fish' foreheads and the inside bases. They sould bring out the idea that the floral wire is control wire.

And here they are painted up. You could certainly do a lot more work and detail on the fish, but they will be a little blurred out through the clear plastic, so it is best to leave it to decent sized blocks of bold colors with high contrast differences.

Then we just assemble them and paint the walkers. I went with a majorly gold theme to match the goldifsh space marines, with a bit of copper, brass, and silver to break it up a bit.

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