The Evolution of a Frame

I keep all my pictures.  I keep a lot of stuff really.  I'll admit it, I'm a packrat.  This does allow me to look back at the things I've built and track their progress over time though.  I've been doing a lot of building and picture taking lately.  Some new, some old.  Quite a few of the pictures I took recently were of my Hecaton frames.  This led to me modifying one of them and stumbling into a design secret I wasn't aware of.  Let's go back to the beginning and see how it all evolved, shall we?

This is the part that inspired the initial builds.

From left to right we have Melee, Artillery, and Direct Fire models.  The frame evolved pretty quickly and the three versions you see above are basically how it changed over time.  Although the black version initially had the legs attached underneath like the white version. The leg joint on the white and red mechs is taken from here and really helps with poseability. The original, on the black, had limited flexibility.

Here's links to a few shots of the frames posing; White kneeling, Black walking, Red in Leaning Stance.  After that a fourth design came along.  Taking new pictures of all four frames last weekend led to a discovery.  You can remove the arm sets and swap them between frames.  When I initially built this design this never really occurred to me.  I just built them specifically for each mech.  Swapping arms gives us this fun design.

It also allows us to this.

I'm not too happy with that picture, so expect a new version sometime in the future.  Along with Spotting and Movement options for arm plug-ins.

As I'm just beginning to discover, the Hecaton is a modular, multi-purpose frame that lends itself to multiple loadouts.  It's also roughly the same size as the ubiquitous Chub.

So look through the following pictures galleries and see if the Hecaton inspires you.

Hecaton Frame set on Flickr.  Brickshelf gallery.