Back in the day, everybody liked drawing I bet, doodling here and there. I was no different. I thought I would toss these up to share before I toss them out.
Here's an early drawing from likely 20 years ago that I did. This is kind of like my first still life drawing (ever, ... maybe), where I had the Skyhawk sitting on the HQ landing pad in my room as I did this.
Here's another old drawing, possibly the oldest of the doodles you see in this post.
It's just a top down view of more or less a jeep-style vehicle. Two cannons stick off the front fenders, and the driver has a rear-facing gunner right behind him with a machine gun. A rocket hangs off the rear left fender, but the big gun is some kind of cannon that takes up the whole right side of the vehicle.
Another older drawing was an attempt at me to draw the profile of the HISS on old grid-paper (does anyone use grid-paper these days?) I guess looking back it was a good thing to attempt at getting proportions down, hand-eye practice and all.
At some point I wanted to create an updated Skyhawk.
The thing that kind of bugged me about the Skyhawk was I didn't feel like it would fly, so to "improve" the "II" version of the Skyhawk I incorporated more lift into the combination landing gear by making it a wing and adding an extra "take-off" engine in the nose. The canopy is up-armored, and those side wings fold up for landing.
This VTOL sketch may have been done around the same time, I'm not sure. The top is a VTOL style plane it seems, where the lower one is a flying platform of sorts with the rotor being inside the disk.
I'm not sure if this had any real purpose other than to use a gray marker and drying-out process black marker.
And here's a doodle that probably started out as an attempt to draw a camaro, but Dreadnok and Mad Max influences took over I think.
In my previous post, I mentioned some ideas I had about setting up a rather large GIJOE base layout. This is a drawing I did a couple years back that kind of illustrates what I was thinking. There are other drawings that had even more elaborate ideas, such as the whole thing on a castle-looking base, with an elevator system that would have lowered the vehicles to an entry at the front/ bottom of the thing. This would have been built on contoured foam (2" think layers is what you see here.) This one has a ramp, with the checkpoint at the front entry cave.
At some point I was thinking of building a "battle in a box" box for the HQ. That's as far as I got with that one.
I've also played with the idea of a "Tomahawk II." It would have been a Super Tomahawk compared the '86 Tomahawk.
The Night Attack Chopper cockpit served me some inspirational imagination. I kind of like that 3-person crew arrangement. I added some gunship-style stations right behind the cockpit on either side, which there's actually kind of space for this on the '86 Tomahawk, I was thinking lowering the wings would put this space to good use.
Also, if you think about WWII bombers, they usually had rear gunner stations, I thought a lie-flat station just under the rear rotor would provide cover fire for landing troops, or picking them up. Or trying to deter any FANGs that might give chase.
You can see in the lower half of the sketch below I was thinking about the N.A.C.. I also kind of wanted to get a vehicle on board, much like a Chinook might have, so I was imagining pushing the sides out with gun stations on all four corners, room for 12 troops or a VAMP.
A rear turning wheel combat bike, possibly an "Evader II."
These are from a whole bunch of ideas for the "Badger II." I always liked how the Badger had an offset drivers seat, and I guess I like the asymmetrical style that could come from a potential Badger II. The driver and passenger (or armament) eventually kind of ended up sitting between the wheels on the outer edges, with the motor in the middle. (slide out figure pegs, too, on the sides.)
And then from there, if the motor was moved forward I started thinking about variable "mission boxes" that could go along with this arrangement.
But then from there, I started liking a variety of low riding side spots with a center gunner seat. A low center of gravity was probably a thought in there, too.
From there I started thinking Cobra could use a new jeep, instead of just along the lines of "Badger II." And the thinking along the lines of the STUN, with it's 360* of action, I starting thinking about a rear-facing gunner station, and making the driving sit in the center with a high seat, sort of four-wheeler like, then having two passengers kind of sit out front to the side for gunners.
The side seats between the wheels eventually became removable deploying gun turrets. I also wanted flip-down panels off the back of either fender for troop platforms.
The rear gunner could stand up and swing the gun around off the top roll cage and shoot forward to assist the assault phase for this vehicle.
A spare tire (actually changeable!) would add to the fun of the toy as it sits up on the front end.
Simplified version, almost more Ferret like, with a single seat ATV style, no rear gunner, but flip-down rear troop fenders. Gunner stations on either side still.
I had a bunch of HISS sketches around here, too, but this is all that was in this pile. I was thinking of widening the HISS body where the treads come down, and adding some IFV-style turrets there.
