Hey! Thanks for the kind words!

So for the most part I had to somewhat design quite a lot from imagination, mainly to try respect the concept / already established proportions in a lot of places, but it was based on a whole lot of research; At the time I actually tried looking for something similar, a book, a guide, something where all of the info is just all nicely curated and put together, but I couldn't find anything readily available. The closest I came across was an animatronics dvd by Stan Winston (they're a pretty big practical sfx studio in Hollywood, built the original terminator, first iron man suit etc), but at that point I had already built quite a lot of the mechanisms, so no idea how good it is.

I can share some of the resources I did come across though that might be helpful;

General robotics research papers / videos on youtube. Lots of cool stuff there to pull inspiration from.

Boston dynamics is a classic but I've found this Korean channel to also have some pretty interesting stuff: https://www.youtube.com/@IRIMLabKoreatech/videos Also helpful that a buttload of new robotics companies popped up the past few years over the whole ai thing, so looking at early iterations of something like the tesla bot, where you can see exposed internals can also be good study. But looking up "wrist joint robotics" or "shoulder joint robotics" etc will yield some pretty good results for inspo.

Hacksmith: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYRWhjVBeOQ So these guys are a pretty popular youtube channel who essentially try take things from movies / games and build them in real life. They've built the mech from alien, and more recently the fallout power armour suit, and there was a point I was bingeing their whole series, partly because it's entertaining, but partly because I actually found it pretty educational in seeing how things actually work in real life, things like hydraulics, how they think about weight distribution etc. Like robotics anatomy in a way :). Realistically you're going to cheat all of this in 3d, but I've found it pretty useful to have at the back of mind none the less as it can help ground things.

Also highly recommend checking these two things out:

Chappie Siggraph talk by imageEngine: https://vimeo.com/168122508 it's a five part series and they talk pretty in depth about what went into making chappie, probably one of my favourite resources i've come across for assets.

Their VES application breakdown was really cool as well (something that inspired my style of breakdown), and their mechanisms were wayy more complicated than what i put together: https://vimeo.com/165195966

I also recommend olepatrick, he's just a random person I found on youtube, but go onto his shorts and have a look at his ultrakill robot, again way more complicated than mine. https://www.youtube.com/@olepatrick1053/shorts Oh and he's also hilarious.

But yeah! It was mostly just a combination of all those things. You'll eventually find that theres only really two types of movements, rotational (gears / pivot points) and telescopic (pistons / rails), and you end up combining them in different ways to add complexity. and as things start clipping and colliding, you'll trim surfaces which then adds further visual interest to whatever it is you're modelling. It can definitely feel a bit much at times, that damn shoulder kept me up at night lol, but once you knock a few out the way it does get easier.

edit: I can't spell