Which is better?
The one on the left was what I was working for, however the second one (on the right) came out really well, if not better. I did these ones the same way I did the recent work, tracing major elements from a photo and adding to the image.
I was inspired by the recent War of the Worlds posts on lategaming.com and a recent post about these excellent autochrome photos from the turn of the 20th Century. You can see how I used the source image by looking at my first attempt:
It took a bit of messing around to find a design that worked for the tripod and I think I found a good one. So here are my early sketchs showing the progress.
I had a great vision of how the tripod moved and attacked. The heat ray would be static on the bottom of the tripod and the tripod would rear up to aim the deadly beam. The legs would be like Doctor Octopus’ tentacles but were spiked at the end (with a heavy weight) so they could dig into the ground to support the great weight of the tripod and also be used as weapons.