Brain in a jar

So this guy is the 2nd and final Machine monster that will show up in the comic. (Technically there were 3 success machines on the Atoll, but that one’s powers never manifest in this current story.) Its probably a waste to concept this guy because his full body only shows up once in the story and the rest of the time his body shot is an emoticon that comes out of this black obelisk looking server rack. Lemarchand was named after the French Toy maker in Clive barker’s Hellraiser series. It was sort of a knod to the fact that hes not necessarily a “Good guy”, and uses his powers sometimes for his own horrible amusement. As your basic “brain-in-a-jar” type character, Hes extremely fragile, light, thin, carries no weapons other then a shield and and cloak. His main weapon is the ability to posses any machine folk (Not including success machines however..). This makes him one of the most powerful success machines in the solar system, as he can just take over your body and use you as a puppet. In the scope of the story he uses the plight of the Atoll machines as a form of distraction to fight the usual Success machine urges toward wanton destruction. Unlike Neodym, he is a neutral character and does not wish to see the ruination of the world and its people.. he needs them for entertainment.

Manny apologies if you thought this guy would have turned out cooler then he did. But there are several reasons why I arrived at this more simplistic design then the one I had originally talked up. Also, Full disclosure, Since the ISS is a very complicated structure that is outside of my general understanding, I elected to give him the same treatment that I did with Neodym. I ripped this same exact dynamic pose based on this image.

I told a couple of people that I wanted to do the ISS “as if the artists for Gundam re-imagined it”. Upon some 5 minute google-fu I come to realize that Gundam, was basically ripping off of the same shit that Syd Mead and Nasa already came up with 20 years prior. Since this Success machine would have been mostly an emulation of outdated tech a space mining corporation purchased for their museum, why reinvent the wheel? Jester mentioned that “If this guy has a God complex why don’t you make him look kind of like a holy cathedral?” So I went with that idea as well as an idea to make him jagged and stained-glassy looking from the call of Duty ghosts intro movie cerebral mentioned. Most of the individual elements have been redesigned simply to look like a roman catholic-church decided it needed a space station. Could I have made the solar panels look like angel wings? Probably.. But  I already did the crazy wing thing for Wulfram and I want to keep all these vehicles monsters looking unique. Lemarchand would have been the most purposeful, intact design of the 3. Not so much like the cancerish brambles or the warped and twisted face-peeling shit from the previous characters.

I still have some left to do … But if you look closely, you can still see some nano root stuff on the body.

(Update) that nanoroot stuff may or may not be slightly augmented for basic survival in space. Space is actually pretty harsh even to machines, so machines that rely upon liquids may have special needs,defenses ect. I guess it makes sense that this guy possesses other space mining drones around him to go mine chunks of space ice from asteroids to bring back. Otherwise he could simply absorb debris floating around once in a while.