Meet Russ, RJ's cousin

Russ is a good ol' boy. He's a southern redneck who got the job at Molton Mecha because he is R.J.'s cousin, although he is a brilliant fabrication master as well. Russ does great work, but he likes to take his time which drives R.J. crazy. Russ hangs out with Jeter all the time at work where they are always creating little robots that do the most useless jobs.

Russ wasn't in any design submissions from our artists. I guess this was because of his character being the good guy with a warm, likable personality. I think our artists prefer drawing the tough characters with more challenging descriptions. Andrew was tasked with creating Russ with the above mentioned character guide. Scott thought the first sketch of Russ was "excellent." However, minor revisions were needed since Russ is human. The elf ears were eliminated, a sleeveless jacket was added and the long sleeved undershirt was rolled up. Revisions were made but it took time because the face was not consistent.

Mikhail was then asked to tighten up the sketch of Russ with the revisions in mind, so that Andrew could move on with the other characters. Mikhail drew three faces to be reviewed by Scott. But with so much work on hand, it took Scott some time to look at the sketches. So to move on, I posted it on the Deviant Art site and asked for help from the viewers. Unfortunately, when Scott saw the faces, he was not satisfied because they were different from what was first approved. So there were four more done before we got an almost-finished Russ. Since we were pressed for time, the 4th sketch was used for the San Diego Comic-Con Mechtechs postcards even though there were revisions that needed to be made to his face. Andrew continued to revise it and finally got what we were looking for. The first color version of Russ was used at Comic-Con. The coloring of the approved Russ was tweaked by Mark Taduran.