Sarah Clarity Studios

Chapter 2: Stance, Proportion & “Hero Lines”

Created by Sarah Choi (prompt writer using ChatGPT)

Stance, Proportion & “Hero Lines” for Mecha Concept Artists

Stance and proportion are the skeleton of mecha readability. Before paint, before greebles, before logos, the viewer reads the machine’s attitude—how it holds its weight, how it occupies the ground, and which lines pull the eye. Those first reads determine whether a design feels nimble or oppressive, premium or improvised, heroic or ominous, and—critically—what scale class the audience assumes it belongs to. “Hero lines” are the guiding lines of flow that make a mecha feel designed rather than assembled: the long, intentional arcs and angles that unify silhouette, posture, and gesture into one confident statement.

This article focuses on how stance, proportion, and hero lines work together to define scale classes (Exo, Light, Medium, Heavy, Colossal) and keep silhouette families consistent across a roster. It’s written for both concepting and production realities: how to push style and personality early, and how to preserve those decisions through handoff, modeling, rigging, animation, and camera.

The triad: stance, proportion, hero lines

Think of the triad as three questions you answer on every design. Stance asks: where does the weight go, and what does the base communicate about stability and intent? Proportion asks: what is emphasized—legs, torso, shoulders, head module, backpack—and what does that imply about speed, strength, durability, and function? Hero lines ask: which long lines organize the shape so the design reads as one idea rather than a pile of parts?

When the triad aligns, your mecha reads clearly from a thumbnail and remains compelling at full render. When it doesn’t, the design can feel “busy,” uncertain, or scale-confused—especially in gameplay where silhouettes and motion reads matter more than surface detail.

Stance as an instant scale cue

Stance is one of the fastest ways to communicate class because it lives in big, legible decisions: foot spacing, knee bend, hip height, and the relationship between center of mass and base of support. In general, as scale increases, stance tends to widen, the posture tends to settle, and the design must look more constrained by physics. If your Exo stands like a tank and your Heavy stands like a ballerina, the audience will feel the mismatch immediately.

Stance also sets the implied animation language. A machine that looks balanced on a narrow base suggests agile movement, quick direction changes, and precise foot placement. A machine that looks planted on a wide base suggests slower acceleration, heavier footfalls, and momentum-driven turns. Concept art that communicates stance clearly gives animators permission to move the mecha the way the design promises.

Proportion as “function story”

Proportion tells the story of what the mecha is built to do. Long legs and compact torso suggest mobility and traversal. Broad shoulders and heavy forearms suggest lifting, recoil control, or melee dominance. A large backpack suggests power generation, boosters, or mission endurance. A small head module suggests armored survivability or sensor redundancy. These are not merely stylistic; in production they affect rig complexity, deformation risk, collision assumptions, and camera composition.

Across a silhouette family, proportion decisions become a shared “manufacturer logic.” If your faction’s mecha are known for high shoulders and tucked heads, keep that trait across classes, then scale it appropriately rather than reinventing it each time. The viewer should feel continuity even when the classes differ.

Hero lines: the backbone of visual authority

Hero lines are the long, continuous lines that lead the eye and unify a design. They often appear as a strong shoulder-to-hip taper, a dominant spine/backpack sweep, a repeated chevron rhythm, or an intentional “C-curve” in the overall gesture. They’re called hero lines because they create confidence. A mecha with clear hero lines looks like it was authored by a single intention.

Hero lines are especially important in mecha because mechanical detail can easily fragment the silhouette. Without a guiding line, panel breaks, vents, cables, and hardpoints can turn the design into noise. With a guiding line, detail becomes ornamentation on top of a clear statement.

In production, hero lines are also a survivability tool. They help maintain design identity under different lighting, shaders, LOD reductions, and motion blur. If the hero line survives, the design survives.

Silhouette families: consistent grammar, escalated emphasis

A silhouette family needs a consistent grammar: recurring angles, repeated negative spaces, a signature shoulder silhouette, a consistent hip geometry, or a trademark sensor profile. The family should feel like the same industrial culture. But within that shared grammar, each scale class needs escalated emphasis in stance, proportion, and hero lines. This is where many rosters fail: they copy the same shapes and simply resize them, which makes scale feel arbitrary.

Instead, treat each class like a different “sentence” in the same language. The vocabulary stays consistent; the tone and volume change. Exo whispers. Light speaks quickly. Medium speaks clearly. Heavy speaks with weight. Colossal speaks like architecture.

Exo class: human legibility, heroic gesture in a tight space

Exo mecha live close to the human silhouette. Their stance is fundamentally human, because the audience expects human balance rules. The feet are roughly human-scale (even if armored), the hip width is believable, and the posture reads as a person enhanced rather than a vehicle piloting itself.

Proportion in Exo often leans toward readable anatomy. If you push shoulders too broad or legs too thick, you risk jumping scale classes. Instead, exaggerate through shape design rather than bulk: sleek shoulder plates, a strong chest line, a distinctive spine pack. Hero lines in Exo work best as clean, wearable arcs—lines that feel like sports armor, powered gear, or high-end protective equipment.

In production, Exo benefits from clear joint intent. Because it moves close to human, any stiffness reads as wrong. Concept sheets should imply range of motion and silhouette changes during movement (knees bending, hips rotating, shoulder plates sliding). If the hero line is “the back sweep,” show how it breaks or flexes when the wearer crouches.

Light class: narrow confidence, spring-loaded attitude

Light mecha are the first rung where the stance can become more “machine” than “human.” They often read best with a slightly widened base and a poised, forward-leaning posture—like a sprinter at the line. The stance communicates readiness and quick reaction.

Proportion in Light tends to emphasize legs and feet for mobility, while keeping the torso compact. Arms can be longer than human to imply reach and tool use, but they should not become heavy blocks unless you intend a brawler sub-type. Hero lines in Light often come from forward thrust: a shoulder-to-knee diagonal, a head-to-backpack sweep, or a repeating angle that suggests velocity.

In production, Light class is where camera and animation begin to stress silhouette clarity. A Light’s hero line should read even when the unit is small on screen. If you rely on small head details to create identity, it will vanish in gameplay. Make sure your hero line is built into the torso and legs where it remains visible.

Medium class: the readable baseline, disciplined proportion

Medium is the hardest class to design because it is the baseline. It needs to be iconic without being exaggerated, and legible without being generic. Medium stance should feel athletic and capable: a stable base, purposeful weight, and a posture that reads “trained.” This is where your silhouette family usually establishes its clearest grammar.

Proportion in Medium works best when it follows a disciplined hierarchy: one dominant mass (often torso and shoulders), one supportive mass (hips and legs), and one accent mass (head module or backpack). If all masses compete equally, the design reads busy and loses authority. Hero lines in Medium often feel like “military tailoring”—clean, direct, and composed. The lines can be angular or curved depending on faction, but they should feel intentional and repeatable across the roster.

In production, Medium is the unit that most frequently gets reused, reskinned, or expanded. If you define hero lines clearly—through silhouette, armor breaks, and big panel seams—downstream teams can preserve identity even as variants proliferate.

Heavy class: grounded mass, visible load paths, authoritative lines

Heavy stance needs to look like it can carry the mass. That usually means wider feet, lower hips, thicker ankles, and a posture that feels “settled” rather than “posed.” Heavy can still be heroic, but the heroism comes from inevitability and force, not from agility. The stance communicates that it will win by endurance, firepower, or presence.

Proportion in Heavy escalates thickness and redundancy. Shoulders broaden. Forearms thicken. Torso depth increases. But the key is to make these choices read as structural, not as arbitrary “bigger blocks.” One of the best ways to do this is to show believable load paths: thigh-to-hip reinforcement, piston placement that suggests real force transfer, heel spurs or stabilizers that explain balance.

Hero lines in Heavy often become longer and more architectural. Instead of fast diagonals, you get strong verticals and deliberate slopes that feel like buttresses or armored ramps. The hero line might be a massive shoulder silhouette that flows into a reinforced hip line, creating a single, commanding contour.

In production, Heavy class often drives VFX and physics reads—dust, recoil, shake, and footfall. Your stance and hero lines should communicate where the weight is so effects teams know where to emphasize impact. If the concept says “weight on the heels,” but the model animates toe-first, the illusion breaks.

Colossal class: posture as skyline, proportion as infrastructure

Colossal mecha are not just “big humanoids.” They read best when they behave like infrastructure: slow, deliberate, and architecturally segmented. Stance in Colossal often becomes less about feet spacing and more about footprint and grounding. The base may be multiple contact points, broad platforms, or structural supports that imply dedicated terrain interaction.

Proportion shifts dramatically. A colossal torso can become a tower. A head module may become a command deck. Limbs may be thicker than buildings. The design must communicate that it belongs to a different category of object. Hero lines in Colossal are macro-lines: the sweep of a superstructure, the silhouette of a dorsal tower, the stepped rhythm of deck levels. Micro detail exists, but it must be embedded inside the macro shape, not competing with it.

In production, Colossal is often seen through lensing and environment framing. Your hero line should support cinematic composition: where does the camera “climb” the design, where does it rest, what line leads the viewer from ground to skyline? If you give Colossal a clear macro hero line, layout and lighting artists can stage it like a building—which is usually the correct mental model.

The “hero line ladder”: how hero lines evolve across scale classes

A useful way to keep class separation is to deliberately evolve hero lines as scale increases. Exo hero lines are wearable and tight—curves and seams that feel like gear. Light hero lines emphasize velocity—diagonals and forward thrust. Medium hero lines emphasize discipline—clean, repeated slopes and stable contours. Heavy hero lines emphasize mass—long, structural ramps and thick silhouettes. Colossal hero lines emphasize architecture—towering verticals, stepped decks, and skyline gestures.

If you want a coherent silhouette family, pick one signature line motif—say, a forward-tilted shoulder ramp—and then express it differently at each scale. On Exo it’s a shoulder plate angle. On Medium it’s the torso contour. On Heavy it’s a layered armor ramp. On Colossal it becomes a superstructure slope the size of a building.

Practical methods to design stance and proportion reliably

A reliable method is to begin with a simple stick-and-mass mannequin. Place the feet, set the hip height, and decide the center of mass. Then lock a single “gesture line” that becomes your primary hero line. Only after that should you add armor and silhouette breaks. This prevents detail from dictating posture.

Another method is to use three silhouettes per class: a neutral standing pose, a motion pose (stride or braced firing), and a “hero” pose for marketing. If the class reads consistently across all three, your stance and proportion are doing their job. If it only reads in the hero pose, your silhouette language may be too dependent on theatrical posing.

Production translation: giving downstream teams something they can keep

To preserve stance, proportion, and hero lines through production, provide more than a pretty render. A single orthographic with a simple “gesture line overlay” can communicate hero lines clearly. A note that says “primary flow: shoulder → hip” or “macro line: dorsal tower sweep” gives modelers a priority when they have to simplify or restructure.

For rigging and animation, stance decisions become requirements. If the design depends on a deep knee bend for its attitude, you need joint ranges that support it. If the design’s hero line depends on a sliding shoulder assembly, you should indicate how it moves. A small callout showing armor overlap during motion can prevent painful rework.

For LOD and readability, hero lines should survive simplification. Encourage downstream teams to preserve the big silhouette breaks and macro seams that create the hero line, even if micro greebles disappear. If the hero line is built into the silhouette, LOD doesn’t destroy identity.

Common mistakes and how to course-correct

One common mistake is relying on pose alone to create heroism. If a design only looks good in an extreme contrapposto stance, it may fall apart in neutral gameplay. Course-correct by building hero lines into the silhouette itself—shoulder ramps, hip tapers, dorsal sweeps—so the design reads even when standing still.

Another mistake is using the same proportions across classes and compensating with detail density. This makes Exo look like a toy and Colossal look like a figurine. Course-correct by escalating stance width, joint thickness, mass hierarchy, and macro segmentation as scale increases.

A third mistake is “knee and ankle fragility” in Heavy and Colossal. If the legs don’t look load-bearing, the whole design loses believability. Course-correct by thickening the lower limb structure, lowering the hips, widening the feet, and adding stabilizers that explain balance.

Closing: hero lines are the promise you keep

Stance and proportion tell the viewer what the machine is; hero lines tell them what the machine means. Together, they make scale classes readable and silhouette families coherent. For concept artists, the triad keeps exploration focused and expressive. For production artists, it provides priorities that survive technical constraints.

If you can look at a tiny silhouette and still feel the stance, recognize the proportion story, and trace the hero line with your eye, you’ve built a design that will hold up—from thumbnails to trailers, and from concept to shipped game.