Another piece of concept art for Armies of Alden that I've been meaning to do for some time. This guy is a Yefreytor, equivalent to a Private First Class, in an assault infantry company called a "Storm Pack".

He's a soldier of the Ursidanian Army, whose government is trying through brute force to 'correct the errors' of their Western society counterparts, who have allowed prey species to occupy government office and hold wealth for far too long. The Ursidanians, with a strong, centralized government and a caste system with apex predators strictly at the top, were long thought to be little better than barbarians by most westerners. That was before the invasion began, of course...

What was really fun about this picture was that I basically got to start with a blank slate. I sifted through a lot of science fiction armor concepts, including those of Gears of War and Halo, in order to determine what was good and what was bad. My ultimate objective was to avoid copying them, and that turned out to be somewhat easy. The shiny, day-glo power armor of Halo is terribly counter-intuitive to combat while the secondhand Space Marine armor in GoW looks like the unholy union of a garbage truck and a boombox.

I went for the minimum level of protection for the vital areas, light equipment, but still a form-fitting and futuristic look. What I got surprised even me! I hope that you guys are as happy with this as I am. There are still flaws to the design- for instance, there isn't a single Ursidanian flag on the entire uniform and there are no visible magazine pouches, but I'm still pleased with how it came together.