Well the cool thing (ok perhaps playing a bit fast and loose with the word cool) about it is that the skeleton can be scaled to get a pretty wide variety of stature for the mech, from broad abd stalky to lean and mean, without messing up the rigging.  So once you have the proportions the way you want you can export an OBJ to craft your armor around.  You have to pay a certain amount of attention to the different bits of armor and how they might collide and model accordingly.  The attantion is well worth it however as it leaves you with some believable proportions.

 

As far as trying to replicate the exact look of the artwork from the games... well probably something I would avoid.  As much as it is a very cool franchise a lot of the artwork was dreadful (mostly with the exception of the borrowed designs).  if you were to work with what I started here it would make more sense to capture the 'general idea' of a particular mech rather than try to replicate it exactly

 

Quote - I shall now join the geeks and keep an eye on this in hopes of it eventually going forward again.  

I am one of those rare and elusive female Battletech/Mechwarrior players.  Not the video games, but the tabletop version.  Though MegaMek is a decent substitute when we can't get a game togther anymore 

As I recall many of the 'classic' Mechs got an overhaul several years back and it is the revamped artwork which is the basis of the ones for the new game.  Okay, I more than recall it, I cried when I saw what they had done to my Crus.

Thank you Harmony Gold for yanking the rights to the old artwork, which yes, was a 'ripoff' of Macross.  Though a legal one when it was done.

Done geeking, the mech is looking very nice regardless, if you ever make a Toad that I would be interested in too :)