In movie special effects, they will sometimes film several passes of a miniature model to capture different aspects–a matte pass, a lighting pass, etc. When they do a pass to capture the surface detail on the model, they call it a beauty pass.
This is the beauty pass on the Drillers. Normally, I’ll just depict them as gray metal, but for today’s strip, I decided to show them in more detail.
They are battered and scarred from thousands of deflected bullets and blades and other attacks. The three dark lines on the forearm unit are welding scars from when Digger attempted to jazz them up by adding fins (as described by Digger in the short story “Double Secret Weapon,” available at Baen’s Universe: “At one point, I got so bored with them that I tried to weld on little Cadillac-style fins, give them some panache, but after two or three battles, they were beat all to hell. Looked really pitiful.”)
The three discolored spots on the hand unit are evidence of more recent welds, but he doesn’t talk about them.
