Photoshop 7 for ~15 hours for mech.

Paint Shop Pro for ~3 hours for the rest.

Staring and thinking what would look better ~4 hours (at least)

Procastrination ~no limit - took 1½ month from start to finish with long periods of inactivity.

References: The pose was referenced from episode 24 of "Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex". A quite crummy rip of it to be exact.

What you see is how I imagine the box-art of a plastic assembly model (scale 1:72, heh heh)of a MSDF 303 Armored Suit might look like (as far as I am aware, there are no such models on sale yet). I started out with just the mech, but then someone said "it looks like a model box art", I got the idea to make it look like such, complete with Japanese descriptions.

The unit itself originates from my favourite TV show, the anime "Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex". It has two pair of arms because the smaller pair belong to the pilot. The mecha arms merely mimic the movement of the pilot arms perfectly, making it very maneuverable and easy to manipulate the surroundings. The legs are straddled into the thighs. The suit itself has two knee-joints, and is essentially a chicken-walker.

Production was initiated in 2030 and it was developed by the (what is now) Japanese Marine Corps own development contractors, MSDF. The unit is intended for urban combat as it is too slow, immobile and large to deal with outdoor terrain combat. Despite it's tall height of 3,9 meters when standing fully extended, it can crouch down to 2,5 meters, enough to squeeze into many buildings, corridors, industrialized areas, etc.

The armor is APC like in strength, and is thus strong enough to deflect small-arms fire up to large bore armor-piercing bullets. Realistically, one needs anti-tank weaponry to disable a MSDF 303 quickly.

The suit has camera/sensor clusters in multiple places, including the wrists, back, thighs, shoulders and knees, giving it an enormous level of awareness of its surroundings. The knee-cameras will even allow the pilot to see what he is stepping on - literally! The pilot interfaces with the machine through his cyberbrain connection, and it is through that which the camera images are displayed to the pilot.

The pilot hands remain the achilles heel of the unit - direct hits can seriously injure them. A newer, heavier version exists with shielding over the hands, but at the expense of being more cumbersome and less dexterious to handle.

"MSDF 303" and "Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex" are copyright of Production IG [link]

EDIT: Due to my monitor settings being far too dark when painting this, it appeared too bright. Gamma has now been reduced by a massive 25% to get it back to the way it looked like to me when painting it.