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Description
I considered inking this, but in the end I liked the look of the pencil version as is.

If you've ever wanted to pick-and-choose to come up with a signature look for your own Grey Wool Science Guy character, here you go. I figured I ought to draw and post several variations on a theme rather than just get irked with anybody who exactly copies what Ray Beethoven wears.

Top Row 1. GWSG Gunslinger Coat. There's actually a finished costume of this in existence, although I'm not sure which of my two pals has it in their closets. This is the Otto Sprechenvulf costume that Austin wore on stage when we sang a barbershop quartet version of "Pour Some Sugar On Me" on stage during a costume contest. The wool arrow-pointing chest panel is supposed to direct the viewer's eyes down to the pistol on a not-shown-here gunbelt, but I've heard that the arrow accidentally tosses the viewer's eye up over the opposite shoulder instead. Oh well. I tried. LOL

Top Row 2. GWSG Repair and Sabotage Coat. {Ray Beethoven's version. A full costume version exists of this, and I would've been up a creek without a paddle if not for the collapse of the U.S.S.R. in 1989 eventually granting us all these surplus East German wool greatcoats in the middle of the corn belt of the U.S. for me to discover and utilize. I never fully decided yet whether or not this look is something Ray came up with or if it's the uniform that most guys in Ray's part of the army were issued during the Holkan-Wachovian War. Likewise for the wool chest panels on the far right of the drawing; I never fully detailed whether the hexnut shape is something only worn by only Ray or by any Wachovian during wartime who is assigned to specialize in repair and sabotage.}

Continuing With Top Row 2. Oooo! I almost forgot! The collar is my real pride-and-joy of the whole design. {I cut off the pocket flaps and added button holes to both ends of a pocket flap; the result is a collar which keeps both the nape, sides, and front of the neck warm in winter without flapping all over in the wind or having holes where modern-day winter coat collars meet the main front zipper.} On a separate note regarding the sleeves, while I don't have this built into the costume because nobody but me would ever know it was there anyway, in the GWSG universe it's common for engineers, mechanics, sappers, etc. to wear heavy leather gloves with gauntlets outdoors. The gloves prevent tools from sliding prematurely out of the long pockets sewn lengthwise into the wrist area on the sleeves. When say, Ray runs up to an enemy tank and needs to start opening up hatches and engine panels, he can take off his gloves to get at the tools for detail work AND his fingers aren't frostbitten. {Hey, I learned a lot by playing the clarinet in marching band! Foremost is the unfortunate effect of November temperatures upon manual dexterity.)

Top Row 3: Greta von Hammersmith style. [link] came up with this design and character, but it fits into the GWSG setting darn well, so why not include it here?

Middle Row 1. Spy Coat. Shorter length reduces weight and likelihood of snagging. Likely to have Buttons Type 4 or 5 sewn on, since Holkans use their own three-pronged screwdrivers instead of Phillips or Regular screwdrivers. {Point of interest: Both Holkans and Wachovians wear lots of grey wool with tan leather, often causing confusion during wartime. Both nation-states are adjacent geographically and share many characteristics and well as history. Their political ideologies and daily behavior of their residents have grown very different over the decades.}

BTW, those are indeed button styles in the mid-upper left. In order from top-to-bottom, the button styles are...
1. Starter Buttons. (These came with the military surplus East German greatcoat.)
2. Phillips Screwdriver Look.
3. Regular Screwdriver Look.
4. Helkan/Holkan Foundry Look 1. Good for spies in Holkus.
5. Helkan/Holkan Foundry Look 2. Good for spies in Holkus. {Yep, their standard screwdrivers have heads which look like that, too.}
6. Hexnut Look. {Currently on my 2009 Ray costume's alteration.)
7. False Hexnut Look. {An Evil Ray costume would have these because circular black buttons are easily found and six-sided shiny hexnut shaped buttons are dang hard to fit over and over through a buttonhole.}
8. Hexnut Cufflinks {Impractical in snowy climates for Ray but perfect for weddings in the GWSG universe or in ours. Heck, I'd wear these on MY tux. It'd be hip yet not blatant enough to offend any of the wedding guests who are over 65.}
9. Screw-in Hexnut. {Only feasible for thicker and sturdier fabrics or metal suits of armor. This was originally #1 on my brainstormed list for my costume's new buttons before the laws of physics and common sense finally forced me to settle on grayish-white Epoxy hexagon-shaped buttons in the style of Button 6.}

Back to coats...
Middle Row 2. Another Army Coat {I haven't decided on whether it's only worn by arms-bearing soldiers, officers, guards, logisics, etc. I was going for multiple coat varieties here moreso than solidifying the backstories behind each one.}

Middle Row 3. RPG and Massive Gatling Gunnery Coat {Notice the built-in thick leather strap(s) which allow the coat to better distribute the weight of the wearer's weapons. Medieval-looking iron chestplates can be worn underneath the coat versus enemy bullets. I'm curious to see what the headgear would look like to go with this coat. Feel free to draw one in, hint. Hint.}

Middle Row 4. Wool Vest

Bottom Row 1. Textile Factory Standard Coat. {Yep, that's what the East European greatcoat looked like before I got out the scissors that day. I thought I'd better include it here for compare-and-contrast and to give other artists ideas.}

Bottom Row 2. Evil Ray Coat {One of a kind, baby.}

Bottom Row 4. Sniper's Coat {Originally drawn for the costume design for Craig, a friend of mine who turned bleach white when I asked if he'd like to come to a sci-fi convention and help me sing my own 1910-style musical arrangement of a Def Lepard song on stagewhile wearing... uh, Craig? Craig? Where'd he go?}

Bottom Row 5. Work Apron. Clockwork Annie style. {Karen and I designed this and she sewed it using the fabric scraps off Austin's costume's lower half from Row One's gunslinger coat. }

On the far left of the drawing are several styles of wool chest panels. Some have pockets, some hide pockets, some hide iron plating for armor, some just act as decoration or for quick visual identification on the battlefield. It's likely that each shape is only worn by specialists in various fields of expertise. Textile factories can create many uniforms with the same basic arrangement of buttons, but the position and shape of the chest panels could act as a sort of hey-I'm-a-solider or hey-I'm-a-medic or hey-I'm-an-interpreter method.

Description
I considered inking this, but in the end I liked the look of the pencil version as is.

If you've ever wanted to pick-and-choose to come up with a signature look for your own Grey Wool Science Guy character, here you go. I figured I ought to draw and post several variations on a theme rather than just get irked with anybody who exactly copies what Ray Beethoven wears.

Top Row 1. GWSG Gunslinger Coat. There's actually a finished costume of this in existence, although I'm not sure which of my two pals has it in their closets. This is the Otto Sprechenvulf costume that Austin wore on stage when we sang a barbershop quartet version of "Pour Some Sugar On Me" on stage during a costume contest. The wool arrow-pointing chest panel is supposed to direct the viewer's eyes down to the pistol on a not-shown-here gunbelt, but I've heard that the arrow accidentally tosses the viewer's eye up over the opposite shoulder instead. Oh well. I tried. LOL

Top Row 2. GWSG Repair and Sabotage Coat. {Ray Beethoven's version. A full costume version exists of this, and I would've been up a creek without a paddle if not for the collapse of the U.S.S.R. in 1989 eventually granting us all these surplus East German wool greatcoats in the middle of the corn belt of the U.S. for me to discover and utilize. I never fully decided yet whether or not this look is something Ray came up with or if it's the uniform that most guys in Ray's part of the army were issued during the Holkan-Wachovian War. Likewise for the wool chest panels on the far right of the drawing; I never fully detailed whether the hexnut shape is something only worn by only Ray or by any Wachovian during wartime who is assigned to specialize in repair and sabotage.}

Continuing With Top Row 2. Oooo! I almost forgot! The collar is my real pride-and-joy of the whole design. {I cut off the pocket flaps and added button holes to both ends of a pocket flap; the result is a collar which keeps both the nape, sides, and front of the neck warm in winter without flapping all over in the wind or having holes where modern-day winter coat collars meet the main front zipper.} On a separate note regarding the sleeves, while I don't have this built into the costume because nobody but me would ever know it was there anyway, in the GWSG universe it's common for engineers, mechanics, sappers, etc. to wear heavy leather gloves with gauntlets outdoors. The gloves prevent tools from sliding prematurely out of the long pockets sewn lengthwise into the wrist area on the sleeves. When say, Ray runs up to an enemy tank and needs to start opening up hatches and engine panels, he can take off his gloves to get at the tools for detail work AND his fingers aren't frostbitten. {Hey, I learned a lot by playing the clarinet in marching band! Foremost is the unfortunate effect of November temperatures upon manual dexterity.)

Top Row 3: Greta von Hammersmith style. [link] came up with this design and character, but it fits into the GWSG setting darn well, so why not include it here?

Middle Row 1. Spy Coat. Shorter length reduces weight and likelihood of snagging. Likely to have Buttons Type 4 or 5 sewn on, since Holkans use their own three-pronged screwdrivers instead of Phillips or Regular screwdrivers. {Point of interest: Both Holkans and Wachovians wear lots of grey wool with tan leather, often causing confusion during wartime. Both nation-states are adjacent geographically and share many characteristics and well as history. Their political ideologies and daily behavior of their residents have grown very different over the decades.}

BTW, those are indeed button styles in the mid-upper left. In order from top-to-bottom, the button styles are...
1. Starter Buttons. (These came with the military surplus East German greatcoat.)
2. Phillips Screwdriver Look.
3. Regular Screwdriver Look.
4. Helkan/Holkan Foundry Look 1. Good for spies in Holkus.
5. Helkan/Holkan Foundry Look 2. Good for spies in Holkus. {Yep, their standard screwdrivers have heads which look like that, too.}
6. Hexnut Look. {Currently on my 2009 Ray costume's alteration.)
7. False Hexnut Look. {An Evil Ray costume would have these because circular black buttons are easily found and six-sided shiny hexnut shaped buttons are dang hard to fit over and over through a buttonhole.}
8. Hexnut Cufflinks {Impractical in snowy climates for Ray but perfect for weddings in the GWSG universe or in ours. Heck, I'd wear these on MY tux. It'd be hip yet not blatant enough to offend any of the wedding guests who are over 65.}
9. Screw-in Hexnut. {Only feasible for thicker and sturdier fabrics or metal suits of armor. This was originally #1 on my brainstormed list for my costume's new buttons before the laws of physics and common sense finally forced me to settle on grayish-white Epoxy hexagon-shaped buttons in the style of Button 6.}

Back to coats...
Middle Row 2. Another Army Coat {I haven't decided on whether it's only worn by arms-bearing soldiers, officers, guards, logisics, etc. I was going for multiple coat varieties here moreso than solidifying the backstories behind each one.}

Middle Row 3. RPG and Massive Gatling Gunnery Coat {Notice the built-in thick leather strap(s) which allow the coat to better distribute the weight of the wearer's weapons. Medieval-looking iron chestplates can be worn underneath the coat versus enemy bullets. I'm curious to see what the headgear would look like to go with this coat. Feel free to draw one in, hint. Hint.}

Middle Row 4. Wool Vest

Bottom Row 1. Textile Factory Standard Coat. {Yep, that's what the East European greatcoat looked like before I got out the scissors that day. I thought I'd better include it here for compare-and-contrast and to give other artists ideas.}

Bottom Row 2. Evil Ray Coat {One of a kind, baby.}

Bottom Row 4. Sniper's Coat {Originally drawn for the costume design for Craig, a friend of mine who turned bleach white when I asked if he'd like to come to a sci-fi convention and help me sing my own 1910-style musical arrangement of a Def Lepard song on stagewhile wearing... uh, Craig? Craig? Where'd he go?}

Bottom Row 5. Work Apron. Clockwork Annie style. {Karen and I designed this and she sewed it using the fabric scraps off Austin's costume's lower half from Row One's gunslinger coat. }

On the far left of the drawing are several styles of wool chest panels. Some have pockets, some hide pockets, some hide iron plating for armor, some just act as decoration or for quick visual identification on the battlefield. It's likely that each shape is only worn by specialists in various fields of expertise. Textile factories can create many uniforms with the same basic arrangement of buttons, but the position and shape of the chest panels could act as a sort of hey-I'm-a-solider or hey-I'm-a-medic or hey-I'm-an-interpreter method.