The Death Machine

We have been slowly working on a couple of projects here at Oxenham Design. Both are in the design stages and are for 2 separate movies. So the next bunch of posts will bounce back and forth. The first one we are fabricating is a Death Machine! This machine will be influenced heavily by the Steam-punk movement. In a nutshell, this old rusted machine has it's victims strapped down and slowly tattoos them to death. There will be a harrow that has 100's of tattoo needles that slowly tattoo your crime onto your body, until you FEEL your sentence in your soul. That sounds like something I got to have. We started the initial designs in the 3d modelling program Sketch-up, which is great for quickly massing an idea out. The next few weeks will be spent figuring out what exactly is going to move and how. At the end of the movie, this machine needs to "break down" and collapse on it's victim. This will also be a big design challenge, having it look like it's breaking down, but still staying quite safe. Safety is always first priority. There will be lots of rusted gears and pipes, my favorite. Below is the initial design concept, and you can see the harrow in the middle. I think we are going to have the tattoo needles attached to a simple crank-shaft design. This should allow an entire row of needles move off of 1 drive unit.

At this point in the design, the components don't really need to function. It's more about massing and design. After the final approval, we can get started. I can hardly wait to have a Death Machine just outside the office.


JO