The Death Machine Lives!

I have been furiously designing all the components for our Death Machine. I thought I would get tired of using the term Death Machine, but it still makes me laugh. Death Machine................Death Machine. We had our meeting on Tuesday to go over some of the concerns( you know, concerns with a Death Machine) and we are good to go! The great thing about this job is that we have a few "key" components that have to be met, but the rest is up to us. I really enjoy designing on the fly, as some things really do come out better I think. I have been doing all of my vector work in Corel for this job. I could have easily done this in Aspire, but as I started out using Corel back at version 8, I find it suits my workflow on this sort of thing. I am in the process of migrating fully to Aspire, but old habits die hard I guess. I can hardly wait to fire up our Techno cnc and start filling the dust collector. This job definately has all the great features in one job. From doing the creative design and the technical drawings, to the artistic parts like texture rusting and concrete weathering, this project will be fun until the end. I think the best part of all is that they might use a location down the street for filming. Nice................up at 6:55, on set at 7!

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

Texture Panel 2

I thought that one of the panels should have a curve to it, it would be a little more interesting than just a flat panel. Back to the very important 2 rail sweep function. Just like always, we need 2 drive "rails" and 1 cross section that we want to drive down the "rails" You can see in the picture below, the pink dotted lines I will use to create the new component and its results.

Once that shape was complete, I just selected the vector outline of the textured panel I created earlier. Hit the "clear area outside vectors" and now my original panel shape has the new curved surface!

I also decided a perfect rectangle panel was a little boring, so I adjusted the rectangle borders to make them all wavy. It would have been easier to just draw them this way  in the beginning, but Aspire is so flexible and quick, you can manipulate the individual parts at anytime. This keeps the creativity flowing by allowing you to design by the seat of your pants.

 I also liked the idea of having more rivets looking like they were holding the seams together. Instead of drawing new vector outlines and adding a dome shape, I just select 1 rivet from the rail, and copied it 3 times to the new location. You can see the results of all the parts coming together very quickly. It still needs some more interesting stuff though. I know.............maybe a punched out, raggedy hole.

Another job for the 2 rail sweep! 2 offset ovals and a cross section later, I have the underlying shape for my hole. I also drew raggedy outline of what the hole opening would look like. Clear the component inside the raggedy outline, and there you have it.

 Now to identify what this panel might be. I came up with some text, and added a prism effect with the create shape tools. Now this piece of metal makes sense.The hole on the left still needed some work, so I used the sculpting tools to add some dents and such.

I think this panel is done. With being able to control every aspect of this design, including how all the components merge/subtract and add, as well as all of there individual heights, The freedom is endless.