Thursday 15 December 2011

Snowbound! Christmas update / reposting old stuff in my blog:)

A couple of vehicles in the snow... Not particularly festive but it's the best I could do. OK?  

....Wish i had spent more time painting the snow.

This model took me over 2 years of freetime and as yet I've only made this one image with it. 

Merry Christmas

Friday 16 September 2011

Alien Makers & more - Dennis Lowe's website

Memories from people who worked on the classic Ridley Scott movie, Alien... Plus many other talented individuals and other projects, documented by a truly great British artist - Dennis Lowe.

His Video productions are highly informative, entertaining and recommended to anyone interested in learning more about classic film and TV production, though many reading this blog will be familiar with digital techniques, you may find many things from the pre-digital era still apply today.

One of Dennis' major contributions to the films effects was the fantastically eerie looking alien planet, as viewed from space... In the following passage from the Alien Makers website, Dennis describes the sneaky process used to create this creepy looking surface texture:


An example of texture for the planets: This came from a trick I learned at art college, a tray of white spirit and pour in some aluminium paint, light with a lamp either side and convection currents will start to produce globules in a cellular form as detailed as the lens will resolve. The paint or spirit can be coloured with powder pigment and with a little patience it's possible to roll off a lot of surfaces. These transparencies can then be projected onto a white painted sphere. I still have 30 trannies of the original surface textures but most of them weren't used. A Hasselblad was used to take these shots.




(try recreating this with procedurals;) - Coolhand)

Friday 29 July 2011

Tech Dice

Another oldie, A range of dice I designed, The  D100 took a looooong time to put together! 

Update: due to the huge amount of attention these items are getting  I've made a REAL plastic (or whatever material you want, stainless steel anyone?) version available.

Simply order and you'll get the dice from shapeways in 2 weeks 




20,000 Leagues - Nemos Organ

An oldie from early '09, this semi-exploded (ok I admit as an image it doesn't work well) view shows all the separate parts I  made for this kit.

2010 Discovery Artwork / Desktop background

Box / Promotional Artwork for the Discovery 2010 Model Kit 
(which was also built by yours truely) 


Soon to be available from Admiralty Modelworks.

Terran Expeditionary Force - Desktop Wallpaper Poster thing.

Emphasis on the 'Force'

Coming soon to Microworld Games

Wednesday 27 July 2011

John Bear Ross

I only started this blog today, inspired by a man I just call "The Bear." or to his face; "Sir."

He's a fantastic sculpter and easily the most experienced digital prototyper I know as well as being just supercool and supportive and a really nice person, a true professional also.  A vast number of miniatures out there today and enjoyed by so many started off life on his computers and machines.

Be sure to check out his blog for some more way cool designs.

http://johnbearross.blogspot.com/

Marine Armoured Personnel Carrier


Another recent Khurasan mini for the 15mm scale, any similarity to any other fictional army battle-bus is purely coincidental.

Soviet Walkers.

A recent commission for Khurasan, I designed and constructed these  miniature armoured suits which in production will be less than 30mm tall - designed for a slightly oversize 15mm figure scale.

You can actually fit a person ergonomically inside the suits limbs so you would "wear it" like a suit, required careful design work, but I think it turned out well.

XR2 MK2 Work in Progress

The XR2 mk2 is currently in development for Orbiter, in conjunction with Douglas Beachy, who writes the code to make it work in the simulator.

Sasquatch - Heavy Duty Scifi Rover / Explorer

Built for orbiter and other applications, basically an extreme space vehicle, the upper part is a shuttle craft, while the lower is a durable off road, on world chassis.  Pictured next to the XR2 mk2 WIP.