Part 2 - Musuem of POW-AH

With the face now completed, it's time to take care of the second part of the module: The group project. My main role in the group is animator (Lee will also be lending his services), as it is more my niche, and for the simple reason that the Harwood twins are some of the finest 3D modellers I know. They even have nicknames regarding the sheer level of detail they create and sense of perfectionism they approach their work with... but they're a bit too 'dark' to mention on a public blog like this. Lee is pretty much the head-honcho, for the simple reason that he is just sexy. He is also in charge of presentations and sound as well as working on some animation too. Being the animator, I'm at the mercy of the Harwood's creations, and thus was pretty happy to work with anything that they felt comfortable modelling. I did have an idea lurking around, however, of a 3D character to help 'present' the working model, and to, quite frankly, help give our final product that extra edge over everyone else's. Ok, so I'm competetive...

Anyways, in week 3, we paid a visit to the Museum of Power (Alias "Museum of POW-AH"), thanks to the Harwood's car and Lee's ability to change a tyre. It was a lot smaller than I expected, and consisted of 2 large rooms (Rather than a collection of smaller). That said, there was a ton of industrial technology around, and we were able to see a lot of large machinery and steam-driven pumps up close. I took around 100+ pictures and videos (Now in the care of the Harwood twins), but below are some of the ones that caught my eye. Though we have agreed to model a Steam Train, the following pictures were ones that caught my eye, and are things that I want to incoporate in my character model.

I'm not a huge fan of steam, but I love clockwork. Maybe it was my childhood of playing with Lego and Mechanno, but I love contraptions with lots of little bits all moving eachother. The gears and weights of the clock-work model really caught my eye.

Likewise, the old-fashioned clock-face and design caught my eye. It was becoming obvious that whatever character I wanted to create, it would need to be a sort of clockwork contraption/machine.

The old style of pipes also caught my eye, and brought up an interesting idea for a steam/water pressure-powered contraption too.

This was perhaps my favourite picture. All the pressure dials on the black surface with a bronze trim. Maybe it just reminds me of my Crystal Maze days again (Crystal Maze definitely seems to be a recurring theme in this module...), but I really wanted to incorporate this in my contraption ideas too. As we left the museum, loaded with a ton of photos, I had an idea...