Works in progress
Archangel II Fuselage
10 October 2024
Archangel II's fuselage is taking shape.
Crucially the fuselage is asymmetrical, so you can't build one side and then mirror it. Parts have to be built separately and then brought together. That is making for some interesting challenges.
Watercolour doodles
29 September 2024
This little doodle of the Middle East makes it look cute and peaceful. How wrong that is at the moment.
A bit of whimsey - dolphins in Lighthouse Cove.
Starting Archangel II
15 September 2024
Archangel II - another build for Cyber-Toulouse, in the heart of the French space precinct.
In Archangel II the passenger sleeping cabins double as "life boats". In an emergency a cabin can be jetisoned into space to get people away from whatever disaster is unfolding on the ship. Each of the cabins has the life support equipment needed to keep people alive till they are rescued.
That means that the outer wall of cabins form an integral part of the hull of the ship. I could have used a simple texture to show that they are there, but decided to actually build them into the geometry. This is a lot more complicated, but makes it easier to create a scene with the cabins leaving the ship - if I want to at some later date.
Fiji dreaming
28 August 2024
I've mentioned before that it's a cute thing to do to take watercolour postcard sized paper with you on holiday. Then knock out a few simple pictures - memories of your time away. I did just that recently. We escaped to an island in Fiji. These are some of the results.
Four from six
16 June 2024
When I finish a poster I hang it on the wall. But this is not about sitting back and admiring my great works (hardly). This is all about making sure the thing is finished - or at least as good as it can be. I've found that you have to hang a picture to really give it a decent assessment. Sometimes it might be six months before you realise that something isn't quite right. Then I believe it's perfectly OK to go back and change things if you decide it improves the work.
I have a wall at home that acts as my poster assessment gallery. They sit on that wall for around six months. If, at the end of that time, I can't see how things could get better (other than to throw away and start again), then they become my "definitive" version. Right now I'm seriously pondering that dark triangular shape at the top of Mondiale Rendezvous. I'm thinking it's not quite right, but what to do about it?
Now to start a great leap beyond the Earth, to Mars, with Archangel II, Mars Line.
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