Design commentary: Star Wars and world war armor

WWI Wehrmacht


Killzone for Sony Playstation 2

The act of recycling is not new, and putting on the Reich seems to be a popular antic among science fiction's badies. I believe such a blatant liberation of aesthetics to now be a cheap shot on the part of art teams to convey that these are the bad guys; the trick has lost some of its impact. Let's go back a ways, prior to the advent of Master Chief (or even Atari) and cross examine a small part of the art direction in Star Wars.

Can we agree that Starfox had cooler belt-buckles?

The original movies was an unexpected hit, and its sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, was slated for a 1980 release. This time around a generous budget would be put toward all kinds of cool things, like the Bespin sets and Frank Oz. Stop-motion animation was utilized in one battle sequence to animate towering battle walkers.

All Terrain Armored Transport vs. German 1918 A7V tank. Beyond the costumes, perhaps there are also parallels in vehicles design. The spacecraft battles in the first film were heavily influenced by WWII aerial combat footage; I'd like to believe the artists who designed the walkers that appeared in the invasion of Hoth had seen this particular armored vehicle. Notice the sloping roofs, the kind of raised cupola in the center, and how the driver and idler track wheels on the tank are placed where the hip joints are on the walker. Also, the tank's main armament was fixed on the front unlike the turreted vehicle we think of as tanks; the ATAT is similar in that its big pew-pews were mounted forward-facing under its command cabin. You would think that rogue squadron would have had an easier time flying around.


More on the A7V via Dieselpunks. Due to its poor ground clearance the A76 did not have the trench-clearing ability demonstrated by the legged AT AT walker. Still, there is something to be said in terms of the fright factor of armored boxes creeping their way along.

Pirates are fierce.

It's worth noting that each vehicle had its shortcomings.


Jagdpanther vs. All Terrain Attack Pod. I.e. wedges with guns:

The Jagdpanter fulfilled a tank destroyer role with the potent 88 gun mounted on the terrain-able Panzer VI Panther chassis. The walker here is from the third prequel. As it had very little screen time, the most "official" image I could find was of the Hasbro toy.

Here's a well-produced brickfilm that jives with this post:

Armored Trains

Prepare yourself, for I am about to defer again the blogging of Lego for that of niche strangeness that suits my fancy, but I assure YSAB will be back on track with our favorite precision-molded blocks. I'm building an armored train of my own with the stuff, so here's some stuff I found inspirational. The fellow fan of Lego might find it an interesting collection, as might the random internet wanderer.

Lego Steampunk is holding a Train/Floating Rock competition, and while steampunk is a great premise, it is more likely to see quantity of MOCs built in the theme rather than quality. Here's to hoping that it brings out a similar turnout to that of the Ma.K. Starfighter contest that saw so many great entrants.


An armored train seen in the Miyazaki film Howl's Moving Castle. If I might allow myself to be obsessive and critical, I offer the opinion that this particular design doesn't jive with the rest of the war machines in the movie. The sloping armor, the reasonable barrel length (as opposed to the smoothbore nubs on the battleship of the same faction) and overall plausibility clash with the fantastical/turn-of-the-century theme, such as the quirky airships and ornithopters. But what the hell, it's a cartoon fantasy movie.

A German armored train from the second world war. After the war sloped armor would be teh n0rmalz and all the cool kids would be doing it. It was then deemed ruined by hipsters and in protest the Leopard 2A4 was developed, which was essentially a box on treads with the sloped armor swapped out for titanium armor.

Mind you, a handsome box with a 120mm armament. But back to static tracks:


An armored train from another Miyazaki work, Laputa / Castle in the Sky that seems to take heavy influence from the German design. Darn it if more combat vehicles shouldn't have pink/peach yellow camouflage.









I might coin the term, "rivet-punk".

Here's the Russian WWII era "MVB-2".
In pictures I've found of armored trains, most of them looked pretty DIY-grunge, but the MVB-2 has an amount of aesthetic value. Kind of submarine-like; the protrusion halway down the vehicle looks akin to a conning tower.



Seriously, what's with the pink and yellow?

Historic

Yuri Gagarin - 50th anniversary of the first manned space flight.


Space Shuttle Columbia - 30th anniversary of the first Space Shuttle launch.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/news/pressrel/2011/11-017_yuri_prt.htm

Better than the average fan art

Quite amazing artwork inspired by the original starwars trilogy, by British poster artist Olly Moss:















I'm particularly in love with the Boba Fett/Bespin one, the integration of the city as the visor is nothing short of brilliant.
















Via WIRED.com

Moss' website.

who also has *exquisite* taste in video-gaming.

Can I call it, "Float Punk"?

Inspired ski-fi artwork by Ian McQue. Via Conceptships. Also, he paints. I haven't been this captivated by someone's aesthetics and technique since I discovered Ashley Wood. Then again I don't look at enough art.

Talros

Baller work from Talros, AKA Daniel Graffenberger, a German conceptual artist.






On deviantArt.com
On Mod DB

Concepts

Artwork from Deviant Art usernames dasAdam, Shinypants and Paooo

Spacy Art

Concepts for inspiration.

"Lunch Break" by dA username Hideyoshi.



"Green Cliffs" by dA username sketchboook.

Art II

By DeviantArt username Malaveldt:




And Norsehound AKA Michael Ptak:

Art

By DeviantArt user Sketchboook:




And Phoenix-06:

"LEGOPark 2009 - Don't ask."

NO IT IS NOT LEGO BUT PLEASE STAY

By one of my favorite artists on deviantArt.com, Andree Wallin.

I raped the pictures when I resized them to 400 pixels, please, please click them to view properly. Even better, click the link.

YES IT IS LEGO GO AWAY

Two (real!) spaceships in one photo. And a nice looking photo to boot.

(Photo by cmdr. waldo)

Brickworld 2009

If you don't want my boring commentary (and my whittling down of the 329 photos to 30) you can just go here and see all my Brickworld photos. Or, you can go here and see everyone's pictures.

On the early morning of Thursday, June 18, I packed my MOCs in the car and began the hour's drive to Wheeling, Illinois.


I arrived around 7 and picked up my Brickworld registration packet, then met up with Matija Grguric, whom I was sharing a room with. We stored my things there, as we weren't to be let into the event hall until 4 PM, and proceeded to go into the event hall anyway because we were helping distribute the pretty yellow stanchions. (note to self: don't arrive quite so early next year.)


After the stanchions were distributed, several AFOLs and a TFOL (me) headed to the LEGOLAND Discovery Center about half an hour away. Our group included Brian Kescenovitz, Nannan Zhang, the aforementioned Matija Grguric, Lee Jones, Chris Phipson, and other people whose names I don't remember and don't feel like looking up.


We had a lot of fun and took many pictures which I won't bore you with here.

Except this one, because it's cool.


We got back and I met the illustrious Shadow Viking, (seated, making gesture with both hands) along with a couple of other cool dudes who I haven't known as long and therefore don't remember their names. Well, one (seated, making gesture with one hand) is Jackson. He's pretty awesome.


REDSTORM!


Izaak Mazer is clearly the only person in this picture you should care about.


Actually, I've never met Izaak. If you're him, and you're reading this, hi. You're famous now. Only not, because nobody reads YSAB anymore. Here's a picture of Brian K's amazing AMCP module (read: the entire AMCP)

Chris Edwards's amazing action controlling diorama.

Microspacewars. Megahairwars.

Lego Lego Lego Lego Lego Lego BLUESMOBILE! Lego Lego Lego Lego Lego Lego

Waiting in line for the Lego store 50% off damaged sets sale. I bought an Amerald Night, a UCS Greivous, a Crystal Sweeper, a Thunder Driller, and a Hailfire... all for under $150.

The awesome people among us went about 100 feet away where there was someplace to sit. I also had my first Starbucks drink in a while. Good, but not $5-for-a-drink-the-size-of-your-average-can-of-soda good.

Nannan's awesome dio was there. More on that later.

Discussion of renaming "jump the shark" to "nuke the fridge" ensued.

Brian is oblivious.

Scotty... being Scotty.

Nannan fixing the laz0rb33m again.

OMGOMGOMGOMGOMG PAB

For once, Tyler makes a face that doesn't involve his eyebrows being raised to an airliner's cruising altitude.

Fradel looking bored.

Peter looking like a viking. Wait, that actually fits.

Nannan is happy because his laser beam is finally stayi... WAIT WHAT WAS THAT? FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

Carter gets a sideways picture because he's awesome.

Lukas gets a properly exposed picture because they turned the lights back up to where they were when I calibrated my camera.

Jordan gets a wider shot because he won't sit still long enough to get a closeup.

Kyle, Ryan and I were doing a Greivous draft. Scotty bought one of my two, so he got in on it too.

Fradel, Nick, Jackson and I went for a walk.

Nick has two faces he'll make if he knows you're tkaing a picture: SATANFACE and DEMONFACE. Speed demon, that is.

And here's a pretty picture of the wheeling water tower. Needs more missiles, though.