Effects.

Johnsons baby powder stopped the milliput sticking on to the armature. A good dyscovery.

I lathed out the perpiscope in one piece, I really like it.

I experimented with painting really thick black paint and dusting with brass powder and polishing it back or stippling on brass resign. I chose the brass resign effect. I think this was a success.

I tryed out different fabrics including leather, but I think plain calico (with out tea stains) worked best.

The over all efect was great, although not finished.

Brass

I was not sure weather to use real brass strip or painted styrene. Styrene would be hard to paint ontop of the wood. And the paint would crack if painted and then bent. So brass strip would have been used.

I vac formed marbles for the porthole glass.

beads were used for holding in the sails.

Portholes, fins and balls.

A polystyrene ball was used covered in vasalene to smooth out the carbody filler on the inside of the head. This was a great tecnique.

Above you can see the big difference between the porthole with the rivet holes made on the pillar drill (with rhyno drawings used to show where the holes go) and the ones done on the mill.

The fins where drawn in Rhyno then printed out. I used these print outs to then draw art novou swirls on. I then imported these into illustrator and drew ontop of those. The etchings were a great success.

The head posed a couple of problems. The origonal head was too large for the body and had to be sculpted again. Using milliput for the lip was a great success as this kept the wood in place.

The sculpy stuck better to the milliput armature by scoring into it with a sculple.

I had massive problems trying to hammer the wooden planking into the scuply head. It simply kept craking and falling off. I filled the gaps with milliput and hammered them in for a second time.

More accurate.

To make it more accurate I lathed out the body. I also made the sub's turret by stacking up lays of Lazar cut acrylic and filling it with car body filler.

trying to keep it equal.

I used a polystyrene ball which I then covered with milliput to make a solid surface to sculpt onto. I dusted the milliput with toulk powder to stop it sticking to the rolling pin. I then added the side flaps out of styrene. I scraped my scalpel into the milliput to make the sculpy stick to the milliput. I then kept sculpting and measuring to keep it symmetrical. I took photo's of it a couple of times to compare the symmetry from a different perspective. As the camera flattened the image some times mistakes are easier to spot in this way.

Keeping it symetrical.

We found it really hard to keep the sculpt symmetrical. I tried to sculpt it again using a better armature technique.

New.

This is the new and more accurate sculpt. I'm doing tests with stippling on resin with brass powder or spraying black and dusting on brass powder.

Using an overlay image to check sculpting accracy.

I took a photo of the sculpt and overlayed it over the original drawing to check accuracy. I was quite shocked to see how inaccurate the sculpt was. I think it would be a better idea to lathe out the body of the submarine using wood, and adding the detail with styrene strips.

Etchings

I had a look at these etchings to give me an idea on how to cleverly design the etchings to fold well and fit together effectively. These etchings are quite complicated with many folds, mainly created by leaving gaps for the fold lines. I want to add etched fold lines to the parts that I want to be folded.

Hogaths line of beauty.

Some one pointed out that the last fin on the Submarine looks like one of Hagaths lines of beauty so I had a look at these lines to get a better shape on it.

Bronze and Brass.

I've found that more likely one would use bronze for allot of the ship as this is less likely to need allot of polishing. But for our purposes we are going to use mostly Brass as its more available to us.

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci had many flying contraptions which may inspire my design for the fins on the submarine. They need to move so it would be a good idea to look at his ideas on moving flying machines.

Also I'd like to look into early hot air balloon ideas. Allot of these had wings or paddles which moved on the baskets to try to help the balloon to be steered.

This website seems to cover most ideas on flying machines, from Leonardo da Vinci, to hot air balloons, to insane contraptions. Its brief but some interesting ideas covered:

http://www.flyingmachines.org/

Metal spinning rocket nose cones.

Still looking into ways which the real submarine might be made (with a touch of salt due to its outlandish design) as this helps to make the model look more realistic. Or as realistic as a fish style submarine complete with fins can look! Metal spinning might be used on the dome of the head. Wikipedia explains it pretty well:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_spinning

This is how the tops of rockets are made! Also bells and cookware can be manufactured in this way. You could use a hydraulic spinning lathe for the job. These are the professionals at work at Winward engineering ltd: http://www.winward.co.uk/about%20us%20new.htm

This would create a completely smooth finish, or one with slight rings left by the lathering tool. Looking at the shape of the head with the current design I think that it is more likely that one would used a beating metal technique all over as its not a complete dome.

Brass and whiskey.

(these images are taken from: http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Ireland/County-Cork/Cork/blog-209569.html and http://www.pbase.com/ourcolin/image/66987144 and http://www.timboondistillery.com/timboon_railshed_distillery-single-malt-whiskey.html)

I wanted to think about the texture of the Brass we where using. Whiskey distillery's are a good reference as they are not designed to be looked at. They are designed to be used to make whiskey. Due to there practical nature the craftsman to make them would not spend the time to make them well polished like a piece of jewelry. Which is why they are a good reference.

Puffing Billie.

Puffing Billie:

http://www.makingthemodernworld.org.uk/icons_of_invention/technology/1750-1820/IC.006/

This is the oldest surviving steam locomotives made in 1814. It looks like someone really hacked and hammered it together out of any odd scraps they could find. The wooden panels and battered metal combined look like they would fit in nicely on our submarine.

American railway models.

Backwood miniatures are high detail railway model company in America.

http://www.backwoodsminiatures.com/

There worn out turn 19th century steam trains are the sort of texture and feel that we are trying to create.

There is also "Narrow Gauge and Short line Gazette" :

http://www.ngslgazette.com/

They feature plenty of articles on how to make realistic worn out scenery effects. As do "Garden Rail"

http://www.exacteditions.com/exact/magazine/443/508

Unfortunately its pretty hard to know which issues feature useful information, but I'll look into it.

Rivets.

Looking at ship rivets:

http://blog.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/graphics/rivets.jpg

Most ships seem to use steel. For the model this would look ugly and it is unnecessary to use the same materials as used in real ship building. Brass or copper rivets will be used. On some of the ship the rivets are being sculpted and painted to look brass or copper. The rivets on the port holes will have to be copper as we cannot buy them in the right size in Brass.

Railway modeling.

I had a gander through some Railway modeling books to find out how they created scenery. For wall and walkway textures they used brought in textured styrene, which is of no interest to me. I've heard that American railway modeling is more extreme and use better crafted scenery. I'm interested in aging techniques for the wooden pontoons.

Colour Fishy image.

This is the colour version from Chris our client. It shows the sort of texture we want to show on our model. We are not following the head shape on this design though. I think the three portholes on the head make the submarine look confused.

Site plans.

These are the site plans given to us by Chris our client. There are two locations, although the most likely location is location A. We are thus going to base the model on location A. The black square seen in photo one is the projects icon.

Victorian Swirls.

I've been designing the fins today. I was considering adding victorian swirls onto the brass work:

http://bp2.blogger.com/_yw920vNyK6s/R5ll--v4eGI/AAAAAAAAArU/-NluQ7Sa4K0/s1600-h/Victorian+Swirl+Brush+Previw.jpg

A fish, a fish, Fishy fishy fishy OH.

Looked at Royal de Luxe's fishy creations. Lovely fins on this one:

http://www.lesmachines-nantes.fr/english/atelier.html

Port holes and periscopes

The port holes and periscopes need to be lathed out of brass. I used this web site to order the brass round's and rivets needed:

http://www.ekp.supplies.btinternet.co.uk/index.htm

Who will buy these lovely port holes?

I went to a marine model shop. I wanted to know if we could buy port holes. I found that the biggest size I could buy would be 20 mm diameter which would be too small.

I also liked the propellers they sold. Very nice.

Practice model and scult one.

I made a foam model to scale of the submarine. This helped me to see how the head would move. It was also important to see how much head to have with out getting in the way of this important movement.

It was very important to make sure that what I sculpted on top of was sturdy. I built up an armature of wire, paper, mud rock. I covered the mud rock in lacquer to make sure it didn't absorb moisture from the sculpy.

In retrospect I wish I had used clay. It would have been allot faster. I also found that as Mark was sculpting the body and I was sculpting the head the two were very different styles, and thus we decided to keep this head as a marquette and let Mark sculpt the head again.

Whale reasearch.

As the submarine is whale shape I looked into whales before starting the sculpting. I found that more cartoon or idealised whales looked more suitable for the look that our client wanted.

Device.

This facinating book details moden steam punk artists. As well as models there is also digital and painted work. The way that these models really look like they can work is what really makes them a great succes. The use of orgainic materials and cogs and gears looks great, are they alove or machines?