Steam Punk Chair

After a couple of weeks of fiddling with this figure over the school holiday's it's finally taking shape and I'm fairly happy with the direction it's taking. I have all the main shapes including the figure worked out and am now happily adding details in the form of cogs, pipes etc to it. Sadly the new term beckons so it will take a while to finish. Always te way, you get into a piece after a bit of struggling and then have to leave it!

Below you can see the chair waiting for the figure to be slotted in. It has just had plastiroc padding added to the arms and some plastic neds removing and spraying but you can see the display console which I really like, made from 2 brass rods threaded through various bits of plastic. It even swivels.

You can also see the green tubing which will go into the figures back which I removed from some piece of medical equipment I found which has a suitable mad scientist look.

I've yet to add all the cogs and gears below te figure. Sadly I hadn't given tis any thought until well into the making but I realised it really needed the complexity of these showing to give it the look I wnated. As a result on careful examination the fianl piece will look totally impractical.

It has given me the urge to create some more mechanical automata though. I fancy a steam punk race car next as I really enjoy making these retro looking macines.

I have considered adding a mechanical hand to the chair, but again as this is an afterthought not sure how to add it. The photo below is of a figure I started last year but never finished. I may use the design of his claw hand.

As I develop more of this kind of work it has become self evident that I need more planning and design work. Normally I have an idea and just start making, but these more complex mechanical forms don't come together so easily with this approach, to quote Xander Harris "Measure twice, cut once, for the longest time I tought it was the other way around"

spider chair

The last few months have been a creative vacuum, too tired and cold and with no clear ideas to get engaged with. Now school hols are here I feel revived. I've had the idea of some kind of robotic chair for some kind and while sat doodling some head ideas during a cover lesson yesterday I came up with a clear idea of a thin little guy on a chair with lots of controls which moves around on spider legs. Kind of a Davros like figure judging by the eloctodes sticking out of his head (I'm fed up of top hats)

While making the chair I sat the driver in 2 poses, one as intended stooped over the controls sat vertical, (as seen below) another with him led back in a more racing car pose. I like this second idea but was worried it was too much like the racers in Phantom Menace, maybe I'll make both.