Here are the first renderings of defender ships that will be fighting it out with the big dumbell ship posted earlier this month. All are based on retro pics found on the web, reposted here.

This is a photo of Nicola Tesla's Wardencliffe Tower, designed to broadcast electricity wirelessly. There are several images of its prototype on the web and this one inspired the alien vs human battle sequence I'm building. In my story, the tower is a weapon used to shoot energy beams to destroy attacking ships. There's something about the blimps in the pic with their search lights that inspired the idea. To me it looks like they are attacking.

So I modeled the tower and put it on top of the Civil Defense building. This will be in the opening shot. Between the W and M is a large stained glass window made of the wild Maus logo which will be the first image in the shot.


It turns out that the Wardencliffe Tower is a favorite subject for 3D modelers and several of them can be found on the web. I changed the tower design to look more art deco (early art deco.) The sphere on top is covered with copper pyramids.

For the past several months I have focused on learning Cinema 4D. It's fun to learn and use and I find it more user-friendly than Lightwave, which I have been using for the past 11 years. As usual, I'm contextualizing my learning around a project: a science fiction action sequence of alen ships attacking a city and being counter-attacked by a defending force. What else? This will compel me to learn C4D for modeling, texturing, lighting, camera movement, and effects creation and animation.

So far I have built he attack ship, pictured above, about a dozen hero building destined to be blown up, the city layout, and have started building the defender ships of various designs. For this project, I've chosen Raygun Gothic style, from the futuristic designs of the 1920s-1940s. This is my first foray into art deco scifi and it's been a learning process. When I was younger I didn't really care for this visual style and lately I've been warming up to it.

The attack ship, rendered above, is based on a concept drawing for a Russian space ship, circa 1949. I discovered the images here.This image (I think) shows two ships being built in space and the small sphere in the tubes is to carry work crews from one ship to another, and the whole assembly rotates end-over-end. The ship I've modeled is one ship and rotates end over end, and the small sphere will slide in the tubes between the larger spheres as it rotates. For this ship, the small sliding sphere is an energy pod and when it makes contact with either end od the ship, it fires a death ray from the pipe at the end of the top. Thus, the barbell shaped ships spins, the energy sphere slides from end to end, firing death rays as the ship revolves.

This is about the fifth model I've built in C4D, the first being Marconi and Edison light bulbs, which will also find their way into this action sequence.