[Fan Art] The Big Cockpit...the journey begins

No news about you ....


Bad news !

No bad news, just been busy doing my taxes. TAXES. I also took last week off to work on a quick project for a friend, and my former band needed me to record some backup vocals for a song, so that took some time to get done.

If there's one reason I suggest aspiring artists to attend art school, is for tips to be a freelancer running a business. It's worth it. I'm thinking of gettin' a new graphics card with my refund.

Anyway, I've been wrestling with the front panel and scanner still. My problem is redesigning the interior of the panel to look like the close-up shot of the scanner. There are a lot of bits that don't really fit in the curved shape of the panel. I might take liberties again...but we know where that leads...later, I'll find a production sketch of it showing that I had it all wrong...but for now, I guess I have no choice.

Note the new corrected angle on right side of the panel, above the monitor. The monitor is also being angled to fit the panel. Cutting the holes in the panel to fit the monitor was a big problem...the resulting object had many surface tears, and the cut was crooked...took me a while to figure out how to create the base shape of the panel so as to get a clean cut. I would have just left the monitor intersecting the panel, but because the panel opens, you see the interior, so I thought it better to make the cuts. I might run into trouble cutting the side wall, but I need to do it, so the wall doesn't intersect the monitor's interior (it needs to recess back to the screen).


How the two top plates will flip up is a bit puzzling, because the needle-indicators need to rotate in place...the control buttons for the scanner appear to be on the back of the front-half of the bottom indicator. I also bult a front box for the two sliders, as they are not flush to the surface of the panel (in some shots)

This thing still looks soooo cool! Can't wait to see the whole thing!

Thumbs up.

Cast in the name of laziness...me guilty.

I've been lax lately...wasting my 3D modeling time building some plastic models for birthday gifts. Uncle G has responsibilities to the chilluns.
(I know, this is non-big-o artwork...but toys are cool too. My progress on the Project is below)






I used the brief hiatus to design the panel-raising/rotating mechansims interior to the scanner control panel. When the panel opens up, each door has to lift vertically and rotate independently. The biggest problem was building the geometry of the needle indicators to split down their centers, so that half is on one door, and half on the next door. There's a lot of compound curves on those indicators. It hasn't been easy getting them to work properly.
I haven't constructed the lifting/rotating mech yet...detailing out the interior is next.
This one panel has been the most difficult object to build so far. That change in angle of the front section has been a real b*tch to work around...a lot of time has gone by experimenting, with little useable progress, but I think the worst is over.

Detailed out the scanner cylinder:


And added the sidewalls


Since I finally got the shape of the panel done, I finished the modifications on the monitor, and rebuilt one of the needle indicators:


Here's a closeup of the monitor:

G! Be that SD characters I see? WHY?!? SD was horrid

(Though I must admit, I bought SD Zero Custom...but only because it was Zero Custom.)

heh, I don't build 'em cuz I'm a fan of the show...I only like the BB-senshi ones because of the details. They're cheap, quick to crank out and make good gifts.

I suppose that makes sense then...

Hey, do you eventually plan on trying to make the whole Megadeus?

Affirmative.

When I do get the big guy started, I have the production plans, courtesy of R. Smith. No going back to rebuild inaccurate sections.

Ah, Time is a fickle mistress. When you want to take care of business, she wants to go out and party. When you want to party, she makes you stay in and fold laundry. Sigh.

Why is the cockpit so red ? I mean there are the same cockpits in Big O, Big Duo and Big Fau. But the Big O's one is red because the front glass is red. Big Duo's one is green and Big Fau's one is blue. The original cockpit is like the Griffon's one : beige, with dark green or black screens.

There are yellowish interior lights above the cockpit, which often reflect off of the bubble dome. There's a lot of red tint to the lighting inside, definitely due to the red glass, but there are a few scenes where the front glass is open, and the color of the panels is reddish orange (as in episode 17, when Roger enters through the front). I don't think that they're the same beige as the Gryphon dashboard.

Very nice! A definite improvement. You even inserted the "Damage" screen? Haha, dude you're making dreams come true.