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A fantasy mecha project, inspired by Patlabor & Gundam. The plan was to build a ‘realistic’ hexapod tank, even though with an SF touch.
The vehicle is not 100% supposed to match anime style – but the concept is pretty popular in Japanese animation, SF or special interest genres like Ma.K., so I think calling the “Ackwisch” (Hebrew for “Spider”) mecha is fine.
While the mobility of walking vehicles is arguably higher than that of wheeled or tracked vehicles, their inherent complexity has limited their use mainly to experimental vehicles. Examples of real manned walking vehicles include General Electric's Walking truck, the University of Duisburg-Essen's ALDURO and Timberjack, a subsidiary of John Deere, built a practical hexapod Walking Forest Machine (a harvester for rough/delicate terrain).
One can argue about the sense of a legged tank, though. It's slow, it has a high CG an silhouette, it's mechanically complex, it needs a lot of space in order to manoeuver, and you cannot deny the laws of physics: ground pressure is a SERIOUS issue, for any armored vehicle. A simple wet lawn can stop a tracked medium battle tank with a relatively large footprint – how’s a walking tank with only a fraction of area to distribute weight supposed to fare? A modern battle tank like the Merkava easily weights 60 tons and more. You might add for a legged specimen at least 10 more for the legs and their mechanics… so, is a walking tank “realistic”? Certainly not, but it’s cool…. And, since this is SF, it should at least look cool and somewhat menacing... ;)
This project had been waiting on the bench for a while and even saw a major creative interruption, and even then the whole building process took several weeks. Main ingredients are an 1:72 ESCI Merkava II tank kit, PVC doll joints from Kotobukiya for the legs (so they remain moveable, within limits),six resin legs from two ‘Junk Rock Tank’ recast kits in 1:35 scale (from a total of eight – you never know!), and two aftermarket gun barrels made from metal, since the tank received a double gun as a special feature. The commander’s cupola was donated from a 1:87 scale Roco Minitanks M60, otherwise a lot of details had been scratched or improvised – please check the WiP album for reference and single steps.
Construction was pretty straightforward, though, as well as painting, since I kept the tank in a uniform drab color (very similar if not identical to real life IDF tanks, RAL 7008 “Khakigrau”). Weathering was done with a thorough black ink wash and dry painting with various shades of brown, beige and grey, plus some of the artist pigments that were used on the base, too (see below).
The base was created with Styrofoam and plaster on an MDF board, the rock is actually aquarium decoration from a pet store, made from resin. The crater was sculpted into the basic surface.
The surface was decorated with fine sand, water-based paint and artist pigments, the vegetation consists of fine model railroad turf and grass fiber, brush fibers for large weed bushels, some dried real vegetation and a bit of dry moss.
As some space was left on the left side of the base, I eventually added a small vehicle there – my choice fell on a die-cast HMMWV from Dragon. Very fine car model, even though its place and position could have looked a bit more natural if I had integrated earlier into the planning process. But with both vehicles in place, the whole arrangement gains a bit of a meaning, as an observation scene. I still would not call it a diorama, though – it’s just a presentation base that might also be used in future model photographs.
Shooting the tank on its base was tricky, because of the relatively small dimensions of the base – on some of the pics I had to add virtual foreground in order to fill blank space, but otherwise only little “photoshopping” had to be done.
The Eastern Hellbender Juvenile Habitat Restoration project is funded through the State Wildlife Grant Program to assess survival in juveniles receiving an enriched captive environment and enriched juvenile habitat in the Blue River, IN. This research project is with the Indiana DNR and the Purdue Aquaculture Research Lab at Purdue University. In addition, 167 juvenile hellbenders will continue to be reared at the Purdue aquaculture facility and be released in 2017 as part of the reintroduction program.
The overarching goals of this research are to assess the historical eastern hellbender habitats for potential reintroductions and reintroduce captive reared juveniles into a former portion of their native range. The specific goals of the project include conducting eDNA screening, habitat suitability assessments, and estimating post-release survival using radio-telemetry. Ultimately, the results of this research could influence management decisions to repatriate eastern hellbenders throughout portions of its former range within Indiana and prevent extirpation.
Photos by Jessica Piispanen/USFWS.
This picture is #83 in my 100 strangers project. Find out more about the project and see pictures taken by other photographers at www.100Strangers.com
Just sitting down after A days walk about Weymouth on the Dorset Coastline. Ordered my fish and chips by the Harbour , making myself comfortable already to taste my first chip and stone the crows these guys walk past ! Well .. Couldnt let them pass .. How could I ?? James is local but also is based/works in London , Juliana also combines both locations. They were fab , they let me take enough photos to get a small set. Chatted about the project, they asked good questions plus their thoughts on the Olympics ( Sailing will be staged here ! ) Locals appear to be leaving the town like the plague when it starts next year .. It will be so so so busy !! You make a great couple , just different .. Then there was my fish and chips left unguarded to the seagulls !!
5 / 50 : Face the Fact Fail
Hardest thing to learn ever? Simple. Accept that sometimes, you're gonna suck.
And I don't mean "suck a little". I mean "suck harder that you thought you could suck".
We're bound to. All of us.
And if we're lucky, or good, we might not have to face it that often.
But it will happen. And it always sucks to find out that you sucked.
Trying to avoid writing the word "suck" again, let me give you a little context :
I had a plan for today's photo. I had it right there, in my mind, just waiting to happen....
But you know, life sometimes tends to get in the way.
Tonight, I got home late, with no photos in my stash and HAD to rely a on my "safety-net of ideas", the kinda thing that really comes in handy whenever any other option crashed and burned!
The idea was to replicate the shadows pattern that hit our rooms during the day by placing a strobe outside in the street and take a night portrait with it.
Pretty easy you say? And that's were I turned out to be so damn wrong.
First of all, at the first try my chinese chep transmitter broke and almost pulverized my flash on the ground. Luckily, the Sb900 is a damn sturdy little flash head, and proved itself worthy of the price I payed it. Taped the whole thing again and asked a couple of people passing by to watch the flash while I was taking the photo.
To make it all a little harder, my roommate's dog decided to bring more challenge to the game by continuously getting in the frame, barking, and howling at me whenever i tried to leave the apartment to adjust the flash.
Result? One frame.
This one. And I HATE THE HELL OUT OF IT.
But hey, don't worry, last year's 365 Project taught me tons of stuff, among which the fact that some days you're just gonna fail.
Tomorrow's another day.
Five done, JUST 45 to go :)
Camera Info: Nikon D700 | 50mm (ƒ/1.4G) @ 50mm | ƒ/1.4 | ISO 400 | 1/6 s — Camera on Tripod
Strobist Info: Nikon SB900 | 1/128th Power | Full CTO on it | With a 1/8 grid on it | Subject right, outside, trying to mimic streetlights| On a stand, double taped to it
The Eden Project is a visitor attraction in Cornwall, England. Inside the two biomes are plants that are collected from many diverse climates and environments. The project is located in a reclaimed Kaolinite pit, located 2 km (1.2 mi) from the town of St Blazey and 5 km (3 mi) from the larger town of St Austell, Cornwall.
The complex is dominated by two huge enclosures consisting of adjoining omes that house thousands of plant species, and each enclosure emulates a natural biome. The biomes consist of hundreds of hexagonal and pentagonal, inflated, plastic cells supported by steel frames. The largest of the two biomes simulates a Rainforest environment and the second, a Mediterranean environment. The attraction also has an outside botanical garden which is home to many plants and wildlife native to Cornwall and the UK in general; it also has many plants that provide an important and interesting backstory, for example, those with a prehistoric heritage.
Aerojet-General second stage being hoisted into position on 8/4/57. On the TV-2 vehicle, only the first stage ( Martin-built modified Viking rocket ) was fully functional. In the second and third stages, only a few systems were active. The stages were weight and balance correct, but inert. Glenn L. Martin Co. Photo.
Each curtain panel: $3 twin flat sheet from Walmart x 2 sheets
Curtain rod: $5.99 from Big Lots
I already had the clip rings, but you can buy a set of 12 from Wally World or Big Lots for about $7-12.
The red basket is the wicker basket I bought at Goodwill for $6.99. I used a full can of red spray paint, which cost me $2.49. The basket will hold the dog's blankets. Or maybe it'll hide a cat as he waits to pounce on someone to passing by... (This is Ollie, contemplating jumping on the window sill. I placed rocks up there to discourage lounging. And curtain destroying.)
The Ballerina Project is a worldwide photo shoot of ballerinas posed in the most random of places. Here are the beautiful and talented young ladies of the Bay Area for my take on The Ballerina Project! Stay tuned for more :)
Photo: Cherish Ortiz
Model: Ohana
SpirosK is the wonderful photographer for this henna project, and Danai Gourd the marvellous model. We shot in an abandoned hotel in the mountains north of Athens, Greece. The hotel was really moody, surreal, post-apocalyptic fairy in a mad maxish setting. This was one of the most fun projects I have worked on with a great crew - assistants, make up artists, everyone gave 110% of their energy to do this.
Henna was a challenge for me, not my normal style. Tried to make it thorny, not too flowery, tribally, but not too tribal, and the raggedy faerie wings were accented with water color pencil.
The cast and crew are:
Spiros K. = Photographer
Kree Arvanitas = Henna artist
Danai Gourd = Model
Jennifer Rage = Makeup Artist
Magdalini = Artist Assistant
Anastasia = Model Assistant
Everything that was has remained… and still is… I regret I refused to become actor and I did not become a dancer either.
Today is my first weekend day of the trip. No session in the hyperbaric chamber today. I walked to the farmers' market which I had been told was good. The walk took longer than I expected and I needed to sit down a few times but I am so glad I came. It's a nice spot by a stream, it's not too crowded and there are some interesting stalls. I bought some peaches from this stall. They were the best peaches I have eaten for years.
I also bought a pork pie, a couple of pork chops and some apple juice.
Saturday, 14th January 2017
A piece from my new project: Skin
The project is meant to capture both the flaws and damages of human skin along with the ability of it to spring back to life and keep moving forward. Hopefully this provides a more in-depth look at the flaws and wonders of human beings as a whole.