Look, it's an update! Remember that huge bag of greeblies that I got from the "Creation Station"? I think it was the night before the LAN that we finally spray painted those. Oh yes, that's how little time we had. I chose a reflective, metallic silver paint to make everything look futuristic and sleek. They had maybe 8 or 10 hours to dry in the freezing winter air before we were hot gluing them onto the chassis. Below is a good selection of what we chose to paint. Any guesses as to what objects the greeblies actually are?
According to the original sprite, there is terrain at the base of the arcology, as well as inside the dome. This was a good excuse for me to slant one end to use for the computer inputs. As you may know, the cords ran down the PVC support pipe in the middle to make the structure appear cord-free. I broke off large chunks of Styrofoam and carved them into large hillsides, then taped them to the base. The input board needed to be sturdy, so I just stained a small piece of plywood and used some L-brackets to secure it to the base. The edges looked pretty ugly, so I glued on some black fun foam to clean them up. Eventually, I sprinkled flocking here and there, and stuck foliage on it as well to give it some scale. The dryer tubing was one of the final things added which spiraled around the PVC, under the guise of supporting the arcolody, when really it was just stapled in place.
The interior of the cylinder was a challenging design process, because I had a lot of materials to fit inside but not a lot of space. I attached the silver SonoTube to the wooden frame with several large L-brackets, and it wasn't quite as sturdy as I had imagined. I bought some 1" wooden dowels, cut them to size, and screwed them in tightly at the cylinder's vertical hinge points. This reduced the wobbly factor by 23! I cut the original DVD-ROM and HDD brackets out of my old case with the dremel, but I think I used the wrong attachment head for it because it was completely worn to the screw by the time I was done. Oh well. One thing I forgot to account for when I measured everthing was protruding cords coming off the motherboard components where the door was to close. I shifted the position of the hinges to give the cylinder a slightly wider diameter, and this fixed the problem with just milimeters to spare. I had this awesome yellow clippy light that I hooked up to various edges to that I could see what the hell I was doing in this increasingly complex creation.
Here is an outside view of the cylinder with some greeblies glued on. We had just installed the DVD drive and were proud of how perfectly it had slipped into place. I had cut several holes in the SonoTube for the drive, a case fan for airflow, and even the LCD screen. Any remaining room on the face was reserved for greeblies large and small. There was a lot of empty space to cover, and so we used nearly all of the objects that I had spray-painted the night before.
The next update will show the finished shots. Stay tuned!
According to the original sprite, there is terrain at the base of the arcology, as well as inside the dome. This was a good excuse for me to slant one end to use for the computer inputs. As you may know, the cords ran down the PVC support pipe in the middle to make the structure appear cord-free. I broke off large chunks of Styrofoam and carved them into large hillsides, then taped them to the base. The input board needed to be sturdy, so I just stained a small piece of plywood and used some L-brackets to secure it to the base. The edges looked pretty ugly, so I glued on some black fun foam to clean them up. Eventually, I sprinkled flocking here and there, and stuck foliage on it as well to give it some scale. The dryer tubing was one of the final things added which spiraled around the PVC, under the guise of supporting the arcolody, when really it was just stapled in place.
The interior of the cylinder was a challenging design process, because I had a lot of materials to fit inside but not a lot of space. I attached the silver SonoTube to the wooden frame with several large L-brackets, and it wasn't quite as sturdy as I had imagined. I bought some 1" wooden dowels, cut them to size, and screwed them in tightly at the cylinder's vertical hinge points. This reduced the wobbly factor by 23! I cut the original DVD-ROM and HDD brackets out of my old case with the dremel, but I think I used the wrong attachment head for it because it was completely worn to the screw by the time I was done. Oh well. One thing I forgot to account for when I measured everthing was protruding cords coming off the motherboard components where the door was to close. I shifted the position of the hinges to give the cylinder a slightly wider diameter, and this fixed the problem with just milimeters to spare. I had this awesome yellow clippy light that I hooked up to various edges to that I could see what the hell I was doing in this increasingly complex creation.
Here is an outside view of the cylinder with some greeblies glued on. We had just installed the DVD drive and were proud of how perfectly it had slipped into place. I had cut several holes in the SonoTube for the drive, a case fan for airflow, and even the LCD screen. Any remaining room on the face was reserved for greeblies large and small. There was a lot of empty space to cover, and so we used nearly all of the objects that I had spray-painted the night before.
The next update will show the finished shots. Stay tuned!
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