Dinotopia Arthropod Strutter

[SteveStarkiller]

so this is a big diversion from what I usually post here, but I've been enjoying this project a lot. Bringing something from my childhood to life. I don't know how many have read Dinotpia: The World Beneath, but I was obsessed with Crabb's arthropod strutter.

Author James Gurney's paintings are both beautiful and also very technical and he often uses maquettes he builds to aid in perspective and lighting when he paints.

Sometime last year I started to wonder if I could build a model of the strutter. I wasn't sure where to start but then I was looking at one of the paintings I realized I might be able to photomatch it in sketchup. I took the first image above and pulled it into sketchup and it turned out Gurney had done such a clean job with the perspective that lo and behold it worked!

still working out the joints and details, but ideally I'd love to get it to a point where I can print it out. Probably relatively small scale, but big enough to put a figure in the cockpit and have poseable joints

 

[Mike J.]

Awesome!

I'm a Dinotopia fan, too, and I'd flirted with parts ID-ing the other strutter maquette.

Very impressed with your 3D skills! I'm looking forward to seeing your strutter progress.

After a bit of thought, LEGO has some fairly sturdy & versatile joints that you might be able to use.

 

[SteveStarkiller]

hmm, that's not a bad idea. I had thought to design and print all the joints but most of the detailed materials are pretty brittle. I could take lego joint, or some other prefab design (ooh man, stop motion joints would be pretty cool...) and then design the printed parts to be more like a shell that would snap in place....

thanks!

 

[DylanRose]

Thats awesome! Big fan of those books. Would love to see some more pieces recreated from that series. Inspired to go re-read them now

 

[Mike J.]

If you have the expanded, anniversary edition of TWB, there are a couple pics of the maquette in the back.

Here are low-rez versions liberated from Amazon.


-MJ