OK...
I was contacted by Mike Rush, who emailed me his kick ass blueprints.. Here they are!
Mike has yet to post on the baord, but maybe we can get him to interact directly!
Mike was also nice enough to email me how he made these plans, so here is his words directly!
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Okay, here goes - don't know if I can successfully write any of it down
though!
***
I put the scans of the toy into Photoshop and adjusted them so that they
were all the same apparent scale, and laid them out into end, side and
plan views. This entire image was then moved into Illustrator.
(Specifically, the bitmap was placed on its own locked layer underneath
the 'work' layer so that it could easily be turned off and on to check
progress.) I've used a few CAD programs but I prefer Illustrator every
time.
The scans were a great starting point but couldn't be taken too
literally as many things didn't line up with each other. Why not?
Perspective. Perspective is the enemy, because things further away from
the eye look smaller (for example the two blisters on the cab roof).
Don't be fooled! As long as you cross-check each thing you draw with the
other two views, you should have no problem. I learned to draw
orthographic projections years ago at school (on paper!) so I'm used to
this.
To begin with you have no set dimensions. Beginning with the side I drew
over some of the major shapes. (The landram is forgiving because it has
some good clear horizontals and right angles, which helps.)
When the side view is done you have set down the lengths and heights.
Using the lengths from that view, I drew a plan by adding the widths
from the scan. Now you have three dimensions for things. Therefore you
can fairly simply make up the end view. The way it works is, if you have
two views of something you can extrapolate the third view without too
much trouble. Take the roof turret for example: I had a side view and a
plan view but no end view, so I used the side and the plan to work it
out.
Once the three views are established you can go to town adding the
details. The more you do, the easier it gets - because everything
relates to everything else in a certain way. If you've made a mistake,
it will show up almost automatically because you will find you won't be
able to add it to all three views. How much detail you add is a matter
of choice. (I left the panel lines off because I couldn't see some of
them accurately enough.)
The isometric view is done because apart from finishing off any set of
plans nicely, it also acts as a final check to see if everything you
drew 'works' in 3D. This was also done by hand, not using a 3D program.
As for scale, it really makes no difference because you can draw at one
scale and change it later (the beauty of computers). I drew these plans
over the scans, so that's what size they are currently. If I now wanted
to make them a specific scale, I would just need one measurement from
the original toy, and I could then scale my drawings up or down until
they matched. If I knew a measurement from the real landram I could use
that. In general I draw things like props 1:1 (within reason), or if
it's something bigger like a vehicle, I use 1:10.
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I beleive one of our own will also have a step by step guide on how he builds his plans, comming up soon!
Excelsior!!!! (Man, I wish Stan Lee would create some other cool sayings!)
-Skyler101
