Japan poster

One of my early architecture school projects was to make a travel poster featuring one of the mid-century Case Study Houses.  I chose Japan for my CSH poster (don't remember why, they're all in the States I think) and ended up with this little gem with a nod to the Japanese flag and a poor attempt at making a generic Japanese castle.

It was probably done at the last minute and I can see a lot of mistakes but I liked the overall idea of the composition.  Much later, after graduation when I had more free time, I decided to revisit it.  I dropped the whole house bit and went with a more cohesive color palette.  I chose a square format and spent a lot more time on the castle (based on the Matsumoto Castle) and tried to get the shapes right.  What I ended up with was a neat design with "welcome to Japan" written in Japanese on one of the mountains.  It's not perfect, but it's better; and I like it.

Scratch built battle-mech

So this week we see an example of how I turn "goofing around" into a finished product.  When I was still in school I was working on a sketch model for a building and made a thing out of a few scraps of matte board and thought to myself "that looks like a mechs' toe".  And indeed it did.  So much so that I made another one, then a foot, then a whole leg.  Then I tried to copy the leg, and make a body for the legs to hold up.  Eventually I had a cool shape and painted it grey and set it up on my desk to show off.

Later on I had more time and pulled it back out to update it.  I opened the canopy up and put windows in it and built a cockpit for the pilots.  I used the grey as a base coat and pre-shaded the panel lines before over coating it and adding mud-splatter to the legs.  I topped it off with some decals on the body and a painted Head Up Display on the canopy glass.

It's not gorgeous nor is it well build (it's prone to toppling easily) but it was a fun build and is now a neat story of how one toe became a whole mech.

Canopy removed and ready for paint

 Pre-shading done

 Not a lot of detail in the cockpit but the windows are small

 Here you can see the heat sinc and rocket pods

 Masked off and ready for the razzle-dazzle paint job

 Painted and decaled.  the canopy is near the feet

 Mud splattering on the feet.  There's that pesky toe that kicked it all off

The finished product

Here you can just see the painted head up display

Project Biashara, Pt.2

Last week I showed the line drawings I did on my phone.  This week we look at the fixed and inked drawings.  This is probably the last update on this game for a while but keep an eye out, as I work on it I'll keep you updated.

Bus.  This is the green one, there are 3 other colors for the four bus lines that players can invest in during the game.

Cashews.  Grown in more remote regions and should be trucked to ports for best profit.

Coffee beans.  These are one of the resources that gets you more money if you export it.

 Corn.  This cannot be exported but gets more money if you truck it to another region.

 Cotton.  This can be exported or used in local industry.

The blue ferry plies the waters of the Indian Ocean.  There is also a teal ferry line that sails in Lake Victoria.

 Fish.  This can be acquired anywhere along the coast.

 Rice.  Like corn, is best trucked across the country.

 Sorghum. Best if exported.

Tea.  This sells well in country and on the export market.