Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Fire Engine, Part 3 of 5

Ernesto Bradford of the E-1 Company designs fire engines for a living. He's a talented artist as well as an engineer. He can draw anything. His designs look cool, but they also work because of his knowledge of materials and physics.

In this ballpoint pen sketch, he has worked out the idea of the brachiosaur pumping the water. The weight of the water line is supported on the dinosaur armor.

The helmet of the dinosaur has a swivel mount for the water cannon, and a breathing filter, so the dinosaur doesn't choke from smoke.

And a modular cab is designed to fit on the back of the dinosaur, just like blog reader K.Tigress was thinking.

Now, how do you go from these drawings to an oil painting that looks three dimensional? Check back tomorrow!

All of these designs are copyright 2006 Ernesto Bradford.


Dinotopian Fire Engine
Fire Engine, Part 1
Fire Engine, Part 2
Fire Engine, Part 3
Fire Engine, Part 4
Fire Engine, Part 5

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I saw the 'finished' (or at least another) version of this elsewhere on the site and it had me grinning for hours, reminded me so much of my days of wild dreaming as a kid. the latest sketches are amazing, and quite an education into just how much thought goes into the art. As a question, if I may, do you ever just sit down in a flash of inspiration and start on a piece of work and go from start to finish (hopefully with breaks to eat, sleep and breathe though)? Or do you tend to work through concept sketches to research to roughs to final in the classical method?

James Gurney said...

Most Dinotopia paintings start out with that "wild dreaming" you're talking about. I start out with a concept sketch just out of my head and try to take it as far as possible. But then I try to wring more juice out of the idea by talking to experts, reading books, or building models. This fire engine piece is a good example, because I thought my idea was OK until I realized it could be a lot better.

K_tigress said...

Its looking really great. Love it. One thing that's been in the back of my mind thought, is how fast would they be able to respond to such an emergencies? I mean they have all that gear to worry about plus people plus the gear they have to load on to the dino. Would all the gear the dino wears, be hanging from the ceiling of the facility be ready to quickly drop on to the dino at a moments notice? Also there is the dino it self, because its quite large, would it be able to move fast enough?

James Gurney said...

I actually asked a paleontologist how fast a Brachiosaurus could run if it had to get to a fire. The answer I got was that he probably couldn't run at all, and like an elephant just did a fast walk of about 12 miles per hour. Even at that speed the guys riding on top would have to hold on for dear life!