Navigating the alien seas
At the end of the last update I mentioned I was working on a kinetic piece inspired by one of the zine images, the video above shows it finished and elaborates a bit on the mechanism but it's perfectly safe to watch just the first 2 minutes if you just want to see it in action.
It feels a bit weird to be repeating myself by drawing this same ship several times but I'm trying to let it happen, treating the idea like a song I can't stop listening to, appreciating the variations.
Its first appearance can be traced to May 20 of last year (2020), it was number 44 of the 100 day project and I wrote about it here, I was then thinking about the connection between childhood and imaginary vehicles.
Soon after I made a sticker based on it with a more dense texture and some blue shading (incidentally, stickers aren't a big seller for me but they are still fun to make and I end up including them as bonuses with other items, you can find them here):
And most recently I re-drew a version for the zine where I changed the handle bars for a ship wheel, added some swirly decorations and gave the pilot a magpie helmet, here is the finished version:
My original plan was to use this new and improved version for the kinetic sculpture but it was hard to add that much detail in such a small area so I went with the simpler version but kept the blue waves and weird marine creatures:
I'm pretty happy with the results here, I managed to achieve the kind of fluid, organic motion I like and the mechanism is simple and works smoothly. This one was part of a show at Giant Robot called The Land and Sea Show.
I'm hoping to wrap up the current zine project soon and print a first run, and perhaps ask your opinion about your favorite images to make into larger prints. I haven't done many prints and I'd love to know if that's interesting to you, let me know with a short comment or reply.
Take care!
Federico