Back in September, I posted a few pictures of my latest model project, Thomas Edison Jr’s Giant Steam Bison of the Plains. The Giant Steam Bison started when my eye fell on a half-finished Atlantis-brand American Bison kit (a repop of the old Aurora kit), and I started thinking about the old proto-sci-fi dime novels about Frank Reade’s Giant Steam Man or Mechanical Bull Elephant or whatever. As usual, the project got wildly out of control, but by gum, it’s finished!
The scale is HO, 1/87th. There are bits and pieces from everywhere in it, including some plastic wargame figure stuff (the mechanical legs), some locomotive bits (the powerplant), and quite a bit of ready-made building details (windows, etc). I ended up building most of the furniture from scratch; ready-made furniture was generally too large, and whoa-baby expensive. But the comfy armchairs in the lounge are ready-made; they were just too Victorian not to use. One of the most fun parts was designing and photoetching my own spiral staircase. Most of the figures are ready-made, except for the cowboy, who’s a fairly extensive conversion.
Anyway, enough blah blah blah; here are some pictures for you guys:
Hmmmm; you’re right. The links work for me, but I suppose that’s because the pages are in my cache. I tried accessing Photobucket directly and got the spinny ball of death; so I guess the only thing to do is wait. Darn.
I love your steam bison! Totally awesome. I agree with Digital, always something new to notice.
Also I always love how photobucket offers suggestions about things to do with your photos. A Steam Bison calendar would be very cool, but please tell me you’re going for the Steam Bison holiday greeting cards for next xmas. I’ve been trying to think of what the greeting inside should be…
If I might make a suggestion–in one of the ‘wide shot’ photos, include some common object (coin, key, pencil, what-have-you) next to the model to give us a sense of scale.
Yeah, I should’ve done that–but for now, it might help to know that an HO-scale human is about an inch high; that is, about as tall as a quarter coin.
You know how it is: You stock your imagination with all sorts of stuff, and once in a while, something worthwhile pops out I think the main influences were having heard of the 1800s dime-novel adventures like “Frank Reade and his Steam Man”, and having once seen pictures of a Visible Trout that a fellow had turned into a nuclear-era Canadian navy “experimental submarine”.
Well, when I was younger, I used an Optivisor, which is a marvel; the magnification really lets you step up your game. Your hands can do really fine work, once you can see what you’re doing.
Now that I’m …older… I use reading glasses and an Optivisor :rolleyes:
One of the most fun parts was designing and photoetching my own spiral staircase. Most of the figures are ready-made, except for the cowboy, who’s a fairly extensive conversion.
I think the main influences were having heard of the 1800s dime-novel adventures like “Frank Reade and his Steam Man”, and having once seen pictures of a Visible Trout that a fellow had turned into a nuclear-era Canadian navy “experimental submarine”.
