Tell Him About The Twinkie

Howdy folks,

Slight delay this week (have been working on a little bit of animation) so a bit of a monster post instead! A lot of the work at this point was almost “more of the same” for what had already been done. This week I have the last few parts of the actual pack itself. We have:

• Gear Box (with Crank & Generator)
• Hydrogen Gas Actuator
• Gun Mount
• Pressure Regulator
• Bumper
• Ribbon Cable
• Power Cell & Injector
• Alice Pack Frame

The gear box, power cell, and gun mount are very similar so I could reuse the assets a bit. The gear box has a few little fiddly details that I only really spotted when building and when trawling the replica prop forums for detailed images. Nothing hugely difficult, just vexing to my OCD at having to rework (when it will probably never be seen!).

The process I used for the cable that comes from the generator is basically the same for all other cables that are seen throughout the model. For the repeating pattern seen in the cable I selected a number of polygons (the highlighted red in the image) and duplicated along a curve. For the tube cables, they were just extruded along a curve.

I think the ribbon cable is my least favourite part about the model, simply because it looks untidy. Saying that, in the real props it looks untidy so I guess it works.

I left the bumper until last because it really felt like the final piece of the pack, and there was a huge sense of completion with it. Of course once I finished it, I remembered I had to make the Alice pack frame… But that turned out to be a lot of fun.

I’ll have the final assembled pack in the next post, as well as the proton gun! I also may end up doing the trap for completionists sake…

Anyway, until then!

– Emmet

Inaugural Post

Howdy folks,

This is the first of what I hope to be many posts on the new blog/website. My old blog had been on life support for about 3 years so I decided to do the humane thing and put it out of its misery. Considering how long it had been since I had updated it, I’ll probably carry over very little but if there’s anything worth salvaging I’ll haul it over here.

There are a number of reasons I have for starting a new blog:

• The old blog had been left for so long that I couldn’t bring myself to write a new post out of shame.
• It was also created when I was still in college and felt immature (especially considering what a mature, upstanding grown up I am now).
• WordPress is far more customisable (though confusing at times) and will serve as a portfolio website as well as a blog.
• This blog will hopefully serve as inspiration to continue doing what I love. I have a terrible habit of ignoring personal projects when I get caught up in work.

That’s it really. Though the website will serve as showpiece for my professional and personal work, I’m hoping to be a bit freer with the blog and plan to include elements of game design and game theory, board games, and general nerd culture.

That’s it for now. Cheers.

– Emmet