Zoe’s Flying Machine 2

Last time I posted about this I said it would be the last one and it kind of is but not as well. I completed two more designs after the last one but the real problem behind them was that they had to fold down. However, with my limited mechanical knowledge I couldn’t really get them to do that. So I concentrated mainly on shape rather than mechanics.

This following image is the first design. I got some good feedback for this one but the reality was that it was too hard to animate. I was pretty sure that after 1000 frames of animation those seven ‘blades’ on the back edge of each wing was going to get boring and painful. It didn’t work with less blades either as the wings just looked unfinished and unbalanced. The centred engines however, looked good and were also in a practical position for animation. They are pretty simple even at this stage and allow for much more simplification. The size of the wings is also pretty good as it makes the whole system much more personal and means that I can get really close-up in shot and still be able to play with composition.

With that in mind, I went back to the drawing board and came up with this:

I like these a lot. I’d be happy to animate this wing even with the 10 feather extensions because they can be worked out really easily with the wing shape. The wing shape itself starts from a rectangle so shots with heavy perspective in them shouldn’t be too much of a problem. The engines sit inside the wing which is good but the overall wing size is far too large. The final wing design needs to be attached to Zoe’s back with a simpler harness than the one shown here. I did opt for an even more organic solution but the results were not as aesthetically pleasing as the this one. I tried again from a mechanical point of view first, but these results were not simple and didn’t serve at all for the poses and positions that would be needed in the film.

In the end I decided to use a telescopic set-up and for the rest I will have to rely on ‘artistic license’ to get the wings small enough for when she is running. Below are the latest sketches of the final wing design:

The wings are smaller and much more slender, they sit on the back and they can flex into an almost circular shape. These wings will be included on a separate version of Zoe’s completed model sheet with their full range of movement.