Big Tank

[Velocity Kendall]

Ok hand on the block time, i never put my work in to crit which is kind of pussy as i crit lots of other peoples like im the big one and never even submit a wip so...this is for TAD IdD class thing, did all my work as fast as i could today so i could play with this all evening. its a big massive tank. ive got everyone doing a tank so we are trying to make ours the best. its to get everyone to learn about tanks and design and drawing in general. its still a wip and theres this is day 1 so theres like 3 or 4 weeks left so i need your help for ideas.
I think it wouldnt be practical or tanks would look like this, it cant go down roads or on planes. but just make believe. but i tried to make it fairly practical having admitted that. like make it low and flat so it can hide, and shoot hull down etc.

theres more views than these here in my link

http://conceptart.org/forums/showthr...41#post3662041

some crits so far:

crits so far, please add more
-smaller bars and more mesh on RPG rail
more stuff and detial on turret
maybe a rail gun?
maybe Phalanx style minigun close support weapon?
bloody barrels are not aligned..



i also thought it cant really look up easily, but maybe it can sort of squat on its tracks to tilt a bit. which should be easy to do. also might try a long narrow one articulated like a train.. so it can go down streets.

anyway please tear it up or draw on it to help things. also composition and background, weak..
also, the st joan thing, i dunno, it just reminded me of tianaman which was a good moment. fuck you The Man in your stupid tank!

thanks in advance.

[Velocity Kendall]

some real quick changes. it looks like the man is super strong and holding it up!
its more like a self propelled gun..

[Velocity Kendall]

well, that was a fun evening! not often i get to kick back these days ;( time to crash.

[Giacomo]

Looks pretty good to me!

I'm not sure if this is supposed to be plausible from an engineering standpoint or not, but in terms of visual coolness I'd suggest you might want to push the functionality a bit more on the next iteration...if it's supposed to be a kind of mobile howitzer then there's really no need for that much armor, nor does the turret need to be enclosed. That might give you the opportunity to include forms that are less austere, which I think might look better. Unless you're going for really austere, in which case I'd suggest losing a lot of the "nurnies" and making it the tank equivalent of a Stealth bomber.

This thing reminds me a LOT of the awesome tanks from the "Ogre" sci-fi board and miniature games of the late 1970s....sample image below. The designs for that game were more "theatrical" than "practical" or "realistic"-- but it seems to me your tank might benefit from a bit of that approach.

[Quike Garcia]

One simple thing is that a projectile is most effective impacting normal to the surface. If there is no requirement of making the sides of the tank flat and vertical, I'd add a bit of slanted shapes. Also, the reactive armour plates seem a bit like an afterthought. They could be a bit better integrated into the design.

Love the turret by the way

[pauloricardo]

This old Brazilian tank has a power trim system to make the wheels always have traction. I know that the Soviets thought a similar system in the 60 to produce a bomber that could use dirt runway for takeoff and landing, can not remember the model of the MIG, but it worked. In practice, they would like the legs of a spider or a scorpion, although a simple principle, which can also help. In the past, some off-road cars tried using the same system before artificial intelligence were available to make it electronically. In my opinion, if you put some wheels using this idea to your tank, you could achieve a better traction effect, because your mats fit the terrain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EE-11_Urutu

From the engineering point of view, it is suitable to produce this tank... the problem is, in the battle, could it be useful? Do not forget that the Soviets eliminated many tanks Tiger through ambushes that made its firepower useless. So, it was enough to invade the tower to eliminate the crew, which was a relatively simple task when the tank was alone. Moreover, many of them were lost in the mud during the winter due to the enormous weight of the armor.

This is another example of what I am talking above

http://www.fiddlersgreen.net/models/...-Tank-A40.html

I think your tank is more suitable for the style of battles from the World War I. Nowadays, if your tank is not fast, or have a good camouflage system, it will not be used. My comments are just related to the usage aspects. About the painting, it is good.

best regards

[Velocity Kendall]

thank you so much guys.

paulo, this is one of the craziest things ive ever seen!!
http://www.fiddlersgreen.net/aircraf...k-Inflight.jpg

and i take your point about traction, and practicability; theres no way it would be any use cos it couldnt drive down anything smaller than a motorway, it was purely abiout visual impact.
im thinking for the next version make it into a long articulated mobile howizter; less armour as Quike and Giacomo suggested, and instead two smaller lighter boxes, or possibly three, connected like a train. something a bit like this maybe shiould solve a lot of problems:
this retains the redundancy of havlng lots of treads too so if one get blown up youve still got 3.

[IMG]ill add more images with changes soon.[/IMG]


giacomo, those pics are perfect, ive not heard of that before but the idea of making them more tv game show esque is a good one i think.

ill add more images with changes soon. thanks a lot fellas!

[Angel Intheuk]

Hiya VK

I know absolutely crap all about tanks but from a practical point of view the tall ufo jobby on the back looks like it would be seen by enemies quite clearly from a distance, what is that btw?

p.s nice work!! The grainy pics are quite convincing

[Falchion]

Just remember that the multi-track thing only works if they're there to support a secondary chassis, or if the tracks on on independent pivots, which yours seem to be.

[The Fez]

First off, fuck yes. Giant tank. There need to be more concepts of giant tanks with hot chicks firing machine guns
indiscriminately into the air, but there are not, and that is a bad thing. It's a crisis, really.

There's a series of questions I always ask before I design anything.

1. What is it?
2. What is it for?
3. How does it do it?

So far as I can tell, it's working out like this:

1. Giant tank
2. ???
3. Bigass gun

You've got a tank with a bigass gun, but as you have already stipulated, it's plausible functionality is severely
hampered by the fact that it's the size of Gabriel Iglesias. Some might say that you can't really make the best
tank a tank can be if your design doesn't have a obvious function. But I don't think that's necessarily the case.
I think you've already, whether you're consciously aware of it or not, determined its function. You mentioned earlier
that it's all about "visual impact", which is, as it turns out, still an important factor in warfare in general. Can't fit
down an alleyway? Who gives a shit? It's got a rotating 270mm death cannon that can level a city block in 5
seconds flat. It's a weapon of mass destruction, and there's no reason to radically redesign it. You can field the
design premise ad-hoc like this:

-Mobile command / fire-support / WMD
-Deployed via ship via hovercraft and then utilizes existing road infrastructure to move inland (even if, practically, it's
weight would destroy any road that wasn't 20' deep worth of concrete)
-Deploys on the PERIMETER of urban centers, and provides direct fire-support with the intent to virtually level whole
segments of a city. The idea here is that you unleash so much destructive power that it causes enemy combatants
to flee from the cover of the urban sprawl. In this way, you induce fear in enemy insurgents such that you displace
them as your own infantry assets push into the city. An enemy will not hold a position that they know can be utterly
annihilated at any second.

It basically takes the whole attritional aspect of urban warfare out of the equation by providing more immediate,
prolonged, AND more destructive fire-support when compared to aerial bombardment. Boom. Sold. How much
and how many?

You also have a problem with proportion. What's true of almost every tank is that the height of the turret is shorter
than the height of the chassis.

Like, let's take a look at one of the most beautiful tanks ever designed:



There's essentially a two to one ratio between the chassis and the turret.

Let's look at the M1A Abrams, the tank yours is directly based on:



You can see that ratio stays very nearly the same even in modern tanks. Why is that? Probably because that's
where the crew needs to be.

I've made a similar adjustment to yours, and honestly, I didn't actually scale the turret down so much as I increased
the depth of the chassis:



At present, your tank looks incredibly top heavy, which is counter-intuitive. You want a larger, heavier chassis in
order to help absorb recoil from the main cannon, and to provide 'comfortable' clearance for the crew (not that
there's any wanting for space in the interior...)

When it comes to complex mechanical designs, and based on my own architectural training, I tend to think in terms
of section. When you know where the internal mechanisms of the tank are, and how all of the various compartments
are supposed to work together, then you will have a much clearer image of how the tank should appear on the exterior.
What kind of compartments should there be in this tank? How large is the crew? Do they need sleeping quarters? If
there's a command center, where's the command center? What kind of propulsion system does it have? Nuclear power,
maybe? How do you load three barrel rotating 270mm cannon? I Literally play a game of 20 questions with my designs for
10 minutes, and then write down some quick, semi-plausible answers. You don't have to actually work out the internals
visually, but you could...



Fucking Hayao Miyazaki. His sketchbooks are just filled with this kind of shit, and if that doesn't give you some kind of
design boner, then I can't help you.

In any case, when I field these kinds of technical questions early in the design process, and do some preliminary
conceptualization (even if they're just notes and not initial design sketches), I wind up eliminating a lot of headaches
later on down the road. Because if I know how large the crew needs to be, then I know there has to be a certain amount
of internal space for them all. And if I know roughly the quantity of internal space required, then you I how to
handle habitable volumes relative to volumes reserved for mechanical systems. If the tank is powered by a nuclear reactor,
then I don't have to sweat about operational limitations so much, ect. Doing this kind of legwork early on ensures that I
have a much clearer design objective, and that I don't get distracted or confused later on. Of course, I'm also one to
obsess over details, and to an entirely unhealthy degree (which is why it takes me 30+ hours to finish any painting ever).

Anywho, you're off to a fantastic start. When I saw that first image posted in your sketchbook thread, I knew this shit was
gonna be hot. Can't wait to see it progress.

[Velocity Kendall]

THIS is CA. Not thids managerial-level shenanigans. THIS.

OK
Angel.Yeah the mushroom, my idea was that it was some kind of scanner on an extendible pole so it could see over things, like the thing on top of an Apache Longbow. This allows it to hide behind things like hills and walls and scan the area. A periscope, effectively. But it needs lots more designing!
Hers the one I was thinking of..
Thank you so much you guys by the way.


Now, Fezmaster, heres the score, I got class on tuesday so ive got monday pencilled in to go nuts on this badboy. Your fantastic crits will go a long way, Ill update you so you can see the difference it made. And sorry, but Im lifting whole paragraphs to pass on to the team.
BTW, assuming it all survives the current unpleasantness, join TAD, youd love it and Id fucken love your brain in ID class!

[Falchion]

VK, I'd recommend looking up the old RAND Corporation study on the future of armor. There's at least five different tank/IFV configurations theorized in there with associated hardware that I've found useful and if put into practice, very visually distinctive.

[Velocity Kendall]

Filthy I forgot to thank you earlier, and Im reading the RAND report now so I can deliver the guts of it to the students. We talk a lot about who uses the things we;re designing, what world they inhabit, and all the design issues facing the product, much as Fez analysed above. This is a really interesting addition to that knowledge. Also Quike, youre right about the sides being too flat. I was thinking maybe break them up into wierd surfaces like in an anechoic chamber, might look kind of cool and techy.

[bill618]

Mega tank—pretty cool!
It dwarfs some of those non-line-of-sight cannons.

I thought the tank was too long and narrow to do any practical skid steering (without a battle ship sized turning radius), but compared to the track to ground patch (dark gray area in diagram) and spacing of an M1 Abrams, it’s not much longer (at the same outside width). It seems the tracks are pretty close together, in line—that’s without seeing the tracks on your model behind the skirt.

I agree The Fez that the chassis just looks to flat, compared with the turret.

Those Apaches are impressive (pic)—although too much pilot hotdogging can render all the tech useless:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDOCh6QWQm8

More updates!

[pauloricardo]

it was purely abiout visual impact.

Hello Velocity, no doubt you got a good result on it...

best regards

[Velocity Kendall]

bit of apathetic update guys, im really busy trying to catch up on stuff fomr the last few days. but ill spend some more serious time on monday when stuffs cleared out the way.
i ensmallened the gun and stuff. needs some though, based on your ideas.

[Giacomo]

What exactly is the purpose of that railing around the turret? Also, why are there side views of burnt-out cars texture-mapped on the side of it?

I'm not sure the most recent iteration is a huge improvement...if it were me at this point, I'd quit out of my 3D program, print out the orthographic views of the thing, trace over them to refine the form, and scan those in as backdrops to work from. The last round of changes feels a bit like you're moving forms around at random in hopes that some magic will happen.

[Velocity Kendall]

What exactly is the purpose of that railing around the turret? Also, why are there side views of burnt-out cars texture-mapped on the side of it?

I'm not sure the most recent iteration is a huge improvement...if it were me at this point, I'd quit out of my 3D program, print out the orthographic views of the thing, trace over them to refine the form, and scan those in as backdrops to work from. The last round of changes feels a bit like you're moving forms around at random in hopes that some magic will happen.

Youre not wrong G, 45 mins at the end of the day and just noodling, not really designing.
I havent made any other changes apart from shrinking the turret really. The only other things I moved were I made the roller wheels smaller and more numerous, in the hope of making the overall track look larger, and telescoped down and folded over the over-the-horizon periscope RADAR.

oh i also moved the claw on the back a bit. this is used for ploughing up roads and landing strips,. as well as towing.
]
oh and i dropped the airboxes at the back a bit, they were fouling the gun as it went round.

but really it needs 6 hours.

The railing is partly Slat Armour use to explode RPG rounds before they hit the turret, to prevent the ammo magazine exploding, and also for soldiers to hang off and dump their packs in when using the tank as a transporter.


i need to make some slat armour panels i think.
Ammo is stacked radially around the inside of the turret usually, and if it explodes the tank is dead. So a lot of effort has to be made to prevent this.

The burnt out cars were a reacl quick attempt to show the tank trying to blend with whats around it, can see its not reading well.. hmm.

right, lots to think about, update monday night. thanks all, no where else can i get the straight dope. love you guys.



im using my cross sections book to mak out internals. im thinking 4 lambo engines and a big vacuum magnetically suspnded flywheel and some lithium batteries, all driving 1 track per engine...
im using this book to helop map the internals while working on paid work (tanks are so much more fun)



Giacomo, please keep the thoughts coming, what you mentioned already has given me a lot tp think about re adaptive camo.

heres more of my research..








i love the gun on this one by young Jepray over on. i just noticed the little three barrel rotary canon in there too!
man this takes me back...



OK monday night, time for a major upgrade to MK2!!!

Lets be honest, three rotary 150mm barrels is cool, but a rail gun or a laser and ginormous batteries, thats where its at right??

[Candra H]

Okay, my head hurts. I have no comments to add, just offering my support and I hope you keep working on this and posting because I'm learning lots of interesting stuff in this thread.

[The Fez]

I liked the car silhouette camouflage. It's clever, and I think it ties the tank directly into a setting. Would it actually work?
That's another one of those things that can be left ambiguous, because, ultimately, we're designing for fictional realms,
and it can work in our fictional realms if we so decide. I like the narrative of an enemy tank commander scanning the
horizon through his binoculars, panning carelessly by it, and then having to do a double take only to realize that he's be zeroed
in, and has exactly two more seconds to live.

Designing via 3D modeling software is hard as hell. I am routinely in awe of anyone who can do it intuitively, because there
is a significant tendency to get bogged down with details and the general management of the modeling tools in general (at
least for me). I might second Giacomo's suggestion to break away from the model for a bit, and work out some sketches (which,
maybe you have).

One of the things I've always liked about superscale vehicles (battleships, submarines, ect, ect, ect) is that they tend to each
posses a human ecology all there own. I've always liked reading about daily lives of tank-crews, for instance. You find that
these vehicles become social mechanisms as well as actual mechanisms for warfare. They're like moving cities, and I
think the genius of creators like Miyazaki is to capture the essence of this intimate social dynamic in films like Laputa: Castle
in the Sky. I'm referring here directly to the sky pirates in that film. Their existence is bound to some crazy flying contraption,
and that's fascinating in and of itself. One of the challenges of being a designer AND storyteller is to capture the day-to-day
routine non-verbally in our designs. What really ties a design to "REALITY" proper is not how convincing your mechanisms are
(Some of Miyazaki's designs are straight up ridiculous in terms of mechanical feasibility), or how elaborate your operational
functions, but the quality of your design empathy regarding the characters who use it. I think this consideration is probably the
most important aspect of design, and is frequently the aspect least considered. For instance, I never particularly liked any Gundam
anime (except for the original) until 8th MS team, and that's because 8th MS Team began to talk about Gundams in exactly the
language I'm describing. When you consider Gundams merely as super-powered robots (like Gundam Wing, which was rubbish),
and as mere destructive objects, they're just boring. Break them down, talk about having to live out of that shit, talk about the
legion of mechanics and engineers who would have to maintain it, talk about how real people would have to use it. Develop
an ecology of individuals who have to make a machine work, and then you'll have a design that possesses something more
important than mere function: it will have character. And if you can give a machine personality and character, then you've
transcended mere mechanical design.

Thinking about this dynamic will also prevent you from falling into another pitfall. I think there's a higher tendency among
designers these days to focus on whether or not their designs are "tacticool". I hate to pick on this guy, but I've seen his
work a few places, and it's the perfect example of what I'm talking about:



Here, the focus really becomes about how much tactical bullshit can be piled up on to a thing. This stuff is trending, too,
and I feel nothing for it.

Don't do that. Always think about the human element. Because, here's what's up, your design will not exist in a abstract
vacuum. It's going to be placed in a setting, whether it be a movie, a video game, or a comic-book, and either it's a vehicle
for the drama of that setting, or it's just a vehicle.

I've rambled quite a bit here, but there's just some stuff I've got to get out of my brain case these days, and this seemed
like the right thread for it. We're all designers here, and I don't see why we can't have discussions about the issues.

[Velocity Kendall]

Fez, we have a LOT to talk about. Your rambling is gold. Details in my sig. This is what our classes our like, everyone just chimes in.

That pic you linked is a bad copy of the I think excellent Aaron Becks highly influential work.

Re Miyazake, that robot... ancient, but still functional and powered and with fully sentient AI, that speaks of a Kardashev 1.5 society of immense power that has fall a long time ago but seriously built to last. All of this is encoded. Its also a sweet aqnd magical character. Its increidble data compression.
Like I say, we have a lot to discuss. please sign up for TAD??? youd rock out!

Heres some of my rubbish slides, might be of interest. i cant spell...

[The Fez]

I'm honestly looking to transition out of architecture (read: interior design ) and into concept art, which is scary as hell, because I know full well what my competition is like. You just can't be good. You have to be mindblowingly good. Of course, I'm sure the greats never obtained their level of ability by cowering the shadows of their superiors. I would love to get involved with TAD, and, in actuality would just love to go back to school full-time and develop my technical proficiency and imaginative capability. Currently, I really have no idea how I could manage that at this juncture in my life. Really, I just need to take the plunge, and start working freelance as a concept artist, for better or worse, because picking out grout color just isn't cutting it

[Velocity Kendall]

I worked in at the buildings dept in the local council during my degree, surveying their property portfolio and drawing up the plans, and integrating their disparate stashes of plans.. All i cared about when I was 21 was having a black Alfa 164 with a bong in it, my own poky office and a job where people didnt fucking bug me. It was alright. Boring people but easy to handle. And a monthly cheque is all good. So I'm not knocking that life.
After uni I worked in a studio that fabricated concept cars. It was ok but I found i was only warming up for work at 5pm! So eventually I left and did really boring design work freelance, was broke for ages and slowly got more interestnig work. The process continues but 3 years in Id recommend it.
Guys like Randis are the inspiration, theyve got their shit in order. they live the life, make decent bank, make cool work, and are their own people.
I advise getting in some work before you quit. Making some steady contacts, even if its boring shit. I do loads of property development visuals (read interior design) when things get slow, boring paid work is better than nothing. I quite like designing houses if Im honest.
Finally, the attitude I find helps is that espoused by the young Snoop Dogg and Ice Cube. Life is hard, youve gotta hustle every day, work hard on your shit, getting by and not relying on any fucker is where its at. As is gin and juice. If you made it through the day, made some art, made some dough for rent and didnt use you AK, it was a good day. Onward and upward.
Thats all I can tell you.

[Quike Garcia]

The Fez last point is gold.

I'd add a couple of pointers.

One thing you should take into account on the design is the kind of conflict the weapon system is aimed for. A huge tank like that is obviously appointed to quite symmetric conflicts (trying to make them assymetric by sheer size alone ) which can make it vulnerable to small attacks (death star style) This can be avoided with a bit of thoughts in the design, like a v-shaped hull to minimize mine/IED damage, small ports around to allow small arms fire, a 360º optics system for situational awareness and protected observation spots for the crew. Also NBC shielding wouldn't be a bad idea.

Second, regarding the tacticool effect, there has been traditionally two approaches to body armour and carry-on equipment. The heavier armour approach, looking for full body armour, with lots of equipment, and the lighter one, covering just the essentials and relying more on moving constantly. If you're going to be a sitting duck, like a sentinel, it makes sense to have a heavier protection, but for an infiltration/assault operative, it may become cumbersome quite fast, and many of them will get rid of the unnecesary equipment along the way. I knew spanish special forces guys that loved to make joint excercises with other forces because they'd come back home with lots of brand new equipment left in the field by other armies..

Also, for RPG protection technology http://www.qinetiq-na.com/products/survivability/q-net/

[Velocity Kendall]

some new brain thinkings based on what weve talked about..
moved it towards a long range weapon with less small arms defensive capability. maybe something like a giant sniper rifle for shooting down satellites or something!

all the images got messed up in the server move..
so heres the lot..

[Falchion]

Digging the articulation, but those things need a LOT more ground clearance. They're supertanks, they're not supposed to be stopped by little things like improvised barricades or conventional planters!

[Velocity Kendall]

v good point. and it needs to be able to stop an A10 tankbuster
heres some tank traps, in warhammer form

[Velocity Kendall]

I think if it can pivot each track independently i can get it to tippy toe over at elast some tank barriers. just need to get all my work out the way and ill do it..
more playing between boring work

[Quike Garcia]

I like the inclusion of the CIWS turrets (although the base seems a bit flimsy articulated only on one side), and I guess at the top is a Surface to Air missile turret. That should stop a warthog for sure By the way, you have a CIWS turret that fires the A10 gun, the Goalkeeper.

[Velocity Kendall]

Yep the mini phalaxes need better armatures, its on a big shelf bracket from the turret but its not the best and neither is the arm it pivots on. still basic. when everyhtings placed ill add the belt feeders and wires and smaller detail everywhere too



I have an A10 bullet on my desk from class, its nearly 7 inches long. Its like Shiva the Destroyer's dildo.