Martian Handling Machine - Scratch build model

After rediscovering my old Photobucket account from 15 years ago, I found a collection of old photos I'd taken during the building of this model from "The War of the Worlds". The ancient potato-vision camera of the time was all I had back then so apologies for the picture quality. The music is an instrumental mix of "I Was Here" written and produced by myself, vocal mix version is available on this channel.

[@DonfridC4DYT]

great job! i love jeff waynes tripod

[@BrendanPerkins]

Many thanks

[@DonfridC4DYT]

your welcome @@BrendanPerkins

[@kaxtorplose]

WARNING! FAIRLY LONG POST APPROACHING, MOSTLY CONSISTING OF HIGH PRAISE FOR YOUR MODEL - PLUS, A FEW DIVERGENCES!
.
.
.
Great scratch build! This is the kind of thing I love to do, but I use cardboard mainly as my material, as well as clear plastic for any windows if I'm building a vehicle.
I HAVE ONE GRIPE WITH YOUR MODEL, BUT IT'S NOT AN 'OFFICIAL' GRIPE... AS YOUR MODEL IS PERFECT, ACCORDING TO YOUR REFERENCES:
I know that the artwork for the Jeff Wayne album features a six legged handling machine, but the book positively and definitively describes them as having FIVE legs.
It would have been an easy customization to include only two legs on each opposite side of your model, giving the machine a total of four legs - two on each side, and repurposing one of the removed legs as the fifth leg, which would protrude from the rear - much like the third leg of the 100-ft tall Martian fighting machines.
Although a five-legged handling machine still presents a problem when it comes to how in the hell a thing designed so impractically could actually walk with such an ungainly form of motivation, the handling machine is still described in the book as a machine having five legs, not six.
I would begin by subtracting two legs from each grouping of three on each opposite side of the machine (personally, I would get rid of both of the 'middle' legs on each side of the machine), while keeping one of the removed legs intact and attaching it to the back, giving the handling machine the proper five legs as was described in the novel.
A five-legged handling machine would be a very easy modification for a scratch built model like yours, since you obviously have a knack for scratch building and the required artistic talent and imagination to redesign the back of the handling machine in order to accommodate the 5th rear leg.
That's where you could use your own creativity and natural talent to modify the back of the handling machine so that the rear leg would fit in a precise and ordered way, giving the entire machine a natural appearance of having been intentionally designed to have five legs - one positioned at the rear, and four forward legs, positioned as two legs installed on each opposite side of the machine.
The rest would be up to you and your imagination to figure out how exactly the back of the handling machine would eventually look, considering the necessary alterations for fitting a fifth leg to the rear of the machine.
There have been so many different designs of Martian fighting machines, handling machines, and flying machines over the past 125 years, including the artwork in the Jeff Wayne album, that modifying the rear of the handling machine should be a cinch for someone like you.
And besides, the artists who produced the artwork for the album designed Martian machinery which differed considerably from what was described in the book, so they were obviously a-ok with straying from the official descriptions of the source material, so it's okay for you to do it in turn to the artwork that is shown in the album!
Regardless, you're going to do what you're going to do, and what you did here is to be considered no more than a pretty much perfect result of your original purpose - that of modeling from scratch an exact replica, using the album artwork as a reference, an extremely accurate Jeff Wayne Martian handling machine.
The way H.G. Wells described the Martian tripod fighting machines was - and this is pretty much the most detail he gave (other than a very simple sketch, a link to which I've included below) - as being constructed of a very shiny metallic material consisting of a lower body and an upper hood, in which a Martian sat. The entire thing used a combination of three legs for locomotion, and he described this movement as 'a milk stool being tilted haphazardly as the fighting machine advanced'. However, he also described the motion of these machines as extremely life-like - as if they were literal extensions of the bodies of the Martians which piloted them.
He also described the structure upon which the Martian sat as being covered by a sort of hood or cowl, which provided some protection to the Martian sitting inside.
The heat ray was described as a cylindrical mirror which wobbled upon an articulated arm for the purpose of moving the actual device of the heat ray and aiming it in the desired direction, which upon firing, produced an invisible ray of heat which could be focused by the mirror assembly.
As long as the target was within range of the heat ray, which was obviously an infrared laser (considering that it is invisible, and doesn't produce the colors that are usually associated with lasers which use other lazing mediums such as crystals, varying types of gases, and diodes) was obviously a CO2 laser, much like the ones under development by the United States Navy.
These lasers, installed on ships powered with fission nuclear reactors, use these reactors to provide about 30 kilowatts (That's 30,000 watts) of power - about enough to bring down a drone.
These carbon dioxide lasers, or heat rays as they were commonly referred to, most likely used an advanced type of fusion - NOT fission - FUSION reactors, probably tokamak or stellerator reactors, as power sources for not only their fighting and handling machines and all of their systems and subsystems, such as life support and locomotion, but these reactors also provided an excess of power for their heat rays.
With this much power, the only other practical tool that the Martians needed was a vast bank, or 'farm', of ultradense capacitors, with each one capable of storing megawatts of electricity for extended periods of time.
These highly advanced capacitors which powered the heat ray SPECIFICALLY, would have needed to be able to store megawatts of electricity in each capacitor - not for merely just a few seconds as our capacitors are capable of doing, but for days, at the least.
Possibly thousands or even millions of these high-powered capacitors, all individually linked together and forming an extremely capable conduit for transmitting multi-megawatts of electricity, would pass via extremely tough power cables directly into the heat ray mechanism.
The energy of merely a fraction of these charged capacitors would be fed directly into the heat ray mechanism, almost certainly an invisible high-powered carbon dioxide laser in the multi-megawatt range.
This overdose of capacitors would exist for the sole purpose of the immediate extraction of a certain amount of energy from an arbitrary cluster of capacitors, which would then deliver that energy into the mechanism of the heat ray, determining its power level and range.
The discharge capacitors would immediately begin to charge again very quickly, resulting in a power mechanism for the heat ray which would never be in danger of being drained.
Obviously, the effects of an extremely powerful CO2 laser powered by hundreds of megawatts at close range would be immediate and devastating - instant destruction and immolation by CO2 laser fire.
Attenuation through the atmosphere was mostly what restricted the heat rays' range, as the further a laser of any type fires through a gaseous medium towards its target, the more attenuated the highly focused photons comprising the laser beam become, until standing in the direct path of the heat ray, after attenuation had rendered it harmless, would pose no danger to anyone or anything.
In addition to a myriad of articulated arms on the tripods and handling machines which were described as carrying canisters for ejecting black smoke, holding and aiming heat rays, handling materials, with presumably a couple of spare articulated arms for other types of work - these tripod fighting machines also sported the 16 tentacle configuration of two groupings of eight, which were used for picking up humans and depositing them into a basket on its' back, as tripods also sported these in order to contain captured humans for returning to their vast construction pits for consumption purposes.
In case you haven't seen it, below is the promised link to an actual drawing by H.G. Wells (more of a gesture drawing, or a sketch) of a Martian tripod fighting machine.
images.app.goo.gl/Qfisj2SYEFbDVdCK7
Unfortunately, no sketch exists for a handling machine. However, this sketch of a fighting machine, as simple as it is, contains more than enough information for a talented, artistically inclined person to design a far more detailed Martian tripod, using this sketch as a reference.
I only discovered it recently, or I would have already drawn a much more fleshed out and detailed version, based on this sketch by the author of the book himself.
.
.
.
Anyway, GREAT WORK!
You're an inspiration.
- Ash

[@BrendanPerkins]

Nice to see someone else so passionate about HGs wonderful novel! 😃 I've always loved every aspect of the story, and adored Jeff Wayne's musical version and the Michael Trim designs, even though they have inaccuracies to the novel. I embrace all the variations as creations in their own right and keep them accurate within each sphere of interpretation. I love the quirkiness as well as the beauty of the original. 😃

[@kaxtorplose]

@@BrendanPerkins I HAVE EDITED PORTIONS OF THIS COMMENT TO INCLUDE EXTREMELY IMPORTANT INFORMATION, JUST FOR YOU! I'M PASSING IT ALONG AS IF YOU WERE A COMPUTER AND I WERE A COMPUTER AND WE WERE ACTUALLY HOOKED UP AND EXCHANGING DATA! WOW I'M RETARDED. ANYWAY, JUST LETTING YOU KNOW.
.
.
.
It was the first novel I ever read, whenever I was 7 years old. It scared the holy terror out of me. It's been my favorite science fiction novel for my entire life, and it is probably the first true, feasible science fiction novel ever written (I don't know which came first, The Invisible Man, The Time Machine, The Island of Dr Moreau, The Food of the Gods, The First Men In the Moon...)
I've read them all several times, and I've picked them all apart several times, too. I've looked for inconsistencies, impossibilities, Deus ex Machinas, concepts which were just completely retarded, and I have never run across anything that wasn't based in science the way it could have been whenever HG Wells wrote all of those science fiction novels.
Another one of my favorite authors is Stephen Baxter, who writes novels very similar in style to those of HG Wells. He even wrote a sequel to The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds, called The Time Ships and The Massacre of Mankind, respectively. The Time Ships is the FAR better novel. Also, if you run across a novel by Stephen Baxter called Anti-Ice, you need to grab that thing like it was Bill bottoms going out of style and read it immediately! It's about the substance discovered in Antarctica, presumably which had arrived from space on a meteor, which was perfectly stable at certain temperatures but once it had warmed up past like a millionth of a degree past some arbitrary temperatures that I can't remember, it exploded with the force of antimatter. This was all taking place I think during either world War I or world War II, so we get to see Berlin getting nuked by anti-ice! A must read.
I don't think any of Jules Verne's works can be included, even though I've read very little of Jules Verne except for From the Earth to the Moon, but firing a gun to send people to the moon would have smeared them like paste against the bottom of the projectile. Not real science.
The War of the Worlds, on the other hand... I've been thinking about this book for decades. I've been trying to mark out points of feasibility in my head concerning this book. As I described in my original comment, the heat ray is obviously an extremely high powered carbon dioxide laser, something that HG Wells probably was not familiar with, but he invented the concept of it anyway. Amazing!
The ending is the only true failure of the book, if you want to call it a failure, because how could such an advanced society as the Martians have no knowledge of microorganisms? Unless they wiped them out millions of years ago, and have just completely forgotten about them?
That's how I justify their completely retarded method of demise and failure at their invasion of the Earth. They had completely forgotten about microorganisms! Unlikely, but it holds up if I want it to.
My granddaddy introduced me to the album in 1980. Just a year after its release. I've been listening to it ever since, off and on, but every year I give it about a dozen listens. I'm just glad that Richard Burton survived for long enough to record all of his lines!
Anyway. The album was released almost exactly a year after I'd read the book, and man oh MAN, did it scared the buhjeezubs our of me, too!
My only wish... my GREATEST wish, before I croak... is too see a really GOOD, period authentic movies of The War of the Worlds, the way Pendragon tried so hard to do, but oh God, that movie gave me PTSD because I was so excited about it!
I mean, the director, Timothy Hines, was constantly writing press releases that were posted on HowStuffWorks, and at the time, I was a part of a buzzing community of WOTW fans, about a hundred of us who belonged to one of those old pro board forums which was dedicated to the War of the Worlds, I mean everything considering the War of the Worlds, especially the movies that were coming out. This was, of course, back in 2005.
We were all looking forward to the Pendragon version, because it was supposed to be the closest to the book that any War of the Worlds movie has ever attempted, and we all were sort of kind of anticipating the Steven Spielberg version which was sure to be a crap fest with awesome special effects.
Our hopes at the time lay with the Pendragon version, which promised to be 100% true to the novel. Also, this was whenever the stage musical of Jeff Waynes' musical of the War of the Worlds, which was being produced and shown only in Australia, was happening. Disappointing that it still never hit American shores, but t it was fun getting glimpses of the animated tripods, man those things looked cool!
Well, Pendragon wasn't lying. And that is an occurrence which should be included in any university level film class. How not to make a book adaptation of a movie. Simply refer to the Pendragon version of The War of the Worlds, directed by Timothy Hines and produced by Susan Goforth.
IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO MAKE AN EXACT ADAPTATION OF A BOOK INTO A MOVIE!
However, you can still make a good adaptation which is faithful to the book, but a book and a movie are two completely different forms of media. You just can't film every little thing that the narrator of a book describes, or that the main character sees and feels... I mean, you're gonna have to change some things. And after I viewed the Pendragon version of The War of the Worlds, this became abundantly clear to me. Especially since I had just graduated with a degree in computer animation, and this topic wasn't even touched upon. The making of a movie out of a book. How to do it, and how not to do it!
So now I've got the rest of my life to hope that somebody makes a version which is set in the correct time., has two main characters being the writer and his brother, has a riveting Thunderchild scene, and damn it, humanity needs to kill at least six of those goddamn 100 ft glittering pieces of metal that are laying waste to England! That's something that happened in the book that should be no trouble at all translating to the big screen! If there's going to be a really good movie of the War of the Worlds, it has to have a Thunderchild scene!
Anywho, I guess I'm done now. I've got ADD and I'm on my medication, which makes me ramble whenever I'm typing or talking or doing anything with my hands, I'll usually screw it all up. So, nice talking to you! You should build an actual tripod to the same degree of precision and quality as your handling machine!
Later,
- Ash

[@BrendanPerkins]

Oh I definitely remember all the buzz about the Pendragon movie, and I too got rather excited about the whole thing. I also remember "War of the Worlds Online" proboards forum because I was one of the moderators (called Poyks) 😃

[@BrendanPerkins]

PS there is a Fighting Machine building video on this channel.

[@kaxtorplose]

@@BrendanPerkins Is the fighting machine on your CZcams channel? I scanned through your videos and couldn't find it. Can you link me to it?
In the meantime, I'm providing a link to a device I invented. When I say that, I mean I haven't seen anything like this either on CZcams, or Amazon, or Etsy, or at retail stores like Hot Topic, or Spencer's Gifts, or KB Toys or Toys R Us, or any of the arts and crafts stores which are still hanging around like Michaels, Joanne's and Hobby Lobby, plus Best Buy, Walmart, Radio Shack (back when it still existed)...
My point is, I came up with this idea almost 30 years ago, and I was sure that someone had already patented the idea and had this device manufactured and available for purchase like... SOMEWHERE, but after 30 years of searching...
I have found hide nor hair of anything which comes close to this thing that I've invented. Now, maybe someone else has invented it too, but if they have, they're keeping it a secret.
I finally got tired of looking for a retail version and decided to build the damn thing myself. I put the first demo of mine on CZcams, and here's a link to it.
czcams.com/video/NAiFBdBkYx8/video.html
I'm also building a Smaug model, which I'll find a link to also. It's built entirely out of cardboard, and the head is almost finished. I used acrylic paints to paint it, and all that's left are to insert the glass beads that I painted yellow for eyes and then install LEDs inside the head to make the eyes glow, and a strip of LEDs to run down the throat to make the throat glow. The head will be mounted on a plaque, kind of like in a lodge where you'd see a reindeer head or moose head on a plaque mounted on a wall.
I'll have to figure out some way to dig that up so I can post it here.