I’ve been watching the resources at the Library of Congress’ web site for years now. They’ve published a lot of vintage photography, posters, and other materials, most of which were produced by government agencies. In general the government-produced work, like posters and photography from the Depression-era WPA projects, are in the public domain (though it’s necessary to check the status of a particular work, and easy since they most often include the rights status of these images).

But now the Library of Congress has branched out into Flickr streams. There’s a large selection of images in (so far) two collections: 1930s-40s in Color is a rare selection of over 1600 color photographs from that period, while News in the 1910s includes 1500 out of the Library’s nearly 40,000 glass negatives from the Bain News Service, circa 1910-1912.

Easy enough to get lost in those virtual stacks. Leave breadcrumbs!

Technorati Tags: vintage photographs, photography, library of congress, bain news service, wpa, United States Farm Security Administration, Office of War Information, great depression, world war ii, 1910s, 1930s, 1940s, newsreel, agriculture, industrial

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3D modeler Niko Moritz has a portfolio site that’s populated with a series of wonderful streamline cars and trucks (and, well, planes and boats) based on designs and prototypes that weren’t always put into production. There are some real gems here.

Above is his model of a fuel tank truck design that was patented in 1937, but possibly never built. He’s based it on a period White coe truck, also the foundation for the teardrop marvel shown at right. Both are based on designs by Alexis De Sakhnoffsky.

Other highlights include the classic Cord 810, Jaguar XKE and XK120, and the Hupmobile Skylark. Oh.. and there’s some modern gunge, too :).

Technorati Tags: vintage cars, 3d models, Niko Moritz, Cord, Deusenberg, Jaguar, Hupmobile, auto, automobile, trucks, streamline, art deco

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It’s hard to imagine a situation in which I would not want one of these. It would have been awesome back when I was commuting over 50 miles in Southern California - in those days, I wanted a personal airship - but since this jet pack is meant for parachutists and doesn’t allow you to take off from your driveway, I guess it wouldn’t have been the perfect solution.

Anyway it’s amazing; two small engines power what’s otherwise a glider that allows a parachutist to travel up to 200 kilometers through the air after leaping out of an airplane at 33,000 feet. (An unpowered version promises 50 kilometers of travel, and is quite a bit lighter, to boot).

Since the powered version weighs at least 80 pounds we’re looking at a new upside to having special forces paratroopers invade us, wherever we happen to be - they’ll probably have to leave their awesome jetpacks behind. Woot!

Technorati Tags: jet pack, jetpack, glider, parachuting, paratrooper, rocketeer

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Here’s the textured version of my “Big Lug” retro robot, a new character for my world of Retropolis. He’s big, he’s strong, he’s durable, but he’s not what you’d call the brightest bulb on the chain. This is the famous Mark II Big Lug, the most successful industrial robot to come off the assembly line at the Ferriss Moto-Man plant in Retropolis. You can get a Big Lug in just about any color - the default factory finish is shown here.

The picture above links to a 9 megabyte Quicktime “turntable” animation that I’ve used to see how he looks all ’round, as well as the way light plays across him. What remains to be done is to skin him to a skeleton. I’ve mentioned before that skinning makes me want to throw myself out of high windows. Really, I do mean that in the plural; I’d like to throw myself out of as many high windows as possible, by the time I’m done. But thankfully it’s much easier to skin a robot than it is to skin a human character.

“Big Lug” is now just over 211,000 triangular polygons. There’s some waste in curvy but indistinct areas like his armpits - but I’m not sure how much more optimization I’ll be doing in there.

Technorati Tags: Retropolis, retro robot, "Big Lug", science fiction, space opera, retro-futurism, 3d, character, turntable animation

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Still loads of texturing to go, though I quite like this basic steely thing he’s wearing. I’ve realized that “Ferriss Motomen” sounds like an instant noodle soup, while “Ferriss Moto-Men” is amazingly better. What a difference a hyphen makes.

Technorati Tags: retro robot, 3ds max, big lug, character, retro-futuristic, retropolis

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