Historical
I got heavily into history as an escape route when science became overwhelming. I hardly ever read any popular science any more, and history forms a nice counterpoint. Whereas science is all about how stuff works, history is all about people : but people in a different world where the rules were different, giving it more than a passing similarity to sci-fi and fantasy. So naturally, I've done a few historical renderings over the years.
The Siege of Conwy Castle
This isn't based on any particular siege but more from a simple desire to see a medieval castle under siege. Probably eventually, had my organic modelling phase continued, I'd have had it attacked by a dragon. Too bad that didn't last ! The castle was based very closely on schematics of Conwy in north Wales, but the terrain is essentially a fiction as no good data was available for the area.
The Iliad According to George
A bizarre spoof of the god-awful "Troy", this features better acting (i.e., none), dialogue (also none) and a giant rocket-propelled sheep. What's not to like ? It also contains what was by far my most painstaking animation challenge – about 200 soldiers engaged in combat. Truly epic.
....and yes, it contains a typo in the world "Trojan". The blue background on some of the text screens is because it genuinely looked black on my monitor at the time, that's how old this thing is. Which explains why I'd hand-animate all those soldiers and then render them in such crappy quality and with such awful compression that you can barely see anything. Needless to say, this was a very early project ! Like the Invasion of Cardiff, it was made in a fit of pique due to the god-awful terribleness that was the Wolfgang Peterson excuse for a film.
You can watch the video of this below. Of course, it's shite. But I for one still love the giant rocket-propelled sheep as a substitute for the Trojan Horse.
Miscellaneous
A few other smaller, standalone projects. Much later I went to the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde (Denmark), which inspired me to remake the longships. Unfortunately nothing much came of it, so these early ones are all I have.
