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The Engineer’s Guide to Smashing Steampunk Design

Started by Josh M · 10 months ago

The mist clears and a brassy, leather-clad apparition appears towering above with nothing but a low hum and muffled wirring of clicks and springs. Prepare to inspire your rigid 3D mind into the most pliable, inventive machine of mechanical renaissance madness you’ve ever experi ... Continue reading »

11 comments

  • aldean

    10 months ago

    Martyn and Myself met Bruce Sterling last year in Arizona (co-author of The Difference Engine) - he's a cool guy, positions himself as a futurist - pretty engaging speaker.. but we freaked him out with our somewhat random questioning - it was noon, at the pool-bar, in 40 degree heat after all.. Fun times and Godfather drinkin' times
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  • Josh M

    10 months ago

    man, that would have been a fun conversation to sit in on. love his blog entries. lot of random, wierd future stuff. I need to pick up that book.
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  • aldean

    10 months ago

    Yeah - he's a pretty random kind of guy, but when he's confronted with two slightly drunk brits, asking him if he had to sleep with a mermaid, which way around would be want it (fish head or fish bottom half), he ran off.. good times..
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  • Daniel

    10 months ago

    Very interesting Post Josh, I've never actually dug into all the details about steampunk. So this had some great info. Gives me some insperation to maybe design and build something in our shop here.
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  • styxxman

    10 months ago

    its totally stupid and should not be used in the same sentence with art. every moron who wants to cash in on a dumb idea calls it art
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  • Dr Flonker

    10 months ago

    Maybe YOU don't consider it art, but looking over Datamancer's site at datamancer.net, I see some VERY cool pieces of gear I'd KILL to have. Talk about serious drool factor...
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  • BRS

    10 months ago

    It would be insulting if you didn't call a lot of this art. As an artist I say art isn't always paint on paper or clay formed into something but art is always something unique! and this is unique!
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  • Josh M

    10 months ago

    I agree with you. If anyone has ever attempted to create something, whether a painting or sculpture, they know the thought it takes to put a vision of what is in your mind or interpretation of what you see into it. There are some things that are not art... however, this stuff is not one of them.
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  • Jens Alfke

    10 months ago

    While it's true that much of the steampunk aesthetic derives from 1990s SF novels (by Gibson, Sterling, diFilippo, etc.), don't forget Terry Gilliam's 1984 film "Brazil", whose art design was, I think, also a huge influence. Remember the computer terminals that looked like an old B/W TV tube dropped on a manual typewriter?

    A little further back, there was some pure steampunk in John Varley's novel "The Ophiuchi Hotline" (1979?): one minor character is a rich and eccentric spaceship captain whose redesigned her ship into a total Jules Verne fantasy with brass tubing and rivets everywhere. IIRC it even had a pipe organ and a fishtank.

    Speaking of Jules Verne, he could even be claimed to have invented the style, from the opposite side of the street, so to speak, pushing technology forward rather than style backward. Although the influence might have mostly been filtered through old movies like Disney's "20,000 Leagues Beneath The Sea".
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  • Sand Punk

    1 month ago

    um... steam punk is well more than a year old. It literally goes back to the victorian era.
    reply
  • Josh M

    1 month ago

    yep, we all interested in it know that, but the press doesn't quite get it yet. let's keep it a secret. :)
    reply

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