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SPBrewer
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« Reply #51 on: February 25, 2012, 07:44:01 am » |
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The Victorians put so much craftsmanship into the items they made. A true steampunk will want to emulate that craftsmanship as best they can. Folks out to make a quick buck on "steampunk" will not follow that lead, but instead the lack of craftsmanship will show by them simply "gluing a gear on something".
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Indigo Spire
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« Reply #52 on: February 26, 2012, 03:24:57 am » |
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The tiny gears and watch movement used in this piece don't actually make it function or even turn but they don't need to because a lot of original creativity has gone into it's construction and the overall effect is one of ten fold awesomeness. See the difference? That looks great! |
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Hez
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« Reply #53 on: February 26, 2012, 06:07:37 am » |
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How about these gears?  (<-- cheesy grin) |
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Neibelungen
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« Reply #54 on: February 26, 2012, 12:43:54 pm » |
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Take a look at Datamancer's laptop and tell me,
Is it just something with gears glued on, or
Is it steampunk art? I think I exampled this earlier, but to mind it's one of the few designs that failed. While the concept was to imply the existence of a clockwork musical box mechanism, I find that the arrangement simply didn't convey that feeling clearly and lacked an sense of 'interconnection' between the various cogs. While the rest of the design was a tour de force of understated elegance, that top lacked cohesion to the rest.. Everybodys perspective of design will differ. Mine is that a simple green or red leather insert with tooled gold lining, similar to a desk top, whould have fitted better to the clean styled lines of the overall design. Others will disagree. |
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Indigo Spire
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« Reply #55 on: February 26, 2012, 02:31:22 pm » |
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Cheesy is right! Where is the salsa?  |
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Bookgal1977
Officer
 United States
Everythings a story. You are a story -I am a story
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« Reply #56 on: February 26, 2012, 02:35:09 pm » |
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To paraphrase an old saying. If you never make a mistake, the reason is you have never done anything.
I rather like this saying!  |
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It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes. -Douglas Adams
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Narsil
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« Reply #57 on: February 26, 2012, 03:04:43 pm » |
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I've noticed that there seem to be a number of common points which get missed a lot in designing realistic looking clockwork.
-Clockwork mechanisms are usually designed to be as compact as possible so empty space should be kept to a minimum.
-Long trains of gears meshing one to the next are rare, except perhaps in industrial feed mechanisms, almost all gearboxes and clockwork will have several gears on common axles to achieve the required reduction rations.
-Gears which mesh need to have identical teeth.
-Axles almost always need to be supported by bearings at both ends.
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A man of eighty has outlived probably three new schools of painting, two of architecture and poetry and a hundred in dress. Lord Byron |
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rhylla
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« Reply #58 on: February 26, 2012, 05:19:33 pm » |
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i like datamancer's laptop... but there ya go, horses for courses i guess my trouble is, much as I would love to, and honestly have tried to, I don't really understand gears. I mean, I get the principle, bits and pieces turn gizmos which turn whatchamacallits which then make something work... but I, sadly, seem to have been away chatting at another queue when mechanical apptitude was handed out! i blame my grandad, master bookbinder, though he was, he had a thing about taking clocks apart then having real trouble putting them back together again - he always ened up with bits left over and a nice looking but non-working clock! so I think my gears will never be anything but decorative - or give the impression that there might be some vague clockwork type mechanism involved in my clockwork snail or whatever I'm making. But as I only make things for myself and my family, I settle for that quite happily. (well, reasonably happily, i would love to be able to make something really clockwork!) so my answer is, like others, it depends on the thought put in and the intention of the maker (if that makes sense?) -Rhylla- |
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Navigator of the Airship Tartan Crow (and the reason why we generally travel in the wrong direction!)
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akumabito
Immortal
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Mundus Patria Nostra!
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« Reply #59 on: February 26, 2012, 10:42:07 pm » |
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Gear motifs are overused and rarely look good. Even Datamancer's laptop would have been better off without all the random gears incorporated in its design. I find them distracting from the beauty of his workmanship. As people before me have pointed out IRL gear mechanisms have some very specific attributes and uses, and using parts of them in any other fashion makes no sense from a technical point of view.
As a purely stylistic design element, I do not like them because of their cliche value. Not everything steampunk needs to have gears, or even suggest the illusion of being clockwork powered. Gears ought only be used in places where gears might reasonablybe expected in a functioning device.
The same goes for pressure gauges.. ohhhh, don't get me started on randomly located pressure gauges.. *shakes fist in the air*
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Narsil
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« Reply #60 on: February 27, 2012, 12:13:28 am » |
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I think the problem with a lot of stuff is that it ends up sitting in a sort of no man's land between using gears as purely decorative objects and something which at least looks as though it's real clockwork.
I suspect that this is partly to do with the tendency for discussions tend to focus on concept (is this steampunk ?) rather than exectution (how well does this work as a piece of art/design ?)
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Astalo
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« Reply #61 on: February 27, 2012, 12:30:47 am » |
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I don't usually like that style when people glued random watch parts for example to some plastic objects, but if you throw glue away and use real brass rivets, solder, hard wood, bone, stone, leather, forged steel and other more "authentic" materials and techniques for victorian era, also that "old junk together style" start to look much better. There is few examples from my own gear decorations, but i think that clockpunk is more suitable term for them than steampunk. |
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« Last Edit: February 27, 2012, 02:07:09 pm by Astalo »
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ForestB
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« Reply #62 on: February 27, 2012, 02:07:03 am » |
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I don't usually like that style when people glued random watch parts for example to some plastic objects, but if you throw glue away and use real brass rivets, solder, hard wood, bone, stone, leather, forged steel and other more "authentic" materials and techniques for victorian era, also that "old junk together style" start to look much better. There is few examples from my own gear decorations, but i think that clockpunk is more suitable term for them than steampunk. Those are some wonderful examples of how to do it right! Wonderful work! |
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SPBrewer
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« Reply #63 on: February 27, 2012, 02:22:05 am » |
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Well, I have a steampunk project that will use a gear for both show AND function!  Some may have followed the X-Ray thread, and know I am building my own X-Ray machine. I plan to incorporate a large (2.5 inch) gear with six spokes into the machine. The power switch will be operated by an old skeleton key door lock. It will turn the gear. The Gear has six openings between the six spokes. I will fill in every other opening with brass, cut to fit. Behind the 3 openings that are not filled in, I will have cut brass mounted to the box. Thus when the machine is in the off state, one will see the gear as being solid brass. Once the machine is turned on, the gear will turn 1/6th of a revolution, so that the filled in sections on the gear will then cover the brass sections on the box. This will then give the operator the view of the RADIATION SYMBOL indicating the machine is on. I hope this has not gotten so wordy as not being able to be followed. I'll upload photos when I get it to that stage. |
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Neibelungen
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« Reply #64 on: February 27, 2012, 03:06:18 am » |
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but if you throw glue away and use real brass rivets, solder, hard wood, bone, stone, leather, forged steel and other more "authentic" materials and techniques for victorian era, also that "old junk together style" start to look much better. I might take a more opposite view. Stylistically it is modern steampunk and very well done, both in design and execution. Gears are usd as design elements and stylistic decoration and work exceptionally well as the element itself is removed from a clockwork or geared mechanism. The difference I take is it's nothing victorian, but more art decco with perhaps a few elements of the last stages of the nouveau , notably Lalique and his insect glasswork, with it's single stylistic element and sweeping lines, rather than the heavy embelishment and density of detaiing/adornment that is characteristic of victorian and art nouveau design. If anything characterises nouveau its the interlaced scrolling and enamelling and often unsymetrical form, while decco is the use of linear or geometrical form in symetrical or radiant form and single colour or contrast accent of colour. Gears essentially are not victorian in the sense of jewelery but more decco and russian industrialist style as somebody noted earlier. If anything they have more in common with people like Naum Slutzky and the bauhouse/dadaism of assemblage. |
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Hez
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« Reply #65 on: February 27, 2012, 03:18:45 am » |
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I like Datamancer's use of gears as decorative elements. I am girly enough to like a little bling and the polished brass does exactly that in my view.
I like the gearbugs too. As for the Art Deco , I agree, but one view of steampunk I have heard is the society we would have if the steam age hadn't ended. Maintaining only a Victorian esthetic would end that whole stream on creativity by keeping to what was and ignoring what might have been.
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Neibelungen
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« Reply #66 on: February 27, 2012, 05:42:16 am » |
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Maintaining only a Victorian esthetic would end that whole stream on creativity by keeping to what was and ignoring what might have been. Styles and fashions go round in cycles and each builds on the concepts of the previous period, either as a rejection or a development from it. The high victorianism built off the earlier gothic influences of people like Pugin, who themselves looked at a more baroque form of the neo-clacisism of the the regency. The italian jewellers, like Casalliani ? branched out rediscovering the clasicism of the roman and greek world in into the 1870's which in tern led to the granulation and enamelling techniques used by the vikings and egyptiians and directly leads into Laliic and Typhany of the Art Nouveau. My argument is that 'steampunk' and it's gears and assemblage motifs (wings, keys, additions) are actually outside of victorian themes and actually more to do with decco and early thirty's styles and the post 60's ' wearable art' of Robert Lee Johnson, and prevoiusly to that, Georg Jensen, who's another side of Art Nouveau. Only a small part of steampunk is victorianism, airships and sky pirates are all post victorian and even post great war. Hence it's victorianism is an imagined element seen in the a very modern cenception, in the same way that Ivanhoe was an imagined medievalism of the victorians. |
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Capt. Dirigible
Rogue Ætherlord
 United Kingdom
Shirts?.....I got plenty at 'ome.
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« Reply #67 on: February 27, 2012, 01:54:03 pm » |
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I don't usually like that style when people glued random watch parts for example to some plastic objects, but if you throw glue away and use real brass rivets, solder, hard wood, bone, stone, leather, forged steel and other more "authentic" materials and techniques for victorian era, also that "old junk together style" start to look much better. There is few examples from my own gear decorations, but i think that clockpunk is more suitable term for them than steampunk. I like those insects a lot! |
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I say, Joe it's jolly frightening out here.
Nonsense dear boy, you should be more like me.
But look at you! You're shaking all over!
Shaking? You silly goose! I'm just doing the Watusi
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Drew P
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« Reply #68 on: February 28, 2012, 04:13:38 am » |
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I'll make it short= for me it's a combination of many things ie:esthetics,craftsmanship,composition... What really gets me is seeing something like a full watch movement with a single 'gem' stuck to it & attached to a chain for a necklace. It hurts that someone would 'make' this and consider it 'art' or good work,etc. It's mind boggling to think that there are those whom would buy such a thing-I understand that some might not have the ability to craft,etc. ,but really...a dab of glue. Plus,the amount of intact movements out there being abused. *shivers* Sorry,not as short as i thought  |
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Never ask 'Why?'
Always ask 'Why not!?'
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Frolicking Johnson
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« Reply #69 on: February 28, 2012, 04:17:18 pm » |
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Well, there is quite a vareity of opinions on the subject. Only a small number of replies seem to have that, ehem, subtle snobbery that I was speaking of to begin with. I understand the viewpoint where those sorts of attitudes come from, but won't let it bother me since 99% of the population simply wouldn't know the difference about things like "misplaced gears", "misplaced pressure gauges", or other things that only a mechanical engineer would notice. There are countless pieces of steampunk art that are not "mechanically correct" and are still quite beautiful in my eyes and the eyes of many others. After all, this all make believe. It seems to me that to be obsessed with "keeping it real" is a bit silly imho.
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Stay STEAMY!!!
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Neibelungen
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« Reply #70 on: February 28, 2012, 05:19:20 pm » |
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It seems to me that to be obsessed with "keeping it real" is a bit silly imho. I don't think there can be any 'keep it real' in steampunk, let alone the historical elements to any great degree. People object to the cheesy naff kitsch that represents the artistic sensibility of a blind goat, that's being marketed my people hoping turn a quick buck. Home made effort is fine and is a stepping stone to learning. It's when it's pushed into peoples faces that crap is acceptable to peddle. It's not just gears, though that;s the obvious. An unnamed dressmaker who can't even set a pair of welt pockets in evenly from one side to the other. It's about learning some skills first.. It's using creativity to inspire a design. Not everybody is going to in the same league as a Datamancer or Heer Docktor, but at least try to make some effort and be inspired by what alternatives a little effort can create. Anybody can sling an old key on a chain... Look through the forums.. it's full of people asking for advice and inspiration. Examples. good and bad, but there's always encouraging words and helpfull constructive suggestion and fair criticism that pushes the creator to see what else they can do. It's the bandwagon pap that people dislike. The insipid, careless and fake hong-kong cheapness of the 70's; the plastic barby-doll ripoff. And the sheer lack of effort. !!!
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Professor J. Cogsworthy
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« Reply #71 on: February 28, 2012, 06:49:38 pm » |
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There seems to be a growing movement in a medieval group that I am part of that
is good in as it looks towards improving the accuracy of you clothing/armor/accessories/
stuff..... Having it be correct and all from the same time frame and location.
This has happened to some degrees in stages in the past but what seems to make this
time different is there is a MUCh greater attempt to lead by example without dismissing
someone else for their mistakes or their goals.... Some wish to be more accurate than
others. I try because I enjoy the challenge of being more correct ( and as I correct the
indiviual mistakes/shortcomings of my stuff I find more and more that it actually works
better than the incorrectly made or incorrected matched up together items do. )
So back to Steampunk..... If you want to encourage more thought behind the average
item.... Instead of looking at someone and saying "you just glued a gear on it." Compliment
the effort and offer suggestions ( POLITELY ) about how they can learn from what they
did to make their next 'thing' better
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No, no no, a thousand times no. Its pronounced - lah-BOHR-ah-tor-ee
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Proffesor Molly Mockett
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« Reply #72 on: February 28, 2012, 07:29:05 pm » |
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I have only joined today so feel entirely unqualified to comment - but I have been experimenting with creating some jewellery and would appreciate some feedback as you all seem to have an excellent eye? Also sincere apologies in advance if this is thread-pirating - please let me know and I will start a new thread. All best wishes |
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Narsil
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« Reply #73 on: February 28, 2012, 07:43:00 pm » |
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I have only joined today so feel entirely unqualified to comment - but I have been experimenting with creating some jewellery and would appreciate some feedback as you all seem to have an excellent eye? Also sincere apologies in advance if this is thread-pirating - please let me know and I will start a new thread. All best wishes Well in the context of this thread I would say that these are good. Clearly some though has gone into selecting components which make sense together and creating a balanced composition. The construction techniques used appear to be simple but appropriate, no obvious bodges or issues with fit or finish. The photography could perhaps be a little better, I'd suggest photographing them in natural light would improve matters a lot. Overall I would say that they represent good use of simple techniques. If you enjoy jewellery there is certainly scope for you to make more ambitious and exciting designs by acquiring new skills but you've demonstrated a good design sense so far. |
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Proffesor Molly Mockett
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« Reply #74 on: February 28, 2012, 09:47:51 pm » |
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Thank you Narsil - these were in quick snapshots - I will attempt to get some better pictures and then I promise I'll start my own thread!
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Poll
