Petipet's Rocket Pandora
Redfern
Posts: 1,647
https://www.daz3d.com/rocket-pandora
Anybody else think the Procket Pandora looks a bit like a distinctive blending of a Flash Gordon Saturday serial spaceship and the "seeker" from "Space Academy" (a live action Saturday morning series by Filmation)?
I think it's the overall color scheme with the subtle "greeblies" and cockpit window that reminds me of the Space Academy craft while the landing gear housings creates tapering lines towards the rear that create that Flash Gordon silhouette.
I'm not claiming that was Petipet's inspiration, only that the elements remind ME of those ships separated by generations. And since I've retaineda certain fondess for Ark II fiberglass shell redressed as a spaceship, I'll be grabbing this one!
Sincerely,
Bill
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Absolutely for the Flash Gordon, though there are actually a few other models out there that are even closer, including the Rocketship Mongo and Rocketship Retro that used to be sold here, and an excellent variant by Cybertenko over at Rendo. One thing though, while that rocket is best identified now with Flash Gordon, it was actually made for an earlier sci-fi flick JUST IMAGINE (1930) and re-used for the Gordon serials. If you ever get a chance to see it, JUST IMAGINE is a major trip, as it was made as the U.S. answer to Fritz Lang's Metropolis at a huge budget for the time and features some truly staggering miniature work, a totally ridiculous plot that ends with a trip to Mars and... it's a musical.
As for the Space Academy resemblence... maybe kinda sorta? The resemblence is there from the side, but Petipet's ship's hull is cylindrical while the Seeker has a much boxier shape that kind of reminds me of the front of the Lotus Espirit. As you noted, the Space Academy ship was ALSO a case of clever re-use of existing props, as the design is based on the full size vehicle Filmation built for the previous year's ARK 2, and building the Seeker on that form let them re-use the very expensive models and set pieces from the earlier series.
Well, I will admit, my first thought after Flash Gordon was ....Josie and the Pussycats. Yep.
I only grabbed it for the cockpit and possible promo artwork.
I wish I could see the interior.
It will either be a pleasant surprise or a terrible disappointment.
Hmm, price has already jumped from the introductory 3.49 to 4.99. Usually the sales price remains for a week or two.
Admittedly, that's not much in this case, but the same happened for the "Foxy Lady". Yesterday it debuted around 17 bucks; today it's already returned to the list price. of 24. Ouch!
Sincerely,
Bill
We have flagged the loss of intro discounts on yesterday's items up.
And yes, I thought it looked like a modernised Flash Gordon ship.
Actually, I HAVE seen "Just Imagine". I think it was upon YouTube. Admittedly, I fast forwarded through a lot of it. Mainly I watched it specifically for the debut of the prop and set piece that would later be reused in the Flash Gordon serials. Yeah, I knew the ship had appeared earlier.
I purchased the Rocketship Mongo and its counterpart, the Zarkov ship when the Platinum Club started. (I also got "War Machine" and wound up influencing a bit of its final design. I mentioned to Kurokina that the book made special note the Martians did not have traditional "wheels" in their technology, so Kuro modified the leg joints. I did not expect him to update his model. I merely presented the information as nerdy trivia, not a critique.) I also bought Cybertenko's spin on Zarkov's ship and I got Coflek-Gnorg's interpretation. (For my purposes, I imagine Coflej's version as Mongo technology, sleeker and more compact, whereas Cybertenko's model is one franticly built by Zarkov (using more primitive human tech) to intercept Mongo.) I also got Coflek's retro saucer. (I see that craft as one Princess Aura might ride within as a pampered passenger.)
Yeah, I have a thing for those 1930s inspired designs. And no, I'm not quite that old. I was born in late 1962. But as a kid, I read material showing how shows like (the original) Star Trek were built upon the "pulp era" serials and Star Wars being an endearing "callback" to that style of entertainment.
Sincerely,
Bill
I was born '61, so it sounds like our likes were probably shaped by the same factors... a love of SF and a scarcity of new material coming out each year during our formative years. Kids these days don't know just how good they have it, never having faced a world where you had to scan the TV guide every week in the often fruitless search for anything that was vaguely SF/Horror-ish and then having to figure out how to get permission to stay up late and commandeer the TV set so you could watch such "classic" features as The Creeping Terror, Retilicus and Invasion of the Saucer Men, as well as whatever ridicuously premised TV series Irwin Allen had cobbled together and the far more reliable British imports from the BBC and Gerry Anderson. (Some great free models out there on the latter, especially from my all-time fav, design-wise, UFO.)
On the subject of classic SF inspired models though, since we seem to have very similar collections... I have Pamawo's Rocketeer based Rocketman set, but I could swear that there used to be another Rocketman set out there that was much closer to the Republic serials but I can't remember who made it. Does that ring any bells?
A somewhat more "bullet" shaped helmet with no stabilizing fin, like what "Commando Cody" wore? It may just be my imagination, but I seem to recall something similar as well. I think Kurokuma offered something like that, but it was at Rendo' and I think it was for, get this...Michael 2! Kuro seems to have "retired" from Poser content long ago, effectively "disappearing", so I wouldn't know to to even try contacting him. (I was thinking that at least the "rigid" components like the helmet, rocket pack and chest mounted flight controls could be applied to more recent figures.)
Of course, a "Cody" styled helmet is the most distinctive element of that costume. Given its rather straightforward design, a basic "bullet" shape with visor holes and a mouth slot, it should not be that hard to model. Manage that and the rest of the ensemble can be "faked" with "near enough" clothing items for the figure of one choice.
Commando Cody images
These photos show Cody wearing a conventional button down shirt with a tie under leather jacket with a centrally postioned zipper. Even the slacks are fairly "normal", not possessing the flaring jodspurs The Rocketeer had. As for the rocket pack, there are several one can find. A few different DAz packages have one. There are even some free ones. For "shiggles", I once "tore down" the geometry of the Zarkov Rocket and reassembled selected components to create my own distinctively unique pack.
Nowadays, when I think of "Commando Cody", I can not hlep thinking how Joel and the 'Bots of "Mystery Science theater 3000" "riffed" a selection of chapters during the earliest years of the series. Every time Cody was about to fly, the gang would say, "nipple, nipple, tweak, tweak!" as the rocket man adjusted his chest mounted control box!
Sincerely,
Bill
Doesn't remind me much of a seeker. There were def other items in the store that did.
Did you know the seeker was actually cobbled together from parts of a real vehicle, the very expensive winnebago built for the Filmation series Ark II?
That gave them a good looking full-size ground prop, and an acutal cockpit. And it flew by the power of red lights in the tail. Ah, Filmation productio values.
Then Filmation stuck more stuff (like "breast pods") on it, upgraded the red light drive to more powerful orange lighs and it became the Starfire for "Jason of Star Command".
The budget went down in every series. Ark II had a chimp. Space Academy replaced the chimp with a much less expensive robot, and Jason of Star Command replaced tha robot with an even cheaper wind-up pocket robot. Jason of Star Command also replaced an expensive Jonathan Harris with a less expensive James Doohan, and then replaced Doohan with an even less expensive John Russel.
Yep, I even noted thus in my initial post.
"...since I've retained a certain fondess for the Ark II fiberglass shell redressed as a spaceship..."
Concerning "Jason of Star Command", it was pretty much a "contemporary" (relative to the late 70s) spin upon the vintage Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers Saturday matinee serials using design elements popularized by Star Wars (hyper detailing of miniatures). Shoot, it was even serialized with cliffhanging "chapters" and had its own Ming the Merciless inspired villain (played by the recently passed Sid Haig).
What cracked up up was part of the opening narration going something to the effect of, "Operating from a secret section of Space Academy..." Uh, yeah, right... Like nobody ever noticed the fighter craft that repeatedly barreled from that station. Still, you had to admire the incentiveness of the miniature work. And I think I'd rather act as though conversing with a wind-up toy robot than a chimp who might grow frustrated and start flinging poo all over the set!
Sincerely,
Bill
There's an old and long out of print little book (I remember seeing it in the school library many moons ago) of diagrams and descriptions of a hundred or so speculative rocket and spaceship designs. There were all sorts of intriguing ideas; SSTOs, suborbital troop transports with aerospike engines, something that in hindsight looks a bit like the Sea Dragon concept, etc. The Pandora rocket would fit in that book very nicely.
I'm guessing this is something Petipet submitted but that Daz hasn't released yet.
And for a helmet that was "inspired by" but not an exact recreation of Dave Stevens' "Rocketeer", I modified a "Mightmare in Silver" styled Cyberman helmet, poistioning steampunk type goggles over the vacant eyeholes and applied a "brass" procedural to the faceplate and a "leather" effect to the sides.
I also torn down a heli-blade flying harness that came with Poser to amchor the Zarkov ship based "thrusters".
Sincerely,
Bill
Actually, my first thought on seeing this rocket was of a combination of the Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers sort of rockets (mainly because this one is also, clearly a lands-on-its-tail type) and that spherical passenger transport from 2001: A Space Oddyssey, the one that landed on the Moon and was then lowered down on an elevator-platform thingy into the guts of the base. But yeah, it went straight into my wishlist. :D
And yeah, I also grew up on a lot of those old, 60s and 70s space-adventure shows. Space Academy, Jason of Star Command, Ark II (well, that one wasn't in space)... for that matter, Space: 1999...
A Flash Gordon ship should seem longer and have huge fins.
I always wondered abou rocket packs, Wouldn't you set your rear end on fire?
Yes, yes you would.
At least my design would end with a rump roast. I can't recall with Dave Stevens' comic art, but for the live action movie, the Rocketeer's pack had two adjustable "vanes" underneath the thrusters that would supposedly deflect the flames, so the issue is at least "lampshaded". They seem too small for the job, but at least it was something. An online acquaintence who saw my setup wondered about a kind of asbestos "apron" that is worn backwards. It would even present a cape like apperance when seen in silhouette. One potenrial downside, "wind drag". But then again, how aerodynamic would the whole arrangement be in reality, anyway?
Sincerely,
Bill
Yeah, though I was mainly refering to the lands-on-its-tail aspect of those. In any event, the actual design of the rocket gives me more of a Space: 1999 / 2001: A Space Oddyssey vibe, even though I don't think either one of those had land-on-their-tails rockets, other than that spherical ship I mentioned from the latter That said, I've been slowly accumulating 1999/2001-ish sets and props for a possible 3D-rendered comicbook-narrative I might eventually do that would be a pastiche of that sort of retro-future world.
Real life stuff usually moves the jets out a bit.
This one is ALMOST a vehicle and chunky, but I love it:
Have you seen the flight gear from Gravity Industries? This is real! Google it!
UFO for the win. I recently upgraded to the utterly gorgeous British BluRay box set and it's astonishing how well that show still holds up on a technical level... much better than later, bigger budget shows like Battlestar Galatica and Buck Rogers... and I don't think any TV series has yet to match the brilliant spacecraft and vehicle design work by Derek Meddings and Mike Trim... though the new WETA produced Thunderbirds series is certainly giving it a go. Space 1999, which started off as a UFO sequel series, has some good work as well, but ouside of the Eagle transporters there's nothing on the jaw-dropping level of the Sky 1/Skydiver and the SHADO Mobiles.
Yep, it was featured upon "Outrageous Acts of Science" and a more recent series "Savage Builds" (featuring former MythBusters co-host, Adam Savage). In Adam's show, he set out to build a "real" Iron Man suit that could fly. This was the tech he selected to get it airborne. The idea is that one wears threedevices that creates a "tripod" of directed thrust, making the system inherently more stable. One is worn upon the back, like the pulp era rockets and two more upon each arm. Adam tried (while wearing a safety cable), but he couldn't perfect his technique in the time allotted, so for the final showcase sequence, the inventor of the flight system was fitted with the MCU styled armor pieces (3D printed from titanium dust) and he flew from a hangar into an open "yard", landing just in front of Adam.
Sincerely,
Bill
There are lots of ways to make a real Ironman suit fly.
It's the "landing safely afterwards" part that they're still having trouble with. ;)
I think you're talking about one of my favourite books, "Frontiers Of Space by Philip Bono and Kenneth Gatland (1971)". I gave my copy to a friend last Christmas, having carried it with me since it first came out. It was brilliant, but my favourite was the drawings and projections for 1987's "Project Deimos". We were supposed to have gone to Mars and come back already thirty years ago (a 450-day mission).
Searching for images of "Project Deimos" should show most of the book's images, while the rest can be seen by searching for the book title.
If that's not the book you're talking about, any hints to help find it?
-- Walt Sterdan
Looks like it was inspired by Elon Musk's starship.
Well, "Alpha Town" is now available for you.
https://www.daz3d.com/alpha-town
Impressive set!
Sincerely,
Bill
Yes, I think that might be it — the authors' names are familiar... hold on...
<googlegooglegoogle>
Yep, that's it! I particularly remember the setup with the kinked tanks surrounding a big chunky-looking core. That's an aerospike engine at the bottom, isn't it?
Oh, this is neat! There's a YouTube video showing a bunch of the book's art.