War of the Worlds Mecha Creation

This weekend, after waiting for our move, I opened the Titan XP Lego box. Quite an impressive number of pieces, and a good looking mecha for the main model.

 

However, before I even managed the first of the listed models, I got inspired, and created myself a lighthouse and steamer (my wife was watching the movie Titanic at the time).

I then spotted my Geoff Wayne "War Of The Worlds" CD, and was further inspired. This was, after all, a mech set. I had also recently seen a tripod posting on Lugnet mecha - so I decided to have a go.

I built my own interpretation of the fighting machines as described by HG Wells:

I then modified the boat into something like the ThunderChild - a steamboat/gunship depicted on the musicals cover, fighting a hopeless battle with the martian war machines:

I then took some mobile phone shots of them together - a diorama if you like:

Then I had an attempt at the fall of the ThunderChild (a major scene in the musical version) - the orange grill is meant to be melting metal.

At this point, I decided to go all out, and get out the real digital camera. I put together a polystyrene foam backing - that I hoped would make for a neutral background. I then starting building some scenery for the scene.

I built a microscale Lego London, including Big Ben, Westminster, and Tower Bridge, as well as a Lego equivalent of cardboard cutout distant burning buildings.

Tower Bridge up close:

Microscale London:

Here are some shots of the battle scene:

Here I tried to get perspective from foot to head of the martian machine:

This was a straight on shot - face to face with the war machine:

Finally - as I was feeling a little proud of my creation, and wanted a bit of fun, I used the Gnu Image Manipulation Tool (the GIMP) to enhance the images - for the main blog images.