Mechanical Maps

It seems I am not alone in my wish to pay tribute to the Game of Thrones animated map: there are plenty more tributes and parodies out there on the Internet. Here are a few I particularly liked: Firstly "The Simpsons" take which you may have seen - a match made in heaven.

Huge amount of skill in this extendable castle illusion.


Purdue University staying fairly close to the original Game of Thrones sequence.

I love this! a very professional job with a social media theme for HootSuite.

And amazingly, a blatant rip-off of the Game of Thrones map - in a classic computer game from 1994.

London Mechanism

My animated tribute to a certain fantasy TV series...

Produced in Blender 2.68, scored in MuseScore.

A Tuf Act To Follow [Review: Tuf Voyaging]

Five mercenary treasure hunters are on the trail of a real find - a massive ancient starship packed with bioweaponry and genetic secrets. They need a ride willing to keep his mouth shut, so they turn to the eccentric, cat-loving captain Haviland Tuf.

Tuf Voyaging is a novel, or more accurately, a series of novellas detailing the adventures of Tuf as he styles himself an Ecological Engineer, travelling the galaxy with his newly-acquired seedship and offering its services for a sharply-negotiated price. It's written by some upstart fantasy novelist called George R.R. something who you've probably never heard of.

Tuf is a curious character - a hermit who prefers feline to human company, smarter, greedier and more devious yet also more honest and honourable than most of his fellow humans. His personality contains the genetic seeds of some of George R.R.'s other characters - in my mind he appears as Varys, perhaps due to the intelligence and the curious interweaving of deviousness and honour, but he also has Ned Stark's determination and is capable of breaking one of his beloved cats' necks as a mercy when it becomes infected.

The stories presented here are fun and inventive. They're also well thought out, although somewhat over-moralistic, not unlike much Golden Age sci-fi. The central theme is power and its' many abuses, something that crops up once or twice in Game Of Thrones too.

Work In Progress: County Hall

A mechanical County Hall - now just one more landmark to add.

[produced in Blender 2.68]

Work In Progress: Westminster Bridge

Now with added bridge.

[Produced in Blender 2.68]

Work In Progress: Westminster

Not sure where I'm going with this yet, exactly, but have a Game Of Thrones-ified model of Westminster Palace...

[produced in Blender 2.68]