KELSO LOCOMOTIVE ANIMATION II

Select the value this animation was for you:





Train Animation


This is a 5 minute animation of a desert locomotive I created using the 3d animation program Maya.

Some viewer appreciative comments on this animation are posted here.


If you have a slower connection, or just want to be able to play this Maya animation directly on your computer rather than playing it over the Internet, you can download the files manually. This can be done on most browsers by clicking the right mouse button on the links below and choosing "Save target as".

Kelso Train Animation 2 s3.mov

Kelso Train Animation 2 s3 Small.mov

There are also two postings on youtube, an original here, and a higher resolution one here.

Though all visual content in this animation is subject to copyright, use is unrestricted for personal viewing. Commercial use of imagry without prior written consent is prohibited. In other words, distribution and use is only ok as long as it is distributed for free and only for individual personal viewing. Your firm or corporation can use it too if I'm contacted first and we come to an agreement. :-)


~~~

Why make this animation?

 

Several years ago, I went on a camping trip with my brother Phil, who recalled a fond memory of a remote valley in the Mojave Desert of southeastern California.

He described massive freight trains being hauled by relentless, muscling locomotives in the searing, radiant heat of summer, where nearby Death Valley temperatures are commonly above 110 degrees.

We decided to detour and visit this isolated terrain. The valley is a vast, bleak, moribund pool of sand; a concave depression guarded by the Providence Mountains, whose lifeless brown peaks join together and conspire like kilns to trap every last ray of heat and blast them back down upon the defenseless, oven-like surface below.

It is Nature's Bowl of Torture. As one cruises through the stark, burning solitude, the baking heat of the sun and stereophonic silence of the desert are occasionally shattered by the roaring thunder of locomotive giants.

We had the good luck to end up driving alongside one of these meandering snakes of alien steel: five Union Pacific diesels, laden with an ungodly amount of military hardware, as they groaned through the valley on their way to the abandoned Union Pacific Depot in Kelso, California.

At once both abjectly servile and unforgiving, these pounding machines strain incessantly to defy megatons of resistance with their inexorable might, obediently trekking with nonnegotiable attitude along the scorching furnace of the desert floor.

The power of these locomotives is both reassuring and intimidating. You have to see them for yourself.

Between the locomotives and the crews that operate them, one thing is assured: Things are getting done. No whining. Let's go. Want to go somewhere a bit cooler? Hop on up then, but hurry... we're leaving now.

And if you're listening to Peter Gabriel's 'Passion' (details in link below) while driving through the desert, you'll start seeing things too. I was, and before I knew it, I had this animation mapped out to the soundtrack "Of these, hope" from 'Passion'.

It's not finished - I don't think it ever will be. I've not even had time yet to put the engineer in. That and many other improvements will have to wait to appear in Kelso Locomotive Animation III.

Oh, and turn the volume up or you won't get it. :-)

-Peter

Technical notes on this animation are here.

Feedback & suggestions welcome; E-mail here.




 

Links:
arts-directory.org

H O M E