Gilmore's Island

Gilmore's Island - Fairfax and Beverly

Sneak preview of my next project.

Silver Streak

Silver Streak - 1937 Pontiac Straight-8 Coupe

This model came about because I needed some cars of this vintage for the KFI scene. I've always like the fat fendered cars from the 30's and 40's, but I hadn't done any models from that era yet. So I took a time out from the KFI project, to create this beauty.

    Billed as "America's Finest Low-Priced Car", the 1937 Pontiac came with 2 engine options. A straight 6 or 8 cylinder were available, along with various body styles, including a 4-door model and a convertible. The Straight-8 cylinder engine was used from 1933 to 1954. Unlike the modern V8 engine, which has 4 cylinders per side, this engine had 8 cylinders in a row. In 1937, the engine displacement increased from 232.3 cubic inches in 1936, to 248.9 cu in, where it stayed until 1950. Also new for 1937, was a one piece turret top, and a new streamlined grill. They also redesigned the dimensions of the car. lengthening and widening the fenders and wheelbase, and reflecting the streamline modern look of the era.

The trademark " Silver Streak" remained, though narrowed from the previous year. The Pontiac nickname came about because of the 5 banded chrome trim piece that ran down the length of the hood from 1935-58.

As usual, the model is not quite finished. Notice the lack of door handles. side view mirrors and other small details. All those little details are what I believe help create the "believability factor". I'll have to finish this model now, especially since I just pointed out all the unfinished bits. Look for an update to this post in the future. It'll be parked in front of the KFI studios.

Radio City

  
Radio City - NBC Studios
Sunset and Vine, Hollywood CA


    I started building this one when I decided to do this blog. I wanted another building to post, and this was one I had been planning to do for a while. Yes, it's another radio station, but that is coincidental. What attracted me to this building, is the same that I felt about the KFI studios. During the 30's and 40's, Los Angeles began to hit it's stride. Thanks largely to Hollywood becoming the new entertainment epicenter with it's movie productions. Before TV became the standard in the 50's, radio was king. And Sunset and Vine was the epicenter of the radio industry, with Tom Breneman's "Breakfast In Hollywood" broadcasting live from his restaurant across Vine St. ABC also had a studio on Vine, while CBS set up shop down the block at Columbia Square. South on Vine had the Don Lee Mutual broadcast building, which still survives today.

   This coincides with the era of streamline modern architecture. This building was designed by John C. Austin. He also designed many other L.A. landmarks such as City Hall, Grauman's Chinese Theater and the Shrine Auditorium. Along with Morgan, Walls & Clements and  Welton Becket, they defined the classic look of the city at that time. Back then, the city had it's own unique vibe. It's the look you think of when you see old film noir detective movies.

Since this model is a fresh work in progress, i'd like to show how a build progresses.

During a build, I will do numerous test renders, to check how the model looks in an environment. This first image is the first test I did. The RCA logo and NBC type were imported into Cheetah3D as .svg files, which can be created in Adobe Illustrator with .eps files.

Buildings are a lot easier to model than cars. I started off with a basic box and added details to it. Then I copied and pasted the first building, to create the other two. A flattened box creates the awning.

Same angle, but now rendered with radiosity and hdri. Hdri uses hi-def photo light information, to recreate it's environment in 3D renders. Radiosity adds realistic shadows. You can see the difference from the previous render.

The planters shown here were a lot easier to make than I thought they would be. They were built from a tube and a box primitive shape, then I used a symmetrical modifier, so both sides would match. Then good ol' copy and paste. If only real construction were this easy.

More details added. The windows were built from elongated boxes with an array. This automatically duplicates your object, as many time as you want, evenly distributed.

This is what the windows look like without the building.
Once again, copy and paste are my friends. Twice for one side, then the whole thing once for the other side.




I use google earth and google maps for a template for the layout. Google earth has a neat feature that lets you go back in time and view old aerial data, if it's available for the area you need. Very helpful for referencing buildings that have been deleted from the face of the earth. This is the NBC studios top view in 1954 from the website http://www.historicaerials.com/

   This is the current state of the model. I've started modeling the
west/north/south sides of the building. Unfortunately, I have no idea what the north side actually looks like. The only side that got photographed was the iconic Sunset and Vine corner. I guess that just goes with trying to model things that don't exist anymore.

The dark side of the moon. This is my best guess at how the north and east side of the building were configured. 
Stanley Kelton informed me that a model of the building exists in a radio museum that is underneath the bank that was built on this site.

Unfortunately, a fire and the resulting litigation has closed the museum to the public for the time being. Maybe someday i'll be able to view it in person after they get everything sorted out.
  


Here is a shot of the back windows. I'm going to assume that the windows were similar on the wall adjoining them.

Also visible here is "Manny". I use him to scale things to a human proportion. You'll see him pop up now and then in my renders.

Bob Thomas is really popular on this street.

I was having problems getting the textures to align properly to the block. Thanks to Frank Beckmann over at the C3D forums for showing me the curb. I've used his tip here and it worked great. Frank is usually the first person to offer help over there and has helped me out more than once on my models.

More renders. I'm using a car in this one to check the scaling. Note the curb looks too high.

Added side trim to the studio buildings (it's the vent looking thingys near the top corners). This motif is also going to be used below the ledge by the doorways.

East side building signage. I still need to work out the best way to light up these signs for night renders.

Also started work on the main lobby. I only have reference photos for this part of the interior. It's just as well since this is a huge complex and doing an entire interior, like on the KFI project, would be daunting.


A main feature of the lobby, is a giant mural above the reception desk. I was able to take this from one of the reference photos. Not sure what the colors were on it, so it's black and white for now. To me it looks like a buff Charlie Chaplin in a gangsta rap outfit holding a radio.

 Stay tuned for updates.......

1951 Hirohata Mercury

The following text was written for a proposed forum magazine over at SMC. I don't know whether or not that is still going to happen, but I needed material for this blog. Sooo.....

1951 HIROHATA MERC - A California Classic

In the 1950's, Los Angeles was a great place to be a gear head. The weather is warm most of the year. Gas was $0.20 a gallon and car culture was in full bloom. This was before the glut of government regulations that hit in the early 70's. This was when custom and speed shops were springing up all over the city. Bob Hirohata took his 1951 Mercury to one of these shops in 1952. 

            The Barris Bros. were already making a name for themselves, producing wild exotic customs out of their Lynwood CA location. Bob brought his car to them with the intent to build a full custom ride. One of the first ideas was to turn it into a hard top, using a design for the side windows similar to a previous project, Nick Matranga's 1940 Mercury, one of the earliest Barris customs. More ideas were sketched out by George Barris, then it was decided to finish it in time to show it at the upcoming 1952 Motorama.

           The roof features a 4" chop in the front and a 7" chop on the rear. The beltline was reshaped so as to flow with the '52 Buick side trim. A functional side scoop was shaped from the rear fenders and adorned with three '52 Chevy grille teeth. Custom rear fenderskirts were made and the wheel openings were flared out all around. The headlights and '52 Lincoln taillights were frenched, and a new grille was crafted from three '51 Ford grilles, surrounded by a hand formed front end. The drivetrain was replaced by Lyon Engineering, using a Cadillac motor,with a clutch from a Ford and a flywheel from an Oldsmobile. In order to make the Motorama deadline, the interior was done by 2 shops, Gaylord's and Carson Top Shop, with custom plastic knobs made by Hirohata. The finishing touch is a pinstriped dashboard by Von Dutch. It's interesting to think they took a one year old car, and using what were brand new factory parts at the time, created this heavily modified, one-of-a-kind vehicle. Also of note, is that Bob used this car as his daily driver for the remainder of the decade, until he sold the car in 1959 after picking up several show trophies and kudos along the way.

              After Bob sold the car, it's history sounds like that of an aging starlet. Time and mileage were already taking it's toll by the time a teenage Jim McNiel found it in 1960, neglected and sitting in a used car lot for $900. The custom scene had cooled off,  people's taste had changed, and the car was in dire need of a rebuild.  Jim bought it for $500 and drove it until 1964, when he put it into storage in his garage and moved on to other cars.

                

       Fast forward to 1989.  In the intervening years, an appreciation for the car had arose. Due to it's high exposure during it's heyday in magazines and even a movie, the car itself had become somewhat famous as the "Hirohata Merc".  Bob Hirohata however, had been killed in an execution style murder in 1981. The case was never solved, but fate was about to give his old car a new lease on life. Through a mutual accountant, Pat Ganahl, an editor for Rod & Custom magazine, was put in touch with Jim McNiel, and convinced him that it was time to do right by the car.  So began a nine year process of restoring the vintage custom, something he had planned on doing eventually, but hadn't felt compelled to do. Since the car had been stored inside a garage for the last 25 years or so, there weren't any major rust problems, and aside from a few bumps and dents, the body was in pretty good shape. The mechanicals were where the most work was needed, with Jim doing most of the work himself over seven years. Then history repeated itself, and the car found itself facing another deadline to make it into a show. So Jim enlisted outside help, including some former Barris employees who worked on the car when it was originally built, finishing the paint job in less than a week. One week later, the Merc was headed north to it's Sept 21, 1996 debut re-appearance at the Oakland Museum.

       Personally, I think that the clean, uncluttered look they chose for the car, is one of the main reasons the car is still popular today. A lot of the customs from this era, could be hideous, with gaudy overblown designs that show their age. Yet the Hirohata Merc's stylish understated class remains timeless and iconic. 

          Shown here is my 3D rendition of this custom classic, and funnily enough, the story sounds familiar. I had been working on this model on an off for about a year or so. I have a bad habit of not finishing off my 3d projects. However, in order to include it for this article. I have to (gasp) finish it. So I too will probably find myself working on it until the eleventh hour, trying to meet a deadline.  And even then…..

          If you would like to find out more about this car or see pictures of the original build and rebuild process, here are some links to sites I used when researching this car.

http://www.kustomrama.com/index.php?title=Bob_Hirohata's_1951_Mercury

http://public.fotki.com/rikster/11_car_photos/beautiful_custom_cars/barris-1/hirohata_mercury-1/

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=68232

  

KFI Noire

141 N Vermont Ave.  Los Angeles, CA

CHAPTER ONE - Origins
It all started with this photo. I was looking to model something else other than a car, and I saw this photo and really liked the film noir look of it. As I did more research on the building, I was dissapointed to find out the building had recently been demolished by the LAUSD to make way for a basketball court. 

I took the model as far as I could with what little reference material I had. Other than the above picture, I had a few scattered shots of it right before it was destroyed. So one day I decided to e-mail a gentleman who used to work at KFI, to see if he could tell me more about the building. I came across his web postings while I was doing my research and sent him the render shown here. He turned out to be a very nice person and was interested in helping me with my project. His name is Newcomb Weisenberger, and he was an engineer at KFI.

This is what the first version looked like

Newcomb introduced me to Stanley Kelton, who it turns out was the one who took the reference pictures I had of the building during it's demolition. Between these two and the online resources of google earth and image archive sites, I now had plenty of sources for reference.

The biggie came when we were able to find a floorplan, after that, progress started moving much quicker. Over the course of about a year, we corresponded via e-mail. They sending me photos and corrections while I would send them the latest renders and ask questions about the areas we were working on.

Next up - Chapter Two - The History....

Studibaker3D

  After stumbling onto fellow 3d modeler and Beatlefan Chris Sileo's blogsite, it inspired me to put up a blog of my own to display my 3d artwork. My subject matter is vintage cars and buildings.

 I am organizing things based on projects, so if there is a model you are interested in, check back on the appropriate post. The way blogspot is set up, it won't put the most recent edit at the top of the list.

I've been doing this for about 5 years now, only recently have I felt I had good enough work to present. I was drawn to 3D because I liked the idea of being able to create a model of anything I wanted, out of practically nothing. And be able to see it in a realistic render, which was possible now, with the addition of radiosity and hdri. 

I started out totally sucking and kept working on it. Some early models, I had to completely rebuild numerous times after finding out some new technique. I started hanging out at 3D forums, and learned many things from the various members there. And while i'm happy to have progressed as far as I have, I see artwork from other more experienced modelers, and realize how far I still have to go. The hard thing is to get the model to what I call "the believability factor". This is when you can't tell if it's a model, or the real thing. Check out Chris's site at http://thebeatlesin3d.blogspot.com/ to see what I mean. 

All my models are created on a 27" i5 iMac, using Cheetah3D software for my modeling and rendering. I'll be adding my current work-in-progress projects, as well as some older artwork. Special thanks to all at the Cheetah3D and SMC forums. I hope you enjoy the view.