IF - Contraptions part ii

Well, I already added the drawing of a masculine butterfly as my entry into Illustration Friday's Contraption challenge, but I was not convinced by it. I mean, I like the design, and I think it has a future to be developed into a future project, but it's not what I would really call a contraption. A contraption is something, in my book, that is cobbled together by an inventor, without the additional benefits of industrial design. Now, I'm a big fan of good industrial design, but I love contraptions too. I grew up reading the adventure of Professor Branestawm, looking at Heath Robinson drawings, wishing I had a mousetrap game and making stuff. 

And later on, what about Wallace and Gromit? I love that stuff! But, alas, my butterfly was more Buck Rogers than Heath Robinson.

But this is a contraption. How better for a young man to plight his troth by serenading his princess with his sackbut? A steam powered winch, a grappling hook (launched by a harpoon gun) and eight legs to climb her tower. She would be impressed! 

This is quite an old, but unfinished sketch - I finished inking it just now so I could scan it for my blog, but the design evolved and I actually made a working model which really did climb,  once I rearranged the centre of gravity and such! I moved the story into the thirties, and had my hero playing his trombone to the heiress of the BaconBitz empire in her penthouse suite of the BaconBitz ArtDeco Skyscraper from his 'Arachnoflyvver', which got industrial designed in the 1930's streamlined style. Hmm, not such a contraption now! But a definite Buckminster Fuller, rather than Buck Rogers influence! I was planning on even making a 3m tall art deco Skyscraper facade for it to climb. Maybe I will some day... I couldn't find the actual model, it's lost in transit somewhere, but here is a representation of it done in Google Sketch-up.