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War Of The World Tripods​

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In celebration of Halloween, I have a treat for all of you. Behold my version of the tripods, the Martian war machine from H.G Well’s “ War of the Worlds.” I always liked these things. While other alien movies show ships as UFOs (i.e., Unidentified Flying Objects), the tripod was more like a water tower, with squid like arms and eyes. While there have been many versions of these tripods from movies, shows, or other adaptations, the ones that people are familiar with are from the 1953 and 2005 movie versions that bring the tripod ships to life. While they look cool, they never screamed “Iconic” to me. Some people say the ones from the 1953 version are iconic, but none of the of them look like the illustrations from the book, so I wanted to do my version of them.

 

There were many influences for my version of the tripod. My look was inspired by the “Iron Giant ,“ the rusty gun metal look. Another influence was the Omnidroid from “The Incredibles,” -the eyes, and the long robot arms.  This is kind of funny,  since both the “Iron Giant” and ”The Incredibles” were directed by Brad Bird. But I think the biggest influence was from the original illustrator of the book “War of the Worlds” - Henrique Alvim Corrêa. He was a Brazilian illustrator of military and science fiction books, and his most well known one was “War of the Worlds.” In his illustrations, each one of the tripods is different from the others. They maybe a bit cartoony, but there is something about them that made them “Iconic.” I feel that his style is unique and I think the Martian’s ships are so advanced that they look almost alive.

 

While I think he illustrated 8 to 10 different version of the ships, I only did three.  The small ones are the scouts, they are the ones that fly out of the mother ship and find people to capture. The medium ones are the soldiers, they are the most common and are the ones used to go in first, to start the invasion. Finally there are the generals, the ones that are in charge of the army. All three of them have eyes which are able to zoom in on far distances, and lock on targets with red lasers and search lights to see in the dark. They also have invisible shields that are so strong that no man made weapons can destroy them. The ship bodies are made out of nano tech metal, this allows them to self-repair any damages, although slowly.  The hands are able change into any weapon. Examples of some of these weapons are a death ray that shoots a green lazer that can burning through anything, missile like quills on top of their heads that regrows, and a laser canon with a blast more powerful than a H bomb.