12 Feb 2010 - The end of the Equine transportation era

In a week, the designs for at least one Steamcar have to be finalised. This is an odd kind of pressure as I like a lot of the early designs but picking one will be difficult. I want to make sure that the design that is chosen is one I really like, but also one that looks semi-plausable and functional at the same time.

Here's an example of a rough proposal I sketched and coloured last night:
This vehicle, as yet unnamed, is not the first design for the Igford steamcars - I came up with a few in the initial stages of the project. Since then I have read a lot more Steampunk fiction and visited the Steampunk exhibition in Oxford and I feel that now I have a bit more of an insight into what kind of visual elements make up a 'typical' steampunk setting (though having said that, Steampunk is incredibly varied in both theme and visuals and depends wholly on the author/producer rather than a specified set of rules).

I'm going to produce more design proposals over the weekend and hopefully by this time next week, Igford's first steamcar will be ready for production!