Saturday, May 15, 2021

Haviland Tuf - Engineer of the Federal Empire's Ecological Engineering Corp of the Earth

George Raymond Richard Martin (also known as GRRM) is a famous American novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, and television producer. Everybody knows that he is the author of the series of epic fantasy novels A Song of Ice and Fire, which was adapted into the Emmy Award-winning series Game of Thrones. He’s also a great amazing science fiction writer.

I've always been an admirer of "classical" science fiction. I especially appreciate the founding fathers of modern science fiction: Clifford Donald Simak (also known as Clifford Simak), Isaac Asimov, sir Arthur Charles Clarke (Arthur Clarke), Robert Sheckley etc.

Novels and short stories by George Martin written in genre of science fiction are continuation the best traditions in world science fiction. George Martin is an amazing literary master who will never betray William Faulkner's principle of "writing only about the conflict in the human heart", while he gives readers endless new worlds full of romance and adventures.

Tuf Voyaging is a science fiction fix-up novel by George Martin created from several short fiction stories about adventures of Haviland Tuf. He is extraordinary person, exceptionally unorthodox and I’d say he’s genius. Haviland Tuf is tall, bald, pale, overweight, a very clever man, able to intellectual development incessantly. He is also very well-behaved, civilized, moral, discreet person, phlegmatic, vegetarian, cat-loving-but-otherwise very solitary...  

In the novel Tuf becomes the master of the Ark - a huge starship. The Ark is a very powerful warship with advanced ecological engineering technologies of the Earth Civilization - the Federal Empire's Ecological Engineering Corp of the Earth. The Ark is a Seedship because it has the power to create life, new genetic combinations and new biological species. Haviland Tuf use the Ark exclusively for peaceful and humane purposes offering his own effective ecological solutions for the Galaxy worlds with environmental, social, humanitarian problems.

I used as my source inspiration works of Hugo Boss, famous German fashion designer / 1885 - 1948. He was the founder of the fashion house Hugo Boss AG. Hugo Boss founded his own clothing company in Metzingen In the 1930s, it produced uniforms for the Hitler Youth, the postal service, the national railroad and Wehrmacht. Its uniform is an amazing examples of elegance in the history if fashion design. Now Hugo Boss is a German luxury fashion house and one of the largest German clothing companies with global sales.

The leading symbol of the Federal Empire's Ecological Engineering Corp of the Earth is the Greek letter "theta" - Θ. So when I was developing the details of the suit, I used this letter as the basis of my design.

I used free photos of cats and anatomical references from the Internet as my source inspiration and some free Internet resources, for example, close-up photos: Macro Shots Of Cat Eyes , Cats Protection / UK's Largest Feline Welfare Charity and so on. Sculpture of famous artist George Lundeen is also an enduring source of inspiration for me. A native of Holdrege, Nebraska, Lundeen George Lundeen established his sculpting studio in Loveland, Colorado in the mid-1970s where he currently lives and works. He sculpted figures compositions,  portraits and interpretive works alike for universities, municipalities, foundations, and corporations. Mr. Lundeen is a member of the National Academy of Design and the National Sculpture Society.

You can see the details of the Taf's cat modeling in the publication: 

You can see the details of the Taf's suit modeling in the publication: 




Turntable video / Zbrush:


Conceptual visualizations:



Assembling full-size figure from different angles:


Conceptual visualizations:




Separate renderings: 








Conceptual visualizations:



Thanks for watching )