Hi, your blog...well is rather interesting( to say the least), but I did find your graphic to be rather intriguing. I'm most likely only commenting because Corey had you on her blog and I felt I should go Poke everyone...So *poke* (and yes I know I'm really strange)
 

Heya, pofo! Sorry I haven't been by as of late. I have to say that the airship looks awesome. I'm currently on a school computer, so I can't watch the animation right now, but I'll be sure to check it out as soon as I get some time at home. I'm rather curious now.
 

Rock! two comments.
One from the smartest girl in Texas and the other from a strange (even if I only have her own word for that) friend of hers. Consider me adequately poked and encouraged in my art ^^
 

Beautiful. Hey, how do you go about designing the mechanics for a thing like that? Does it come to you pretty intuitively, drawing on experience? I'd see myself having to do a bit of research before I tried to tackle gear mechanics and what not, mostly since all I've really done is character rigging. And what about the aesthetic? Where'd you get inspiration?
 

thanks. I pretty much just made all that up. Didn't use any reference material, but I've looked closely at steam locomotives and such before. The first thing I made on this was actually the chain since I had an idea for how to animate it. Would have been much harder if I wanted to make the gears in it different in size.
Aesthetic inspiration came from small steam powered boats (obviously), locomotives and beatles (the insects, not the band ^^). Or rather the idealized pictures of such things that are bouncing around in my head. I think parts of it, or at least some of the curves, came from memories of my uncles sail boat when I was little. Bits and pieces from all over the place really.