Eve Of The War

At least I did a better job shading it this time. Any suggestions on how to make it look more... Dome-ish?

I would change the position of it, put it above the lights and extend it along the back of the FM.

But then I'd loose the whole 'face' thing I've got going with the front... What If I sink it back a bit, so the lights extend out over it?

No I don't think you would, because you still have the eyes and that is all you really need, you can still put a lot of expression into it with just the eyes.
Here's a sketch to show you what I mean. I don't want to dishearten you because I think you've got a good design, I also don't want to influence you too much or it won't be your design, so tell me to buzz off if you like I won't be offended

Definately not what I'm looking for. I wanmt to keep the top of the hood as one continuous armoured plate, leaving the hood in front or below. Adds a bit of a symbol in that the machine which gets taken down by the guns at Wheybridge and the one shot by the Thunderchild get a sort of "Smack in the jaw" feel to them.

Plus, that kind of removes the cylindrical part under the head which the tentacles extend from.

OK, like I said it was only a suggestion

Perhaps if I used the same shape of dome, but flipped it to the bottom....

Yes that could work but you would have to show more of the underside of your FM (get a lower angle) or you wouldn't see it.


You could extend the dome or cockpit around to form the cylinder, but that doesn't help with your "continuous armoured plate" for the back.
The answer is, I really don't know it took me about four years before I was happy with my design, People often gave me tips, some I agreed with others I ignored.

Well, so far I've only done bird's-eye-views of my machines in action. I have a few Ideas in the works that would involve looking up at the machine from below, like the attacks on London a few more generic battle scenes. Each would have one or more of the FMs looming over their targets. And of course, there's the one destroyed at Wheybridge which takes a shell to the hood, which would send it flying backwards.

Well keep them coming, it's great to see new ideas

Now that I think of it, that second head would go nicely on my version of the Handling Machine. Just slap on two more legs and add a basket on the back... and you've got yourself an HM. (Don't have to worry about the armour plate deal, since it's not a war machine.)

Handling machines dont hve baskets, that's the Fighting Machines have them. You should put a basket on your FM and have a very different design for the HM.

Being an industrial machine, they shuld have some means of storeage for things they arren't carrying...

there is no mention of an attached basket in the book-

here is the bits about in the book cobbled together.

The mechanism it certainly was that held my attention first. It was one of those complicated fabrics that have since been called handling-machines, and the study of which has already given such an enormous impetus to terrestrial invention. As it dawned upon me first, it presented a sort of metallic spider with five jointed, agile legs, and with an extraordinary number of jointed levers, bars, and reaching and clutching tentacles about its body. Most of its arms were retracted, but with three long tentacles it was fishing out a number of rods, plates, and bars which lined the covering and apparently strengthened the walls of the cylinder. These, as it extracted them, were lifted out and deposited upon a level surface of earth behind it.


At first, I say, the handling-machine did not impress me as a machine, but as a crablike creature with a glittering integument, the controlling Martian whose delicate tentacles actuated its movements seeming to be simply the equivalent of the crab's cerebral portion. But then I perceived the resemblance of its grey-brown, shiny, leathery integument to that of the other sprawling bodies beyond, and the true nature of this dexterous workman dawned upon me. With that realisation my interest shifted to those other creatures, the real Martians. Already I had had a transient impression of these, and the first nausea no longer obscured my observation. Moreover, I was concealed and motionless, and under no urgency of action.



Such quasi-muscles abounded in the crablike handling-machine which, on my first peeping out of the slit, I watched unpacking the cylinder. It seemed infinitely more alive than the actual Martians lying beyond it in the sunset light, panting, stirring ineffectual tentacles, and moving feebly after their vast journey across space.

The second handling-machine was now completed, and was busied in serving one of the novel contrivances the big machine had brought. This was a body resembling a milk can in its general form, above which oscillated a pear-shaped receptacle, and from which a stream of white powder flowed into a circular basin below.

The oscillatory motion was imparted to this by one tentacle of the handling-machine. With two spatulate hands the handling-machine was digging out and flinging masses of clay into the pear-shaped receptacle above, while with another arm it periodically opened a door and removed rusty and blackened clinkers from the middle part of the machine. Another steely tentacle directed the powder from the basin along a ribbed channel towards some receiver that was hidden from me by the mound of bluish dust. From this unseen receiver a little thread of green smoke rose vertically into the quiet air. As I looked, the handling-machine, with a faint and musical clinking, extended, telescopic fashion, a tentacle that had been a moment before a mere blunt projection, until its end was hidden behind the mound of clay. In another second it had lifted a bar of white aluminium into sight, untarnished as yet, and shining dazzlingly, and deposited it in a growing stack of bars that stood at the side of the pit. Between sunset and starlight this dexterous machine must have made more than a hundred such bars out of the crude clay, and the mound of bluish dust rose steadily until it topped the side of the pit.

The contrast between the swift and complex movements of these contrivances and the inert panting clumsiness of their masters was acute, and for days I had to tell myself repeatedly that these latter were indeed the living of the two things.

I looked up and saw the lower surface of a handling-machine coming slowly across the hole. One of its gripping limbs curled amid the debris; another limb appeared, feeling its way over the fallen beams. I stood petrified, staring. Then I saw through a sort of glass plate near the edge of the body the face, as we may call it, and the large dark eyes of a Martian, peering, and then a long metallic snake of tentacle came feeling slowly through the hole.

but it doesn't say it hasn't got a basket

doesn't say it hasn't got a big pink fluffy handbag either.

Don't you know those were in style on Mars back then? No martian would be caught dead outside without an original Ulatto, or at least a Phoberret...

Check your copy of WOTW Loz. Book One, Chapter 18

I stand correceted!

Excellent 'Klaatu'

'Yuri' where is the basket situated on your Fighting Machine? I can't see it on any of your pictures

I have done a sketch with the Hood / cockpit underneath the main body, I think it looks better than my previous one because the tentacles are closer to the Martian so it looks as though it can operate them from this position. it's also closer to your original design.

Havn't put it in there yet. I was sort of under the impression that the baskets werren't insltalled on the machines until farther into the invasion, after they descided to start harvesting humans, so I've not put one on any of my works. (Which are all set in the early days of the war) That, and I've not descided where to put it yet.


Looks much better now, though there shuldn't be a hole in the bottom of the 'hip', and it should ahve a total of 8 tentacles. (I didn't put them all into my most recent drawing, but they could have been retracted into the body, and thus hidden under the plated head)

But thanks for trying anyway Lonesome...it's very much appreciated.(Thought I'd say it for him)

No the baskets are there from the first time we see the Tripods in

Chapter 10 "In The Storm"