HENK DAWSON / 3D ARTIST

Space Needle

When I got this assignment to model the Space Needle in 3D I was thrilled. Old memories of going to the Space Needle as a kid and recent memories of bringing my kids there made this project unlike any other. I started with taking pictures. A lot of pictures. As my son and I were going up the elevator I was snapin’ pictures of the bolts, bars, cables - ‘gettin’ some weird looks from the other tourist.

 

Also there were some conceptual drawings like this that were interesting but kind of useless for making a accurate model. The most helpful thing - more useful than the photos was this paper model of the needle. This model was created using the original engineering plans for the actual building. Using scans of the paper model I carefully modeled each element. This was time intensive but also fascinating to see how this building is put together. Once the final animation was complete it was composited with design elements and put on a continuous loop at the welcome center as a permanent installation.