Research

I began to gather images of oil refineries and oil rigs as well as other present day facilities. I also started to research the mining industry itself. By researching the mining industry I was able to gain an insight to the way in which these mining corporations extracted various raw materials such as coal, silver and diamonds. These industries rely heavily on machinery and transportation vehicles. many of these mines took on the form of massive trenches and craters. Some were cave like that had been carved out of the rock. Some of these mines used cranes to extract the materials safely. 

By looking at the images and information available to me I was able to get a better understanding of the idea behind a mine and the way in which they were run. Mines themselves are extremely dangerous. The sites are usually littered with machinery and there is always the danger that the mines could collapse. Conditions are severe and miners risk their lives to extract the raw materials that are eventually sold and refined to produce useable products.

I gathered as many images as I could find so that the group could decide on a single unique look that would be applied to the mine. The images include many references to oil rigs, oil refineries as well as Second World War facilities. I also looked at various films such as Blade Runner, Star Wars and 2001 A Space Odyssey and Dune. These films have many futuristic but aesthetic designs we could use for our project.

Mines themselves employ vehicles to transport and extract the raw materials from the ground.

I had a look at many vehicles ranging from tanks, lorries and aircraft from different time periods which the group could use later to construct some vehicles we could animate. Although some of the vehicles do not relate directly to our project we can use some of the designs to create some futuristic yet aesthetic machinery.

We must be careful that these vehicles do not take the primary role however. Vehicles are secondary to the mine itself and must not overshadow the task in hand.