"Phoenix" custom Celcius for TAG Show July 10th

            This is my piece for the Toy Art Gallery Celcius show later this week. 

His wings are 22" inches across, his tail is 20" long with 23 points of articulation. They're both attached via a removable backpack, totaling 258 individually made parts (not including the body/robobrain). 

Backstory

Phoenix was developed with the close collaboration of the Omega Tellurion, the elite research division within the Epoch Foundation that focuses on mind-blowing technical leaps. Their labs had been experimenting for a short while with force carrying elementary particles called Graviphotons, the hope being that they would be able to make lighter, stronger robots by directly manipulating or blocking their gravitational fields. However they found that direct bombardment with the particles only made things heavier, much to their dismay. 

It's was nothing short of a serious accidently that lead them to the discovery they were after. An Epoch Rummage that was assisting the lab, suddenly attempted to collect the particle beam generator for himself, momentarily exposing a nearby canister of antimatter to the Graviphotons as he grabbed it. For an instant, everything within a 30 foot radius that wasn't bolted down jumped 3 foot in the air, crashing down again as the equipment was stowed away inside the robot. Antimatter was the key to making things lighter through an indirect method. 

Phoenix was the first operational test bed for the Graviphonic Attenuated Field unit, built directly into the core of his robobrain. Because the power requirements for a continuous 100% antigravity field was astronomical and the amount of antimatter required was terribly unsafe, the GAF unit made use of small pulses of the particles directed at a spinning antimatter core. This created a 24 foot wide bubble around the robot, reducing Pheonix's weight inside to a mere 10% of its' original. 

With no engines of any kinda, Phoenix is a glider, pure and simple. Launched with the help of an external booster rocket that detaches mid flight, Phoenix glides to his only target - Forest fires. Weighing so little (thanks to the GAF unit), yet having a massive wing span, the heat from the fire alone allows him to rise and fall on the thermals just like a Condor, staying airborne for the entirely of the mission. 

Apart from running the GAF unit, the remainder of Phoenix's power reserve is dedicated to running the huge Ultrasonic Shockwave unit built into his highly mobile tail. Strafing the flames with massive pulses of Ultrasonic energy, the shockwaves hit the fire at 15x the speed of sound, causing explosive vacuums to extinguish the inferno wherever they land. By calculating the most efficient flight pattern, Phoenix circles overhead smothering up to a square mile a minute. 

Once his mission is accomplished, he glides as close as he can to the site he was launched from, folds his immense wings up as he lands and with the GAF unit disabled for safety, walks the rest of the way back. 

Omega Tellurion are working on miniaturizing both the GAF and Ultrasonic units. While the latter is going rather well, the former will require another significant breakthrough to succeed.

Taken on: July 4, 2010

Sets appears in: • Select Works • Vinyl Customs

Groups appears in: • Vinyl Abuse

Camera: Canon EOS 20D, f/4.0, 1/250 sec, 50mm, ISO 800 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Canon EOS 20D
Aperture:	f/4.0
Exposure Time:	0.004 sec (1/250)
Focal Length:	50mm
ISO:	800
Exposure Bias:	+1 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Program AE
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Average
White Balance:	Manual
Color Space:	Uncalibrated
Software:	Adobe Photoshop CS3 Macintosh
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