I ran across this amazing animation and immediately thought that there was an uncanny resemblance to Stan Mott’s Les 24 Heures De Choo Choo. So I emailed Stan.
From Stan Mott:
Russian enthusiast Роман Кузнецов (Roman Kuznetsov) sent me a copy of this marvelous video last month. I in turn sent my compliments to Digital Light Studio creator Andrew Ledenev. His thoughtful reply:
Dear Mr. Mott,
First of all, I would like to thank you for the inspiration that your images “Les 24 Heures de Choo-Choo” gave us in our animation project “Steam speed.” Thank you!
The same idea came to me and my friend when we were students and greatnnfans of Formula 1 racing in early 90’s. We wanted to create a parody of the race, but with steam trains. Unfortunately we couldn’t realize our vision at that time. We’ve restored our old idea in 2013. We remembered many things and jokes we thank out later and added many more. We looked for the reference images and found your perfect imagery! We were shocked! We saw the idea and vision very close to ours. And this fact gave us inspiration and confidence, that we were in right way. It’s really great to find person with same vision!
Thank you once more, Sir! For our works and ideas.
Sincerely yours,
Andrew Ledenev and Digital Light Studio team
A great production, it brings back memories from the old days. Congatulations to Andrew on winning the race and I recognized Stan on winning the cup. My best wishes to both on jobs well done.
Norm
Steam Speed is indeed a great production, Norm, and I too recall those memories of yesteryear. One of my favorites is GM’s 1956 efforts to liven up the bleak halls of the Tech Center Styling Section. They announced that employees could bring in their own art and hang it up. You provided, I think, the best art in a private inter-office memo; a sketch of a giant realistic painting to fill the end of a hall, picturing that same hall continuing to a vanishing point. I have no doubt some employees in a corporate daze would have smacked right into it.
But things are still bopping. I liked Andrew Ledenev’s aerodynamic smoke stack in Steam Speed so much I proposed that it swivel to blast smoke into competitors faces. He responded by suggesting it could also spin rapidly spewing out a smoke screen to blind competitors. I offered that it could also be aimed to take competitors out by blasting them with bowling balls. Stay tuned.