zondag 13 mei 2012

Encyclopedia

I added a few more entries to the Encyclopedia that I'm writing related to the books. Hopefully it is entertaining. The new entries are the alerter (from my latest book) and the trireme (from The Daemon of Cormagan).

vrijdag 11 mei 2012

Alerter

My artist, Marlon Teunissen, is working on the fourth illustration of the Haeven of Punyal. This scene covers one of the steampunk devices used in this book, which doesn't have a name. It is an alerter, and I created a simple rendering of it here, so that she can use it to complete her drawing. The way it works is approximately as follows: using a flywheel (eventually steam powered, of course) a platform slowly turns around, on which a infrared sensitive lens is situated. This lens' focus is changed between certain distances, allowing the valve to open and close depending on whether a heat signature is detected (the alerter uses a similar crystal as the talker, which allows the infrared light to be focused on a valve which opens and closes). In this case the valve doesn't trigger an air stream, but a small silver rod which hits a large bell. As long as the device is powered, this means it will sound the bell each time it finds a relatively large heat signature. It therefore alerts you if there are people nearby.