Next Dimension: Dodgems

At last! After wandering the length of the entire park, trundling past the sedate to the downright insane and being thoroughly unmoved, we have finally arrived at the best darn fairground attraction ever. It’s perfect, which incidentally also means that Fairground Attraction would surely be satisfied. How tidy.

We are of course at the Dodgems, or Bumper Cars, whichever you prefer. These bumpy beasts have been creating havoc since the 1920s. It’s really the only place where I’m acceptable behind a wheel; you drive stylish cars and crash into everyone, with hilarity ensuing as you inevitably all get into a big pile-up in a corner and nobody can move.

This was my go-to ride at the fair, theme park or anywhere else they might be. I used to enjoy surveying the competition and singling people out, basically going after them for the duration. If you happened to look even slightly like one of my school teachers, my, you were doomed, or at least you would have been, were I a decent driver.

I was so into the ride that, on one occasion, my sister and I were in fact the only people on it. And we were in the same car. Noting the slight dip in turnout and us sitting there like lemons, the operator himself ventured out of his cubicle and joined us. However, he decided to try and look super cool by standing on the back, rather than sitting in the car like any normal person would. Surely this was short-sighted; I mean, what if we hit him? Perhaps he looked at us and made some estimations on our driving skill. He’d have been right – but we still hit him, and he still went flying! Needless to say, that was the end of our ride. Still makes me laugh twenty or so years later.

He did get his own back a bit later on, though, for there was another time when, as soon as the bell rang and the vehicles powered up, I zoomed backwards, uncontrollably, until crashing into (and breaking) the arena railings. Oops! This is also hilarious. So many fun memories of this ride – now I want another go, and right now!

The 3D model. Thank goodness for splines and LoftNURBS, as the latter is basically responsible for everything you see here, bar a few of the outer details on the vehicle, and the steering wheel. I essentially made the outer shell by constructing a chain of rectangles – the tool bridges the gaps with polygons. The smoothness of the model wasn’t actually what I was going for; I was looking for a more square look of the 80s/90s kind I’ve the most vivid memories of – never mind. As I seem to say every time, there was probably a much easier way of doing this, but, again, never mind! It was hugely frustrating at times, but I’m dead chuffed to have finally come out with something resembling a dodgem. I wouldn’t have believed that at teatime…

The car has working headlights installed, too:

The arena itself probably could do with some work – well, there’s no probably about it. I think I got so excited by the progress of the vehicle that I rather sped through this. I certainly hope no cars go between those front-central pillars…

The speckled finish I ultimately ran with wasn’t my only design. Cinema 4D makes patterning and texturing so easy, it’d have been remiss not to experiment with some fancy styles. Here are a few variations:

So desperate for a ride on the dodgems now. Ah well. Until I bump into you next, cheerio!

• 3d
• amusements
• Art
• bumper car
• cinema 4d
• design
• dodgems
• fairground
• model
• theme park