 |
 |
THE HORSE DESIGN by Berta LLedo |
 Designing the horse was a fun challenge. In the beginning, when the
possibility of building the horse roused,
Tufan was excited but at the same time hesitant because he did not want to
promise something he could not deliver. After a couple of days of
discussions on how much weight will the horse have to carry, how big it
should be, should it be a copy of the one in Troy?, etc.... we got to the
conclusion that we had to come up with something completely different to
the typical Trojan horse.
This one had to be 1. practical, 2. move 3. built in a very short time and 4. for the sake of Termite art: not to be too expensive. Tufan asked around for few budgets but they were to high. We decided I would do the design for a far more competitive price. At that stage I started looking for samples, I collected all pictures of Trojan horses I could find, even the more outrageous, to study and compare them. Then, I read very carefully all the ancient texts mentioning the Trojan horse. The most descriptive is from the 4th century AD (included in the page About the Horse in this web site). According to that text the horse looked exactly like a horse, took them 3 days to built it and it was moved on rollers, no wheels. Those where good references to start with.
I made a small flimsy blue paper model of the horse (1:50 scale) and Tufan used while talking with Ibrahim, the carpenter, as we all know, an image is worth 1000 words. Ibrahim said it was possible to make and gave a budget. We got our spirits up. The project was possible so Tufan decided to pursued it and offer it seriously to Andy. For the second stage of design much more care and detail was to put on. The horse had to look like a horse but it had to hold 12 'Greek soldiers' inside, the body had to be spacious and fairly comfortable. Ventilation was necessary. We could not put these guys in without a toilet, for food for 12 hungry guys.24 hours.... all these things had to be taken under consideration.
1. Bronze horse. It is dated in
the transition between the Geometric to the Archaic period. It is unique
for its monumentality on comparison with the small scale of other
artifacts from the Geometric period.
By the time the Termite Art production team arrived in Bodrum the horse was almost finished and waiting for them in the center of the town. Only the head was to be put on top of the already impressive structure. And you know the rest of the story....
|
There are millions of pictures of horses in the internet, from every
angle, so it was easy to get a good idea. I found an old chart showing the
perfect horse proportions. I used those to get the general measurements
right. We decided on 3 meters high for the legs, 2 meters for the body and
3 meters again for the head. 
A second model was made, this time 1:20 scale and using a thicker
material. This time I had found the perfect head shape. I used a mixture
between two bronze figures of horses dating from the 5th and 7th century
BC, both in the museum in Olympia, Greece. I decided in those
figures because there were simple lines, the main was solid but at the
same time was showing the shape, and the most important reason, the way
ancient people represented reality is different from the way we do
it today, so these figures are closer to their vision of a horse that that
we can have in any modern design. I also made a preliminary 3D model to
check the proportions and volumes of the horse.
1
2
3
So... it was time for the real work. Mutlu Karadeniz came into action
building a 1:10 scale wooden model of the horse. We had already decided
with Ibrahim what will be the better measurements for the leg supports and
main structural pieces. Based on my models and those figures, he
started discerning the other small structural pieces necessary in the
final construction. Mutlu worked on the model and supervised Ibrahim's
team during the construction of the full size horse. He also, using my
outlines, improved some of the horse features as the tail and the volumes
on the head. At the same time the final 3D model was under
construction in my computer. We worked in parallel, Mutlu, Ibrahim and me.
I had to get all measurements of the structure pieces from them since they
are all reflected exactly in the 3D model.
