Taking a cue from Maverick Collecting's suggestion that press photo's may have influenced space box art I looked into Robert McCall's ROLLOUT above. Painted in 1964 originally for LIFE magazine, it pre-dates the construction of the Vehicle Assembly Biulding (VAB) pictured in it by at least a year. As such it was an artists's impression completely. So I was amazed to find the NASA photograph below. Uncannily similar it pictures Apollo 16 in 1972, eight years after McCall's painting! There will no doubt be many photo's of one of the many Saturn V's emerging from the VAB but this is the only one I could find online.
Pictures: top - Look and Learn under licence, bottom - NASA.
Is it at all possible the artwork was based on a model? You know, like the sort of architectural models made for proposed buildings?
ReplyDeleteI was going to say the same thing, as an ex-architectural student (technically still on a 'Year Off' - my third year was due '95!!!).
ReplyDeleteIf it was finished in 65, the main building would have been complete when he painted his, as 'fitting out' a building like that would take well over a year. There would have been a mass of scale models, design drawings, blue-prints and - most importantly - artists renditions.
NASA have always been very free with images, as part of a constant propaganda exercise to justify their funding, so he would have been able to access all sorts of stuff, as would other artists then and later.
The reason I mentioned the 'hypothetical' helicopter sequence, is because I remember helicopters following the transporter - indeed two of them are in his image, and there is film footage taken from them, ergo, stills must be available too!
So, Maverick: not exactly a "gap" year from your course, more like a "chasm" year ^_^
ReplyDeleteWell, the last time I looked at my Faculty on Google-earth it was a building site, so I guess they're not missing my acidic interjections (it's a love/hate thing with mature students!), argumentative stance on 'concepts' and general dislike of the whole Rogers/Foster religion!
ReplyDeleteGetting back to artwork; Before this was built, there would - presumably - have been small vehicle assembly buildings and transporters for the other programs, Gemini, Mercury etc...
Helicopter shadowing, rocket-case markings, filming launches, press releases, didar didar didaarr... would have followed the same or similar patterns from the mid-fifties?