Magic Railroad No.1 "Lady"
My take on Lady from Thomas & the Magic Railroad. Despite Lady's simplified and somewhat unrealistic design, the scene when she's fired up is the one in which a locomotive is given the most physicality in the entire movie. Most reimaginings of Lady depict her as a different class of engine, or otherwise take away some of her unique elements, but I wanted to try to keep her proportions and shape language the same, but detail her as a realistic steam locomotive.
More on that, and alternate versions of the image, under the cut:
The initial sketch.
The final line art.
my version of Lady keeps most of her existing proportions and details intact, while adding realistic details on top. My additions include:
Water injector
blower pipe
handrails
mechanical lubricator
more realistic cylinders and running gear
guard irons and realistic frames
brake shoes
sandbox and sand tubes
safety valve
water tank filler caps
lamp irons and more realistic lamp
builder's plate (reading Conductor & Sons Locomotive Works No.1)
vacuum brakepipe
and of course, functional screw link couplers, by far the most glaring omission on her original prop.
The running gear was based on Alfred and Judy, the Port of Par saddle tanks that are the basis for Bill & Ben. Technically I could have done a more screen-accurate running gear with internal valves like Percy and many british 0-4-0Ts, but the opportunity to have a little extra detail in the form of the valve stem peeking out of the frames was too good to turn down.
I kept her livery mostly intact, but added some subtle kinda arabesques to the corners of the gold lining, to compensate partly for painting her smokebox in standard black rather than leaving it golden. Her bufferbeam is red as well. I did make sure to add a lot of golden/brass features that would not necessarily be expected on the engine because it is such an icon aspect of her livery. For example I did keep the brass buffers and headlamp and golden running gear and cranks.
The one bit I don't like about my design is the curved front running board smoothly blending into the bufferbeam, but I stubbornly included it to match the original prop anyway.
I'm really pleased with the final design. I feel like the shading/rendering wasn't as good as it could be but I was tired of fiddling around with it. But the design itself I am very happy with. Despite the extra details I don't think she looks too cluttered, and she still looks beautiful.
Solid Color
Transparent Version.
This isn't for a particular au, I'm still imagining this is just a more realistic appearance for her in the movie, though if I were to write a Lady in ttte or rws au this is how I'd like her to look in it.
