Kamakiri MT-6

GiveMePrompts Lab · chapter 30

A praying mantis built like a machine.

Every part of it is generated in code. There is no model file to download, no texture to load and no photograph to trace. The shell, the hydraulics, the gear train, the wings and the abdomen are all built from primitives at run time, then lit like a product shot.

The MT-6 stands in a strike lab and works through a twenty-five second cycle: it holds its stance, opens its optics, deploys its wings, strikes twice, takes one raptor arm apart joint by joint, opens its mandible and its abdomen, tears the whole machine down and reassembles it. The panels around it are wired to the animation, so the joint load, the power draw and the attitude readout move with the body instead of sitting still beside it.

• THE MODELFaceted armour, a triangular head with the optics set into the corners, raptor arms on coil-over hip suspension, hydraulic rams across the knees, a live gear train and tendon cables that stretch and slacken as the legs move.
• THE SEQUENCETwenty-five seconds at sixty frames a second, with the camera moving to a new shot for every state and callout labels tracking the parts as they separate.
• THE CONTROLSOrbit with a drag, pull any assembly off by hand, and switch the display between normal, exploded, x-ray and turntable.
• THE SOUNDA reactor hum, a servo whine that rises with the joint speed, the strike, the wing hiss and the clack of each part seating back in. Synthesised live, nothing streamed.