Roller Coaster Designs: Car

I hadn't really thought about the car's appearance to be honest so I thought I would get round to visualising it immediately so I can start modelling it. I only have 4 weeks left on the project so I need to crack on with modelling asap, hence instead of drawing up designs for the car, I decided to do a moodboard different rollercoaster cars and try and get a design from that.

The idea is that I can get inspiration from their designs and mix and match elements from them with my own design. The moodboard c

an be seen below anyway.

The designs I am most keen on are the blue one in the bottom right corner and the little grey one in the middle. I particularly quite like the design of the blue one actually, it reminds me a lot of a hovercraft type vehicle and I wouldn't mind modelling something similar to that, but it would need be as transparent as possible, so the passengers can look out all the time.

I would probably opt for modelling the bottom half of the car to something like that but having a huge glass screen to cover the top half so people can look out of it.

I'm going to try modelling it now and see where I go with it, improvisation is something I do a lot of and I'm good at, I'm always adapting as I progress so I'll be adapting my design as I model it.

Rollercoaster Designs

Click thumbnails to enlarge

Apologies for the terrible quality of my sketches, my presentational skills have always been terrible, I'm quite a messy, all over the place person as you may see. Neatness was never my strong point and hence I emphasise these ar pretty rough sketches.
My rollercoaster is going to have the underwater theme as mentioned in a previous post and it starts on a huge theme park island. Starting at point 1, you have the beginning part of the track where the people board the rollercoaster.
It then starts moving slowly and naturally ends up accelerating as it goes down the slope. A glass tunnel visible in the water is where the track passes through and the car travels in a U shape to end up back outside where it goes up a short slope and then pauses for a second. After the pause, the car ends up moving backwards down the track due to gravity mainly and down a new branching track which also is in a U shape. This was designed deliberately so the car would end up facing the right way after the 2nd U bend. As it comes back down now facing the right way, the track ends up twisting in corkscrew fashion along the walls and ceiling for a certain distance before resuming it's usual form.


This 2nd area comes after the corkscrew part and the car accelerates as it's going up a slope and about to hit a huge jump. The track leads outside once again and the jump takes place in the air as the diagram shows. Once the car hits the jump, time will "slow down" with the sound of screaming drowned out by wind and extreme wide eyed expressions will appear on the passengers too. The camera will pan around the car slowly too and will snap back to the front immediately when the car hits the track again with time speeding up to normal speed again respectively.
The car goes underwater again and hits a huge U turn before ending up going in the opposite direction to where it came from but this is leading up to the last part of the track that is behind the island itself.

After the turn, it hits a loop de loop and then passes through an area with wildlife, plants and possibly a shipwreck too. I was planning on having dangerous wildlife here like sharks and octopi to add to the thrills and scares.
After the first wildlife section, we come to the "Dolphin Jumps" area. Here, the track takes the form of 2 large hills rising out of the water, with a gap at the top. I was trying to recreate how dolphins jump in and out of the water rapidly as they swim, I would have liked to have more jumps here actually.
After the Dolphin Jumps, we come to the Minefield Madness area. As the name suggests, an underwater minefield is located here and the track weaves in and out of the mines before running into the 2nd and final wildlife area. The 2nd wildlife area is a tamer place designed to act like a breather before the grand finale and only features safer animals like turtles. I was thinking of having a treasure chest here too. Here we have the Grand Finale area, featuring a huge loop de loop and an exciting jump to the end platform. The loop de loop rises out of the water and is placed to help gather speed for the jump at the end. After it, the car will accelerate as it will rise out of the water and the back of the island will be visible too. The track stops before the end platform but has a little ramp at the end so the car will have to make a leap of faith to the end platform and stop there. The gap won't be far though anyways.

I really like the ideas I have come up with to be honest and I'd love to be able to make the full thing I designed. Trouble is, there is an immense amount to be built and animated, and it literally would be impossible in my timeframe so I will have to make scarifices, but I am happy with the concept and should be able to pull it off without too many problems I think.