On the origins of a tank

One of the main back story's of the farm is the suggestion that it may have been some sort of military base or weapons dump. Tom and Bernie often use military surplus instead of traditional farm equipment.

Tom's tank evolved from this. It started with Gordon's obsession with tanks, but the closest we got to it in the comic strip run was this:

In between the end of the strip and the start of TV development Gordon produced this great colour piece:

This was the basic design of Tom's tank. When I did the revised version for the TV pitch I didn't have to change much. I added the Starsky and Hutch stripe on the side and a few other small details, but the main shape remained the same.

We also did a longer image which was used as a promtional tool. It lent itself very nicely to side banner images on pitch documents!

So Tom's tank was becoming part of the shows identiy, so much so that the second script we did was all about the tank being stolen.

Last year Andrew Glazebrook was working for us and I asked him to start building the tank as a 3D model. Although we haven't finished it yet the results so far are pretty great. There are defintly hints on 'dalek' about this design, but they are just tanks after all! You might spot a small homage to the excellent 'Back To The Future' on the tank too, we like to call it 'Mrs Fisson'.



Niel