Cutaways

are a special form of presentation, where you show an object in a kind of X-Ray view. Mostly, this is used in industrial car- or plane design. But Science Fiction artists use this technique as well. Unfortunately, it is hard to make a living out of it (at least in Germany), unless maybe your name is Syd Mead or Oliver Scholl (GODZILLA).

I began

thinking about this, when I read my first Perry Rhodan issue (#1183, 'Zwischen Licht und Finsternis), the cutaway in this issue was called 'Flottentender der Bisonklasse' by Ralf Meyer. I was very impressed. I then started drawing a little bit like these artists and finished my first cutaway in 1984 at the age of 12. I liked it a lot and started learning (most of these old pics are ...funny now). I drew LOTS of cutaways and most of them didn't leave my desk, but I tried to publish several, until one was accepted (TS-Cordoba, 1988). By that time, I had contact to the established artists and the "fandom", and in the coming years (until 1993 when I attended university) I published one or two cutaways a year. My equipment grew from just one technical pen (0.25mm Rotring) and three ellipse stencils to 13 pens and 15 stencils, and because small pens either tend to break when you use them alot or to dry and stop working when you use them little, not all of them were working at the same time ;-)

Though

I haven't continued doing cutaways after my first year at university, I'm still looking forward to start again someday, and maybe do this on a regular basis. So, if you like my work and need some ideas for your next blockbuster scifi-movie, don't be shy and call me ;-)

For a comparative look

between these pictures and the state of the art nowadays, visit the Risszeichnungsjournal, a page dedicated to THE German cutaway fanzine, where almost all German artists somehow connected to Perry Rhodan published once or still do, or the Perry Rhodan Online Club archive. This selection is of course not complete, but representative.

As you will see,

half of my cutaways are related to the Perry Rhodan universe. Because Perry Rhodan is a weekly epic for over 30 years now, a special technological background and slang has developed, which someone who has not read at least some Perry Rhodan stories has difficulties to understand (what the heck is a transform-cannon?). Therefore I thought it would make little sense to literally translate those techno-slang to English (that is the reverse STAR TREK problem by the way). So there will be English texts with some of the drawings, but not all of them.

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