The Flying Barrel was originally concieved by two friends of mine, Rich Stubbs and Pete Walton.

The Story
The flying barrel is the pinnacle of Gnomish Magical Engineering. It works by the principles of steam engine technology with a little magic thrown in.

Gnomish magic works on a kind of belief system where the laws of physics are tricked into acting in ways that would make their mother's frown.

In order to gain some height, the barrel is launched from a long slope, usually down the side of a hill, with a short ramp leading off of the edge of a cliff. Most of the time this works. On the times that it doesn't, not enough pieces of the barrel or its pilots are found to conclusively say what went wrong.

The Gnomes figure that if a 14 tonne Dragon can fly, then why can't a relatively simple barrel?

The Model
The original flying barrel model, built in 1997(I think), was made using basic primitive shapes and simple lofts and extrudes. It was built with MAX v2 I think, but I can't be sure. The texturing was quite simple, but seems to work.

The updated version, built in 2000, used more advanced techniques and texturing, and also has a higher poly count, which allowed more detail to be added. As I had learned more about MAX by this time, I was able to use more complex textures and modelling techniques to create a slightly more realistic looking model.