The Soviet Tesla coil fires a long lightning bolt at a hapless Allied soldier while a Tesla Trooper provides extra power. A Conscript is on guard and an Engineer sets off.

A scene from Red Alert on which this project is based. Note the yellow and white very long sparks and the zapped figure in white which is probably a pixellated skeleton.

The Red Alert Photo

1 The cover photo was taken with a Nikon D70s digital camera and is a 17 second exposure of a real functioning Tesla coil.  It is the result of perhaps 100 hours of preparation. It is completely untouched. It is not, repeat not, photoshopped. It does however achieve the result using special effects which I will explain.
2 A real Tesla coil cannot make ultralong sparks and it can’t direct them specifically to a point (like the enemy). This is not a real weapon.

Background to the Game

Red Alert is a Westwood game in the Command and Conquer series which has the Guinness record for most popular real time strategy game with 12 million sold according to Wiki. The main Soviet defence was the Tesla coil which has a long reach and can direct it’s sparks to the enemy without placing Soviet units in danger. Indeed the Tesla trooper could be placed next to the Tesla coil to increase it’s power. I have played several of the Red Alert series but specifically refer to Red Alert 2 which was the version from 2000 to 2003. See the Red Alert 2 Wiki.

The Red Alert Models

In the Red Alert screen shot, the Engineer is the top figure and there is another one lower just obscuring a Conscript.
The lower 4 figures are Tesla Troopers receiving charge from a Tesla Tower.

Tesla Trooper in action in this animated GIF. This was just amazing when someone first did this from a sequence of photos of mine. Well, it was 2007.

The Soviet units of interest are from the Official Red Alert 2 page.

Tesla Trooper, Engineer and Conscript.

Construction of Props 2007

To give the feel of Red Alert in my backyard, some props were made. The basis of the Tesla coil will be my 18 inch diameter TC that has had 11 foot sparks.

The RA props under construction include, in the photo above, a different shape to the normal top of the Tesla coil with a sphere on top and two concentric rings (toroids) below the sphere. For convenience of connections I have used an old defunct Tesla coil (4 x 23 inches) secondary on top of the old one with the sphere on top of that.The 4 upright supports around the Tesla coil before painting in Soviet red. The original Red Alert version of the Tesla coil and supports.
My latest addition to my base is the Soviet wheelie bin. The upper photo shows the best side. The lower, the not so best side.

Above is the completed Tesla Trooper and during construction. Not that true to the original but I’m no expert and I can’t spend too long on just one model. I hope to have sparks coming from him in the final shot.
This is a model of a Soviet conscript wearing my Driza-bone stockman’s coat, army boots and carrying some optics from an 8 kW Xenon arc coagulator in lieu of a gun! Yes he is left-handed.
The Engineer was a bit more challenging than the others in that the body has to be more anatomical. I feel like Gepetto (Pinocchio’s maker). The case is my school case from about 37 years ago. I knew it would be useful one day. Lesson: never throw anything out – ever.
The 3 units in the one shot.
And finally the target of the long sparks.
This is just a cardboard cut-out on a wood frame covered with sheets of white A4 paper. Paper fluoresces under UV (remember the nitrogen laser) so it shows up as bluish colour with the sparks plus fluorescence. I am not sure that it looks the best but is not too dissimilar to the Red Alert representation. Often a skeleton like look is used and maybe that is what was intended but in limited pixels wasn’t able to be done in the game.

Special Effects

The main special effect is to recreate the range of the sparks of the Red Alert TC. A normal Tesla coil will only make sparks over a short distance. My best from this coil is 11 feet so a special effect is needed to get a 30 foot spark to be closer to scale.
To make long sparks I have trailed a wire out from the Tesla coil making strong 3 foot sparks. If this is done during the exposure time of the camera such as 17 seconds then all the sparks will be captured in the photo and this can then extend for 22 feet or more to give an appearance not unlike a continuous spark.
By spooling out the nylon line that has segments of wire attached the sparks appear to travel with the line. On a long exposure these seem continuous as in the last graphic. Thanks to the Chinese site Ixiqi (translated) for the animated gif’s above and below. (Note to Joey at Ixiqi: Hope that’s OK. Sorry, my email back to you is blocked in China)
This is what it looks like in practice. Impressive 19 foot sparks much longer than a single spark could strike from this coil.
The spark from the Tesla trooper also calls for similar special effects. We need the sparks to go only to the troopers outstretched right arm and this has to be some 6-8 feet from the coil. To achieve this a wire and nylon arrangement is pulled from the arm to the top of the coil and out the other side. Sort of a similar effect as the main long spark without the spool. There is an added benefit that sparks will also appear down the other side of the coil adding to the effect.

This series shows photos a second or so apart as the wire segment is pulled through. In the left photo, the wire is half way between trooper and coil and there are sparks to either end. As it is pulled towards the top of the coil it eventually breaks but there have been sparks along the whole length at different times.
The effect on a 5 second exposure pulling the wire through seems to work quite well in practice with just one errant spark to ground near the trooper.
This is as close as I have got yet on a daylight and testing shot. The sparks are faint in daylight but you can see the flashover. I now have 3 shorted windings and the Tesla coil needs major repair work. This puts my schedule back to possibly early November 2007.

  The lower short circuit has vaporized a short segment of wire. I removed 2 turns in 3 places and re-coated with polyurethane. I needed a motor set-up in the right photo to rotate the coil for about 24 h while it dried. It runs fine despite looking a bit scrappy.

Coloured sparks

In the Red alert screen shot the long Tesla coil sparks have both yellow and white sparks.  I used a yellow filter to make some of the sparks yellow.

The left photo above shows the camera with diffused flash and rotating yellow filter. When it is running, one in 4 sparks will be yellow. As the only thing giving out light will be the sparks nothing else will be affected. By the time I come to the flash shot and the Tesla trooper shots I will have removed the yellow filter so the colour will be natural.

The final shot

The final shot of 3 minutes involved an unspooling of 2 lines, rotation of the colour filter and a final flash to illuminate the coil. Many false starts followed by 10-15 mins to reload the spool.

and finally…

“all your base are belong to us…” Game over.

Media

This photo in the media 2007
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