The image below is the fan which I based my fan on as it looks vintage and a bit rusty which might help me capture the apocalyptic theme that I have been given.
To make the base, start off with a simple cylinder and inset the top and extrude it a small amount then use the bevel tool to get the inwards curve (may need to add an additional edge near the bottom and scale it outwards to get the shape shown in the image). From there, inset the top and extrude down wards then inset again and extrude outwards to create the top of the base. After that, draw a line in a U shape and attach it to the extruded part out the top. Once that part has been attached, create a sphere and attach it to the end of the U as seen in the image below.
To create the fan holder, start off with a cylinder and simply use the inset and extrude tools. The fan cage is simply create from circles and then move the vertices of the circles to make it look dented and beaten as seen in the second image.
To create the fan blades, start off start off with a cylinder and inset and bridge to create the part that spins the fans. then extrude polygons at 4 different angles which will create the parts that the blades are attached to. Then to create the blades, start off with a box and add 2 segments going across. Turn the box into an edit poly then drag the 2 vertices ate the top end down and add turbosmooth. To create the create the round parts at the bottom of the blades, start with a sphere and turn the hemisphere up to 50 then attach it to the blade (may have to reduce the number of segments).
