With this thread I guess I'm making a statement of intent. Have been recently updating my on-line portfolio:
www.haroldwithers.co.uk
Which was in need of a much overdue update. I hadn't updated it for over 4 years which is just criminal. My copy of Dreamweaver went the way of the Dodo which kinda scuppered any efforts to update it, but getting a new copy recently gave me the chance to do a bit of a clear out and spruce up, and now she's ready to set sail on the interwebs again with stacks of brand new content.
While going through the samples during the updating process I realised there were a raft of ship designs, be those concept designs developed for a game which didn't get used, or underdeveloped personal projects. For example, prior to working on
First Strike I was developing my own rich sci-fi universe which I fully intend to get back to at some point. So there are designs for vehicles and characters from that in the mix, also potential designs for craft intended for use in
First Strike, but have not yet been (or are not likely to be) developed. Some may be in sketch form, others basically blocked out in 3d.
My intent is to post a few of these designs here for feedback, and for the designs that people like I might actually get off my arse and take them to the next level and fully complete them. Or alternatively if anyone else fancies building them if they like the look of a design they can feel free to do so.
So with
First Strike still currently first and foremost on my dancecard this probably won't get updated or go that much further just yet, but seeing feedback on some of these designs might give me the impetus to get cracking on a few of these old birds.
So below are a few of the designs I'm talking about. As ever feedback is more than welcome.
These first designs are unused concepts from
Mace Griffin: Bounty Hunter.
Shuttle02.jpg
Shuttle.jpg
Rickshaw01.jpg
Rickshaw02.jpg
Super killer Ship 01.jpg
Super killer Ship 02.jpg
Posts
Agrippa_Spacecraft.jpg
Oh, and while I'm on the subject of the Sentinel, I wouldn't mind taking the current in game model I built for First Strike, untextured version pictured below...
Sentinel_Render_02.jpg
...and beef it up to a more fully detailed high poly version, who knows? Might sit comfortably in the Imperial hangar I've just built.
...and here are a few designs from that sci-fi universe I mentioned earlier. The first is an Orion Starfighter, I like the body, but the wing panels are just too derivative of a TIE Interceptors, so I'd want to do something quite different with those.
OrionStarfighter.jpg
These next two pictures feature a small airspeeder like aircraft customised to allow it to make planetfall from orbit and be capable of short distance space travel. I quite like this design and reckon it could be well worth detailing up in 3d.
Comicbook_Planetfall_01.jpg
Comicbook_Planetfall_02.jpg
The following ship is the vessel of one of the principle characters, so I'd like to work this one up into a fully highly detailed model at some point with an intricate fully realised interior which would see plenty of action.
TalonShip01.jpg
TalonShip04.jpg
Finally we have a design which is obviously not of my own, but a model I built a long time ago of one of my fave designs. A Babylon 5 Earthforce Starfury. I want to revisit this model at some point, as it currently just has the seperate parts sunk into each other, and I'd like to rectify that by attaching all the parts correctly so that you have smooth joins between the engines and wings, and perhaps work on a cockpit interior too.
Starfury_Render_01.jpg
Right, so there are a few of the designs and what not I intend to put some time and effort into working up at some point.
Let me know what you guys think of 'em.
That's quite interesting that, as that is the closest shuttle design to the one that actually got used in the game. They went with a design I did which had a different engine configuration at the back, but the rest was essentially the same. Nice choice.
Ohh, or did you mean Shuttle 02 as it appears on my website? Which would be the first one that appears in the first post on here? If so that's also a good choice as that was my fave design which I'd have liked to have seen go into the game. There's just a bit more going on with that design.
Either way, good choice.
Shuttle02.jpg
Oh, and then there was also the Orion starfighter which I did a little experimentation with creating several layers of illustration featuring the inner workings of the ship. The version you see here is just all the line work layers all gathered together, but for the final piece I then printed them out on to acetate sheets so you could layer up the detail with a final sheet showing the outer hull. I then painted onto the line work on the acetate to complete the effect and then you could flip each layer up to reveal the guts of the ship's concept design. Will have to dig that out sometime, haven't checked out the original piece in years.
:argh:
Anyway. Your work is beautiful. It isn't as easy to come up with new ship designs (given all that have come before) as one might think.
We could have used you on the SFM film project. Sadly that died a slow a painful death.
Now I can add some of your stuff to MY list of unfinished work...
Steve
But, somehow the tail and engines reminds me of the passenger liner in The 5th Element.
Anyway, looking at the additional detail to this ship, I like what is going on with the lift thrusters, especially the one under the nose which has a nice touch integrating the nozzle into the shape of the underside of the fuselage, but I'm not totally sold on the main thrusters to the rear, perhaps they just need to be better integrated into the rear cowling of the engines? Maybe if the cowling recess was curved and ran deeper like the front of them there would be more room to allow those thrusters to appear more integrated into the engine, perhaps if the thrusters were a bit longer as well that would help differentiate them from the lift thrusters too.
Really liking the near orbital shot, that is looking great, a real pleasure to see this coming together Starrigger, if you want any other pointers on the possible finer details just give us a shout. One other thing to consider is the fact that I envisioned this as a multitasking workhorse of a spacecraft with interchangeable modules, hence the reason why the passenger compartment is so boxy while the rest of the craft is fairly streamline. So I saw that passenger module as a detachable component which could be switched with a cargo or fuel tanker slug style module so that it could perform multiple duties in a similar fashion to the classic Eagle spacecraft from Space 1999, so when it comes to the finer detailing you might want to take that into consideration in case you wanted to add latches or locking mechanisms of some sort to suggest this detachable nature of the module. Anyway great to see this developing as I said earlier, looking forward to seeing more, thanks for putting the time and effort into realizing this design in 3d, it's much appreciated.
For the landing pads if you do make the cargo pods interchangeable I'd suggest one on each side engine/wing and one on the base of the "nose". Looking really good.
Agreed. If you swapped the position of the engines with that radiator section below it, I think that would bring a great deal of balance to the design.
I had to take a look at the last posted picture and I think you have something there. It would make sense to switch them around.