I dunno if any of you have seen this or not, but a friend of mine introduced me to this site and it's been a blast coming up with some really cool ideas for ship designs with absolute ease:
http://ship.shapewright.com/
All you have to do is type in a word or string of words into the field and their 3D generator employs a custom algorithm that spits out a low-poly/res design that's unique to that word (or letters or numbers- anything you type in, really). Some of the results are a little weird or useless, but MANY of them are pretty eye-catching. If you find a design that you like, you can download a VRML (*.wrl format) copy of the model, import it into your 3D proggie and use it as a base for embellishment or reference. Here's a few pics of some design ideas of my own that I might tinker around with in the coming days, just so that you get an idea of what it does (all ships shown are named after the word I used to create the design):
Anvil01.jpgAnvil02.jpg
Avenger01.jpgAvenger02.jpg
For those of us who get stumped on ideas or are just looking for some inspiration, this could be an invaluable tool!
Posts
Castaway02.jpgCastaway01.jpg
Disney01.jpgDisney02.jpg
Dump01.jpgDump02.jpg
Embargo01.jpgEmbargo02.jpg
The point is not to let ShapeWright *build* the design for you, but to give you some ideas and suggestions on what you CAN do if you want a new ship design that'll be completely unique.
Seriously, though- play around with as many words as you can think of, no matter how absurd. They don't even have to be words- try a jumble of letters or made-up words like "akamshi" or "glomtickle" and see what comes up. Real words like "fairy" or "fallen" work well, too. You just have to play around with it and see what happens.