Thansk! It's really hard to come up with something that's not influenced on something I've seen before (and growing up with Star Trek, it feels really hard to get out of the Federation's shadow) but I think I might have the start of something here.
Wow, I can't believe how long it's been... while my head has been in the stars, what I've seen hasn't really translated into any interesting art. Outside of these three images, that is...
Redesigning the Minbar ships from Babylon 5... never liked the look of the things, they always seemed too skinny, too top heavy... they look like fish, which is fine, but I wanted to make them look a little sleeker, a little tougher... it's still rough, but I was thinking they might turn into something like the ships from "Jupiter Ascending," the sort of advanced, artistic design you get after 1000 years of spacefaring.
Toying around wit the giant Proteus ship from the Lost In Space movie, which I recently found a cheap blu-ray copy of.
Expanding the Proteus-as-sailing-ship idea, trying to come up with something that would be identifiable as a sailing ship, but boiled down to clean, sweeping curves.
Scanner's cracked and broken, finally got a new one (though I didn't realize it would be so small). Not too much new stuff, but this little update of The Last Straighter was something that had been in my head for a while. I did another one where it's the old base but on a realistic mountain, referenced from "Planet Earth," but it didn't come out that hot.
All right, well, that Quitely base is fine if you like Quietly style, but I kept thinking I could do better, and another interesting mountain was my random computer background of the day. After staring at this thing for hours, I had an idea of how to integrate a spaceport into it. I think the right hand side should be a little longer, but other than that, I'm happy with it.
Wow, long time no post. But darned if these aren't stylistically similar to my last post: sleek shapes in nature. These were sockingly relaxing to draw.
There are a few more little things in my clipboard but I don't know if they're post-worthy.
Hey dude! I also started developing a new spaceship (well, an old idea that I rekindled), but I need to kitbash some parts on it to make my inspiration a little less obvious. I'll share that once it's more presentable.
A little update.... I've done quite a lot of pen and ink doodles recently, but no ships. But this I thought you might like: me playing around with designs for super-thin smartphones.
Comparing your design with what is out now, I think it is doable with most of the electronics at the top and bottom. the only real limiter for the design would be the battery.
Well, my big thing with these was I wanted to make it as close to reality as possible. And yeah, we can make paper-thin flexible screens, we can get rid of the bezel, but we still need a speaker, we still need a button, we still need the internal hardware and we need to be able to HOLD the damn thing!
I had an image in my head yesterday of what's going to happen when we get flexible electronics, when you can make the whole phone as thin as a piece of paper: slap bracelet phones! Take your phone out of the dock, slap it on your wrist, and out you go into the world.
I could see that. If the phone was just a phone, we are now at the point of the insignia communicators from STTNG. maybe a concealed phone would be a band-aid you stick to your chin! "Yeah, I cut myself shaving...."
We actually have comm badges now, I remember reading about a hospital that started using them. The thing is, we use phones for far more than just verbal communication: texting, games, surfing the web, taking pictures or video, etc... comm badges would be a step backwards from that.
I've been meaning to do these. The design of the Franklin in the new Star Trek was real underwhelming, that design just doesn't scale down to that size, it's not functional. So I thought I would take my own crack at it.
I rather like that last one. Feels like something I pictured reading some of the extended universe Trek books.
And another piece of art I created, a massive greenhouse of a spaceship.
1. Thank you. Yes, there are a few in this thread, though because my sketches are so rough, they're not precise.
2. I don't kow how, i've never really been called upon to do them. I'm pretty flighty when it comes to these things, so once I get the general idea down, I rarely feel the need to revisit them. I do mostly make these things for me. And since I don't know how to 3D model (i've always had a bit of a blind spot when it comes to making the transition, I can't build things physically very well either), the need has never come up.
There's one I've been trying to refine, the concept for the Excalibur, but I can't seem to draw it again. I love the shape of it, the way it all comes together, it's big but it's sleek... any other angle, though, and it falls apart. It doesn't look like it does in my head.
Okay, here's something I've been working on for a while... and had the idea for even further back. Inspired by a very obvious piece of hardware sitting around the house, my mind turned it into a scoundrel's spaceship since my mind needed a scoundrel's spaceship. Well, now I have the scoundrel, but I'm still having difficulty drawing this dang thing. But I think I also need to tease out the design more, find something original in the derivative form. This is more of a starting point than anything else. I still have a lot to figure out, including the flight deck sitting between the analog thumbsticks... I mean, the cannons (wink wink).
I don't even have a name for this thing yet!
This is the original concept doodle, very rough. It's a weird shape to draw.
My original thinking for the center area. The back will look sort of like a yacht with glass-enclosed decks (the trigger buttons will be the thrusters, and I want them to look like car taillights). The ABXY "pleasure" dome houses their small pool, hot tub and so on, I'm not sure what's in the other dome. The one thing I keep going to is that cockpit/bridge being sandwiched between the cannon columns, so it's wider... even though I haven't worked out what it looks like inside.
And here's me playing with some more variants on the shape.
(holy cow, I just happened upon this picture, so close to what I pictured the inside of the Pleasure Dome looking like... with a couple different pool options)
Definitely appreciate any feedback on this thing. It's an itch that I haven't been able to adaquetly scratch for a while.
This follows the basic idea of the ship above... but overloaded, big and bad... and clearly belonging to some guys you don't wanna mess with. Our heroes are mites in comparison.
A quick break from the spaceships, uniforms! Obviously inspired by a certain Sci Fi franchise, and yet somehow maybe possibly not derivative of it. Outside of the colour piping, of course.
An administrator ship from the same universe as that controller ship, inspired by a famous building that no longer exists.
I'm glad you like it, I'm still disappointed in it... I can't even draw them on two different planes (the wings are supposed to point down while the center stays level, since that's where the cargo and habitat areas are. I wanted to make it so the turrets on top and bottom can hit anywhere, though really there should be a back launcher of some kind.
Posts
Redesigning the Minbar ships from Babylon 5... never liked the look of the things, they always seemed too skinny, too top heavy... they look like fish, which is fine, but I wanted to make them look a little sleeker, a little tougher... it's still rough, but I was thinking they might turn into something like the ships from "Jupiter Ascending," the sort of advanced, artistic design you get after 1000 years of spacefaring.
Toying around wit the giant Proteus ship from the Lost In Space movie, which I recently found a cheap blu-ray copy of.
Expanding the Proteus-as-sailing-ship idea, trying to come up with something that would be identifiable as a sailing ship, but boiled down to clean, sweeping curves.
Enjoy!
There are a few more little things in my clipboard but I don't know if they're post-worthy.
I had an image in my head yesterday of what's going to happen when we get flexible electronics, when you can make the whole phone as thin as a piece of paper: slap bracelet phones! Take your phone out of the dock, slap it on your wrist, and out you go into the world.
I've been meaning to do these. The design of the Franklin in the new Star Trek was real underwhelming, that design just doesn't scale down to that size, it's not functional. So I thought I would take my own crack at it.
I rather like that last one. Feels like something I pictured reading some of the extended universe Trek books.
And another piece of art I created, a massive greenhouse of a spaceship.
Do you know how to do an art direction comp that would be handed off to a modelling team for a prop like a spaceship? Have you made one already?
Have you refined any of these beyond napkin sketches?
Good stuff, man.
2. I don't kow how, i've never really been called upon to do them. I'm pretty flighty when it comes to these things, so once I get the general idea down, I rarely feel the need to revisit them. I do mostly make these things for me. And since I don't know how to 3D model (i've always had a bit of a blind spot when it comes to making the transition, I can't build things physically very well either), the need has never come up.
There's one I've been trying to refine, the concept for the Excalibur, but I can't seem to draw it again. I love the shape of it, the way it all comes together, it's big but it's sleek... any other angle, though, and it falls apart. It doesn't look like it does in my head.
I don't even have a name for this thing yet!
This is the original concept doodle, very rough. It's a weird shape to draw.
My original thinking for the center area. The back will look sort of like a yacht with glass-enclosed decks (the trigger buttons will be the thrusters, and I want them to look like car taillights). The ABXY "pleasure" dome houses their small pool, hot tub and so on, I'm not sure what's in the other dome. The one thing I keep going to is that cockpit/bridge being sandwiched between the cannon columns, so it's wider... even though I haven't worked out what it looks like inside.
And here's me playing with some more variants on the shape.
(holy cow, I just happened upon this picture, so close to what I pictured the inside of the Pleasure Dome looking like... with a couple different pool options)
Definitely appreciate any feedback on this thing. It's an itch that I haven't been able to adaquetly scratch for a while.
And some more. More I say!
This follows the basic idea of the ship above... but overloaded, big and bad... and clearly belonging to some guys you don't wanna mess with. Our heroes are mites in comparison.
A quick break from the spaceships, uniforms! Obviously inspired by a certain Sci Fi franchise, and yet somehow maybe possibly not derivative of it. Outside of the colour piping, of course.
An administrator ship from the same universe as that controller ship, inspired by a famous building that no longer exists.
Hope you like too