Yep, it's been over a year now and I've just updated this blog. I've been busy to say the least, productive.. well, that's another story.
I did take a number of classes at the Concept Design Academy over the Summer months when I wasn't working as much and connected with a now dear friend named Paul who gave me some really excellent perspective on all things art, life and not letting my anxieties eat my brain. It had been a long time since I'd done anything relating to my much beloved sci-fi so late last year I decided to work on proving to myself I learned a few things. Contrasting this image with the last posted ship I think I've made some headway.
What's the best use of this headway you ask? Well silly, obviously to make interstellar vehicles built for the purpose of making planetfall to engage in the construction of human colonies on otherworldly.. worlds.. So behold, the Veristruct Vitruvius Mark II.
So, basically the deal is that these things are basically mobile construction sites. They come with integrated hardware (such as that spine which says Veristruct on it) which deploy into a very large crane for the moving elements of the surrounding site and the building of structures. Supported inside the ship are bays of material, prefrabricated structures, construction vehicles and other necessities to build a settlement light years away from good old Terra. A PCV is a workhorse of settling space. Owned by larger colonial development corporations, or used by private contractors, they are sometimes massed in fleets or relegated to a single operation depending on the size and budget of the settlement. This particular model is actually one I designed for a story I've drummed up.
It all goes back to the not-so-glorious work in space theme.
Below you can see, in the midst of other sketches I did on this topic, the sketch where this design originated from.
For the final I employed something that I guess might be sort of unique technique, but probably not since I'm really just a philistine in matters of photo-comping. Either way, I used to be a sculptor and model maker. In the past, when practical effects were used, a starship would be a physical model. One of the last hurrahs for these models was the movie Starship Troopers where model makers constructed 16 ft long behemoth models to be filmed.
When making such a model, you would start with your general shapes, polygons if you will, and you would build out the form of the ship. Then, when the detailing process came along, often pieces from sometimes very random sources were integrated into the models as surface or structure. Usually if something physical looked neat, lets say out of a model kit you'd find in a hobby shop, you'd simply mold the piece you liked and bam, now you have 80 of them to decorate the hull of your ship with. The process was (is) called kit bashing. It's akin to photo bashing which we now see used in a lot of digital illustration for various purposes.
I employed something which I felt was in the vein of the old-school kit bashers. Taking structural or detail components from photographs and integrating them into the design which helped me shortcut the usual hours worth of detail I'd normally love to render out on something like this. Hopefully it's not ridiculously obvious, but even if it is, it was still fun, and I think gets the point across.
Anyway, back to it. Nothing spaceship related, but hopefully soon enough, sooner than a year from now, I'll throw up some more updates.
Till then..
I did take a number of classes at the Concept Design Academy over the Summer months when I wasn't working as much and connected with a now dear friend named Paul who gave me some really excellent perspective on all things art, life and not letting my anxieties eat my brain. It had been a long time since I'd done anything relating to my much beloved sci-fi so late last year I decided to work on proving to myself I learned a few things. Contrasting this image with the last posted ship I think I've made some headway.
What's the best use of this headway you ask? Well silly, obviously to make interstellar vehicles built for the purpose of making planetfall to engage in the construction of human colonies on otherworldly.. worlds.. So behold, the Veristruct Vitruvius Mark II.
So, basically the deal is that these things are basically mobile construction sites. They come with integrated hardware (such as that spine which says Veristruct on it) which deploy into a very large crane for the moving elements of the surrounding site and the building of structures. Supported inside the ship are bays of material, prefrabricated structures, construction vehicles and other necessities to build a settlement light years away from good old Terra. A PCV is a workhorse of settling space. Owned by larger colonial development corporations, or used by private contractors, they are sometimes massed in fleets or relegated to a single operation depending on the size and budget of the settlement. This particular model is actually one I designed for a story I've drummed up.
It all goes back to the not-so-glorious work in space theme.
Below you can see, in the midst of other sketches I did on this topic, the sketch where this design originated from.
For the final I employed something that I guess might be sort of unique technique, but probably not since I'm really just a philistine in matters of photo-comping. Either way, I used to be a sculptor and model maker. In the past, when practical effects were used, a starship would be a physical model. One of the last hurrahs for these models was the movie Starship Troopers where model makers constructed 16 ft long behemoth models to be filmed.
When making such a model, you would start with your general shapes, polygons if you will, and you would build out the form of the ship. Then, when the detailing process came along, often pieces from sometimes very random sources were integrated into the models as surface or structure. Usually if something physical looked neat, lets say out of a model kit you'd find in a hobby shop, you'd simply mold the piece you liked and bam, now you have 80 of them to decorate the hull of your ship with. The process was (is) called kit bashing. It's akin to photo bashing which we now see used in a lot of digital illustration for various purposes.
I employed something which I felt was in the vein of the old-school kit bashers. Taking structural or detail components from photographs and integrating them into the design which helped me shortcut the usual hours worth of detail I'd normally love to render out on something like this. Hopefully it's not ridiculously obvious, but even if it is, it was still fun, and I think gets the point across.
Anyway, back to it. Nothing spaceship related, but hopefully soon enough, sooner than a year from now, I'll throw up some more updates.
Till then..
Very cool design!
ReplyDeleteNice job !
ReplyDelete