Interstellar Abstract
2007-2

Interstellar Abstract
2007-3

Far Future
Human Alphabet 1

Milky Way Galaxy

INTERSTELLAR ABSTRACTS

Interstellar Abstract 2007-1 and Interstellar Abstract 2007-2 are abstract designs inspired by the fractal artwork of an artist known as Psion005 on Renderosity. They were created in Adobe Photoshop 7 using custom brushes by Renderosity artists Antje, Designfera, and Raptura.

Interstellar Abstract 3: Sign of Shakoren is based on the symbol used to represent the fictional Divine Revelator named Shakoren. Shakoren promotes peaceful coexistence and spiritual unity among the various sentient species encountered by my various fictional exploratory starships. The four stars inside the circle of represent the sentient computers of the starships of different sentient species whose melding formed the gestalt entity of Shakoren. The streams of stars that pinwheel around the circle represent the sentient species directly influenced by Shakoren's teachings. This image was created in Adobe Photoshop 7 with elements imported from Corel PhotoPaint X3 and using custom brushes by Renderosity artists Antje, Designfera, and Raptura.

FAR FUTURE HUMAN ALPHABETS

These images show two alternate alphabets I have created for use with my speculative spaceship designs. I often use these alphabets in place of the English alphabet to point out that star travel may not be developed until much further in our future than is usually depicted in literary and visual science fiction. I also wish to separate many of my designs from the cultures that currently dominate our planet.

MILKY WAY GALAXY AND LOCAL SUPER CLUSTER

These images were created using Adobe Photoshop 7 with custom space-themed brushes purchsed from the marketplace section of Renderosity.

MEDIUM FREIGHTER S.S. SAN ANTONIO

This was a free-lance project I did for a client who wanted 3D computer generated images and 2D deck plans for an original space freighter design. The ship was not meant to be part of any existing science fiction environment, but was to have a roughly "Star Wars" level of technology. The client provided a written design brief describing the basic configuration of the ship, the layouts of the decks, and what kinds of backgrounds to be used.

The S.S. San Antonio Medium Freighter was modeled and rendered using TrueSpace 6.5. No custom textures were requested, so stock hull and detailing textures were used. The ship's markings were simple enough that 3D objects could be used. The planet textures came from the Dark Tree Simbiont and Shader Lab add-on texturing programs for TrueSpace. Universe Image Creator was used for the backgrounds and running lights. Some final tweaking one of the planet textures was done using Corel PHOTO-PAINT 9. CorelDRAW 9 was employed to create the translucent fading banners and the deck plans. Much of the deck plan detail involved creative use of existing CorelDRAW symbols.

STARSHIPS COMMONWEALTH AND K'LOKAL E'KANGOK

Starship Commonwealth and Starship K'lokal E'Kangok are based on two designs I did back in the 1990's for the Star Trek universe. In the images shown above, I have taken them out of that SF environment in order to incorporate design and technology elements not consonant with Star Trek.

Starship Commonwealth is inspired by the Federation starships of the Star Trek: The Next Generation Era. It is a Human-built flagship of the Federated Star Systems, an interstellar organization similar to the Federation of Star Trek.

Starship K'lokal E'Kangok is inspired by the Klingon starships of the Star Trek: The Next Generation Era. The K'lokal E'Kangok differs more from its Star Trek counterpart than the Commonwealth in that it is the flagship of a race of sentient reptilians called the D'Jalarons rather than another humanoid race. The D'Jalarons were once the chief rivals of Humans and led an empire called the D'Jalaron Interstellar Consolidation. By the era of the Starships Commonwealth and K'lokal E'Kangok, the D'Jalarons have been part of the Federated Star Systems for some time and participated with Humans in exchanges of star-faring technology. Thus, while Human and D'Jalaron ships differ noticeably in form, they use similar technology and have comparable capabilities.

The images of Starship Commonwealth and Starship K'lokal E'Kangok originally were created in 2003 using Corel Draw 9 and Universe Image Creator. Some tweaking was done using Corel Draw 12 in 2004. The hull textures used on both ships were found on the Internet. Some of the textures came from a website called Concept 40. The nacelle design for Starship K'lokal E'Kangok was inspired by that used on a fan-designed Klingon ship found on the SciFi-Art website.

"ZEROIDS" ZINTAR TOY ROBOT

My favorite toy robot of all time is "Zeroids" Zintar. Jeff Tucker at www.planetzeroid.com generously gave me his AutoCAD 3D CGI mesh of this robot, its display case and associated accessories. I imported his version of Zintar into TrueSpace 6.6 and added much of my own detailing, especially to the various control panels mounted on Zintar's torso and lower body. I made a simple space background in Universe 1.63 and adapted an existing landscape mesh from a previous project. I completely retextured Zintar and was able to employ a digital photo I took of the robot's most complex control panel. The three resulting images of Zintar were then brought into Corel Draw 12 for banners and addition of the "Zeroids" logo so kindly provided by Jeff Tucker. A bit of final image cleanup was done in Corel Photo-Paint 12. For those interested in more "Zeroids" information, please visit www.planetzeroid.com.

UPHOLDER OF HONOR VARIANTS

I did three versions of the large military starship Upholder of Honor using TrueSpace. Besides the obvious color scheme variations, there are subtle modeling differences as well.