Cover Art - Bob Eggelton SciFi ship

[Thomas P]

Just finished reading Probability Space by Nancy Kress which has cover art by Bob Eggelton. The picture sort of inspired me to do something different - a part of the pic:



I did not want to copy it exactly but thought it would be fun and a good 'box modeling' project.

Series of hull start to finish:

Cool! Looks like the Cosmostrator from the East German movie from the 1960s. It is going to have chrome finish?

[Thomas P]

No, more of an odd metallic finish I've cooked up. It should work with the scene I'm trying to emulate.

[skyhawk223]

Looks good so far. Are the wings going to be a part of the same piece, or modeled separately, then connected?

[Thomas P]

The 'wings' are seperate as are the outboard pods. My wings will be different as I had done the originals but they looked too thin to me. I also put a little detail on the wings. The pods are looking pretty close to the paintings.

Looks good

Just courious...why isn't this in the WIP forum? *notices title of poster*

[Thomas P]

Originally posted by Random Chaos
...Just courious...why isn't this in the WIP forum? *notices title of poster*

D'uh :o ! Thanks - I was not paying attention, silly me. I have moved it.

[Thomas P]

Okay, now that I have my act together!

Here is that pod and wing assembly.

[F.A.M.]

Wow! That's looking very good! I love the organic flow of the ship....

[General Phoenix]

Quite spiffy, I must say...

very very pretty

[Thomas P]

Most of the texture maps and the final parts.

Now I'm curious how the final lighting will be...

The ship is beautiful.

crap!


that looks cool

now go make a fast spacecruiser orion VII

[skyhawk223]

Sweet! What scale is this ship? Are those round lit things windows?

Very cool! I love this retro stuff

I know you said that you aren't going for total accuracy, but the proportions on your model make it look rather stumpy.The main body in the painting looks much longer more graceful, and the wing pods smaller. Its possible that you could just stretch yours.

Were you going to add the canopy too?
Are you going to recreate that painting?

[Thomas P]

Thanks everyone!

Scale, no frigg'n idea but I do assume the little orange lights are port holes (or picture windows?). The book has Humans and only one other race capable of space flight and they are about the same physical size.

As far as lighting goes, I'll have to work on that but I expect to put it in scenes that are more like cover art - so bright-ish blues.

I did start to recreate the scene itself and did a pretty decent job on a galaxy background like the book. I have had trouble recreating the ship texture though and it ends up looking like a model hanging in front of a painting.

The ship hull is pretty much in the shape and scale of the original painting. I rotated the picture until I had a level horizontal cross view. I elected to make some changes as I wanted this to be something of mine and not just a recreation. Also, as I added the fins and other details they looked to small to me and I ended up not liking it as much as the painting version.

However, in going back I did notice that the pods on the fins were backwards(!?) so I have rotated them properly.

Hrm . . . . Very nice. Makes we wanna buzz around space and shoot stuff.

Yep that does look better with the pods in that position!

[F.A.M.]

Very nice! Go render up some pics for us now!

[Hito]

Hey Thomas.
Mind going into a little detail on how u went from blocky cylender to bulb shaped perfection, and the indents on the struts?

[Thomas P]

OMG - a tutorial challenge - who the heck around here is in charge of that? Oh crap - that's me .

[Hito]

::chants::

Tho-Mas!
Tho-Mas!
Tho-Mas!