Rob Chapman has entered the Grand Space Opera 3D.
Latest Update: Concept Sketch: sketch 19 !
an idea I was toying with, since I had such difficulty with the overall composition of an underground dig. this one was an open mine dig on another planet where the artefacts were unearthed or ‘discovered’
Hello all,
other inspirational ‘Space Opera’ authors on my bookshelf are Alastair Reynolds, Bruce Sterling, Ken Macleod, Ian M Banks, Robert Heinlen and of course Phil K Dick. how could I not enter?
its going to be hard starting this though with such an amount of inspirational themes and ideas. But often when reading these books, Ive just finished ‘Revelation Space’ by Alastair Reynolds, im thinking it would be great to have an escuse to visualise the ‘operatic’ vision of the author. Now I do, Thank you CG Challenge and may the force be with all who enter.
for a start Idea I would like to somehow visualise an orbitital docking station with local system shuttles and ‘lighthugger’ deep space craft docked around a recently colonised world that had previously been inhabited by a much older civilisation, which happened to have been wiped out by a prior ‘event’. The new colonists are keen to find out how and why… mmkay this is a brief synopsis of the plot to ‘revelation space’ by Alastair Reynolds, but heaven only knows where I can start with the visualisation of this… :hmm: onto the drawing board and back into the book…
hey Tekano, nice idea u got there… i like the feeling of the story… r u gonna picture some kind of war or just show the great space invention of a very advanced civilization?.. i could really see the docking station infront of my eyes… cant wait to see some concept drawings from u man…
hi 3doid,
thanks for the question, its a good one! - this is the hard part of my visualisation, in the ‘revelation space’ story im basing this upon, the older civilisation (Amarantin’s) who were originally on this recently human colonised planet had left various intriguing artefacts, which I was going to try and suggest somehow with un-natural structures or ‘canals’ like on mars heheh. Obviously I am going to have to differentiate this from the colonists structures in some way. I guess the colonists would need ‘bio’ spheres or artificial air and the original inhabitants wouldnt have…
Also the reason this race was ‘wiped’ out in the book was by a much older race called the ‘inhibitors’ who were lets say ‘borg’ like and had won an original universal war millions of years prior and had probed vast regions of the universe in anticipation of any fast growing space-fairing civilisations that eventually would spring up .
These ‘inhibitors’ had converted a nearby (in the Amarantin’s solar system) nuetron star into a kind of ‘calling card’ for curious space travelling species to visit, at which point it would activate its own defense mechanisms, learn about that species and ultimately wipe them out entirely. This will be hard to visualise as in the book it was pretty far away from the colonised planet and only seen as a ‘star’ like say mercury is from earth. So some artistic license will have to be applied. 
my initial thought was to have debris in orbit but it would again be hard to differentiate visually that this was not the human colonist’s own doings. My initial thought it to suggest some kind of larger death star structure but im going to have to think about this one. any suggestions are more than welcome! 
ah doh! they are oversized because I had them still at 100dpi from the scanner. sorted now at 72dpi. phew. a few more to come this is fun ive got my wacom out and everything
I am enjoying seeing the composition improve from sketch to sketch. The last one is most original, looking forward to the next.
composition sketch, photoshop colour in. trying to work out netting or atmosphere controls and protection from planet. also working out an idea from the ‘revelation space’ book with robotic taxi cable cars that clamber around the netting and cabling.
I REALLY like how you’re experimenting with all of your ideas instead of plugging away on just one!
heheh thanks Titanium, perhaps its because im still undecided on composition, the elements inside this and what points it is im trying to get across !! 
I do think its best to mess around at this stage before getting started on serious 3d final entry though, its harder to change things around so easily when its getting complicated. Also if I dont like what im doing or sold on it then I wont have wasted much time. im also working on dummy placement satalite and space images in photoshop atm moving things around to what ‘feels’ right. another one to come soon…
Stumbled upon these in my google travels - great high res references for those doing planets on fire
Rob, NASA has LOTS of really good reference stuff – not to plenty of pictures from the space probes that can be used for bump or displacement maps!
I agree with you about the many advantages of testing out the composition before moving on to the next stage. (If my own traditional art skills were better, I’d probably be doing a lot more of that myself.) And it’s really great to see someone so familiar with the major luminaries of the SF field. When I was at the Clarion West workshop in '96, one of my fellow students was Justina Robson, who has gone on to be nominated for several awards (including for her most recent novel, Natural History, with I gather has the kind of epic scale that would’ve made it great fodder for this contest).
Best of luck on developing your scene … and nice to know there’s at least one other XSI user in the contest!
–Nuke
