Nervous about entering for the first time I wanted to test my ideas, and when I reached this stadium I felt brave enough to enter the challenge.
The composition is nowhere near final. The idea is actually to show the interior of the Sundiver on its part scientific, part diplomatic journey into the sun.
There will be representatives from several Uplift species onboard, engaged in observation, mingling and intrigue, all based on David Brin’s first uplift book “Sundiver”
Looks good so far.
The colors look very good.
How will you show both the detail of the ship and the people/aliens inside?
I am not sure myself how to do this.
good luck on your entry
wayne k
guam usa
This exterior is just a sketch. I wanted to begin with understanding what visualising the inside of the Chronosphere would be like and to get a general idea of the ship. There are sketches in the original book, but I’m going to deviate from it a little to make it more impressive and give it wider perspective opportunities for interior views.
The work so far actually began with the Sphere Challenge, where I had already started to sketch this ship when this challenge came along.
(I’d like to add more pictures showing the development, but I haven’t learned how the forum/submission posting works yet. I’ll edit this post when I get the hang of it. 
)
Your Sundiver ship has beautiful design. I read the book very recently but can’t remember if the ship was mirror-like when diving. Maybe it was. Anyway not having it like that makes perfect sense, here. Love the colours.
Am curious to see the composition you’ll go for. Ship is a beauty but the human and alien interaction has the top position. Keep going, I’ll follow this with interest.
Backtracking concept and WIP since my original submission was work quite far gone:
It actually began a month ago when I wanted to do the Uplift ship Sundiver for the CG Sphere challenge. It never got further than this.
collecting images from NASA (http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/) to create a panoramic image and HDRI source.
The panorama is scaled and pieced together, then combined in 16 bit color depth. From there I can create several exposurelevels for a final HDR.
Photoshop has a good distortion filter to turn a normaldirected panorama to a classic spherical panorama.
Now I consider my initial entry complete. These were my first tests to see if I thought I could go through with the challenge. Now I must get started with my composition and aliens!
Wow, I really like the image of the Sundiver flying in the sun! Great design on such a “simple” ship. Good luck!
Finally got to sketch a little while on a seminar. Got sidetracked from drawing pring as I had intended and drifted to Traeki/Jophur and on to T8lek.
Haven’t got too much hope for finishing at the level I wan’t to due to lack of spare time, but I WILL produce a composition before this week is over!
Back on track. Trying to figure out the odd mammal, a forestdweller before the brutal uplift by it’s patron. Trying also not to make it too similar to Burns version on the novel cover.
y
OK… now I’m inside. pretty close to the first 3D sketch, but the alignment to the sun is tilted. Unfortunately that has made it much more similar to Japetus’ idea (http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=235&t=612644), but atleast we are visualizing different action.
Finally got my computer fully reinstalled and can start working at home, but sadly my own drawing tablet broke down last tuesday.
Been a lot of traditional drawing and sketching in lack of computer equipment and occasionally doing som minor scene and render adjustments in breaks at work, last wednesday and some today. Ended up with this scene before I went home today.
Placed several dummies for proportion all over the model. The image is now in my opinion definitely too much like Jim Burns’ cover for Sundiver but with this little tiem left I’ll go for it and try to tweak it away as far as I can from here.
Now I’m arming myself with the wacom tablet I borrowed from work to start proper CG-sketching, atlast!
Thank for your comment!
I think the Sundiver is a great inspiration even though it is just a prelude for the rest of the UPLIFT.
As you have noticed I am also focusing on Sundiver.
For your piece I would suggest on focusing on the actual “story” in the composition of the final image. This is what I have to figure out myself as well.
Good luck!
Oh gorgeous work…I love the “donuts”…i wanted to do these myself but went in an entirely different direction…loving ship design…and the composition is spot on.
Not much time left, hope to see you at the finish line.
Marley
Thanks.
I’m aiming at the part where they communicate with the Toroids with the laser.
My problem is that I want to have both the Kanten and Pring in the scene and I’m struggling part with their appearance and interaction, and mainly with the way it shall work technically. Where’s the laser, how is it communicating. I’m not working artistically when developing the scene in my head, but rather intellectually. The thing must be functional in my head before I can visualize it. And old bad engineer habit I developed in my youth.
Finally I have decided to dedicate this entire weekend to finishing, so I have shut off the phones, and I will try to ignore the distraction called the internet. 
I was suddenly reminded of another uplift-universe by the amazing spanish adult comic artist Miguel Prada. In the 80s, in Sweden, a series of short stories called “Fragments from the Delphinian Encycopedia” was published in Tung Metall, the swedish equivalent of Heavy Metal.
The comic in question don’t seem to have been published in album form after what I learned from my enquiries. Possibly the right (Swedish or world wide i do not know) are owned by swedish comic magnate Horst Schröder, or Joakim Pirinen (my memory eludes me in details of what I heard) and that the market has been unfavourable for such a publishing in Sweden atleast.
The story begins with Chimps being uplifted and after traditional servant role and final uprising to full citizenship, and later the uplifting of Dolphins
who thousands of years later compiles the Delphinian Encyclopedia that tells of their heritage from the humans, which is the framing story for the series.
If anyone knows of this story being published in it’s entirety, please tell me. I have only a handfull of parts from this story in random issues of Tung Metall from around 1989.
i completely understand. I have an architectural background as well and tend to analyze things too much.
Trying to figure the Kanten species by a Broccoli study. Have problems with Pring posture.
overview of the sundiver interior.
I’m mostly trying to figure where to place the communication laser. Propably itt will be at the apogee of the bridge
