Ship Art

Throughout the course of this year I've been working on a story, back when this class first started I was inspired to try and do art of some of the ships in the story's setting. Admittedly, they are all a bit on the simple side for this class, but I'm still somewhat proud of them. Their simplicity is more of a conviction of my choice of medium and my limited skills than the concept as a whole.

In part I didn't originally intend for these to be part of the class. This was more an attempt to get my creative juices flowing, and attempt that didn't really pay off in the long run, but did get me to at least create these.

Below is an early rough attempt.


The first example (above) is most typical of my early attempts at the thematic style I intended in the story. WWII in space. I'll be the first to admit it has been done before, although how literal it was taken sits on a spectrum. This is inspired in part by the process behind a lot of scenes from Star Wars.
This would obviously be seen as a less literal interpretation of WW2 in space, with ww2 movies and footage serving as an inspiration rather than a direct mold for Star Wars.


On the other hand, we have the Space Battleship Yamato, obviously a far more literal WW2 in space, in that in the story it is literally the Battleship Yamato being converted into a space ship and sent into space. My intentions leaned far more to this side than towards George's interpretation.

The overall style is simple. Take a WWII ship and mirror it. While it's hard to see the style does have a few more nuances than that. While hard to convey at this scale and angle, the ships aren't flat on the top and bottom, rather, they are curved, and pinch flat vertically towards the front. The large rectangular shapes on the side are extensions, and the soft gray and blue detailing on those extensions, and on the back, are the starship's propulsion.

I didn't stop at the first ship.



That top ship is my own interpretation of a "Space Battleship Yamato," in my sort of mirrored style. It along with the fourth ship down are the only non American interpretations I've done, the rest being United States Navy ships. The specific classes are as following.
1.) the Yamato class Battleship
2.) the Baltimore class Heavy Cruiser
3.) the Cleveland class Light Cruiser
4.) the Chitose class Light Carrier
5.) the Porter class Destroyer Leader
6.) and 6.5) the Buckley class Destroyer Escort

Number 2, the Baltimore is the most developed of the designs. Having that 2d image, as well as a 3d image I worked 12 hours with a friend to create. (Him doing the hard work and modeling, me filling in each detail the 'pixel' drawing failed to convey.) (below)

The model does a better job of showing off the shape of the ship. Capturing, the less than imagination grabbingly named, "toothpaste tube" shape the first three and the fifth ships have.

You can view the model here, though it lacks any of the colorations, due to the format of the viewer.

The first diversion from that design is the Chitose, the fourth ship from the top. Part of the design change was to try and convey the different intent of this ship. The large rectangular gray section towards the mid back of the ship are a set of massive hangar doors, intended to let fighter craft come and go. And the sort of fence hanging from the top front of the ship are intended to be extensions of the "catapult," the rail that launches the fighters into battle. Plus, I wanted to mix things up just from a creative standpoint.


The art for the fighters it carries is older than the rest of the art, drawn before this class.


The other divergence from the style is the 6.5th ship.

The Buckleys. The one on the left is more traditional, it follows the toothpaste tube shape, it's the only ship with it's own unique turrets (they are just a smaller version of the secondaries the cruisers have), which stems from it having 3 inch guns, which none of the other ships have.

This was after I had made the Yamato, and I was kind of burned out on the style of the toothpaste tube, so I figured since this was a destroyer escort, and the least miltary of the ships, so I thought I'd mix things up again.

Although, this again requires some explanation, the segmented look was intended to be concentric cylinders. It was unintentional, but that combined with the new front shape gave it more of a submarine shape.

The emblem on the side of half of the ships is yggdrasil, the world tree of norse mythology. I talk a bit more about it in the last draft of the NSR Jomsflot Officer Uniform.




Not really sure how to end this one.

NSR Jomsflot Officer Uniform Draft 7

This jacket is a combination of several styles and ideas from multiple centuries of military fashion, fitting in with the in setting history of the organization.

The length of the jacket is something I found common in military uniforms across Europe in the 17th century, though the slightly above the knee cut is specifically inspired by several English uniforms I found from that century.

The pin on the collar is two crossed swords of western european style, though I was going for something vaguely Nordic. The upright stiff collar itself comes from some uniforms I found in the 18th century, though unlike the length it wasn't a universal style, as collar varied by service and country.

The colored shoulders, and the off centeredness of the jacket comes from Star Trek, the shoulder pads are common in every uniform after the original series and the original movies. Though unlike in Star Trek, the colors do not denote department/branch of service, rather red and white are the universal colors of the military unit this uniform is for, the Royal Guard of my setting. The off centered design is from the formal uniforms seen in the movies with the original series cast.

The belt buckle is Yggdrasil, the branches interweave as a symbol of a united "Midgard" or Earth. It is the symbol of a country that embraced pan-humanism as an ideal in the 20th century in the setting, and successfully united the planet before aliens would come in the 21st century and blow everything up.

The boots are meant to be general militaristic boots, they aren't too important, as in they only really have ship side wear, and need to cuff on tight in order to hold someone through magnetic pads in case the ship's artificial gravity fails.

There is no undershirt, or underwear for this uniform, just a body sleeve that can interface with a helmet to serve as a temporary spacesuit in emergencies. The pants have pockets, that are obscured by the jacket, and generally it's common practice in the utility departments to flip the skirt up and tuck it under the belt. The uniform would come with a sidearm and a sword, though I could not settle on a design for either.

For the overall style of the jacket, I gave it a sort of two triangles looks, triangles to try and give it a more militaristic bearing.

17th century uniforms

18th century collar 


Star Trek Colored Shoulders

Star Trek TOS formal Uniform

Uniform Draft 5 and 6

Temp Text. The newer version is the right one.

Uniform Draft #4

Have the pants traced over, and some of the left boot done. Not sure what color the boots will be, and I still need to desaturate the reds and whites.

Uniform Draft #3

Decided to go ahead and add pants, as you can see the scale is way off still, but it's getting closer. I'm using some front shots of biology diagrams to begin fixing the scale of it.

Uniform Draft #2

Decided to more consistently do my lines as black, and recolored the belt to match the jacket, as well as redrawing the tree and resizing most of the thing.

Uniform Draft #1

Just a little something I've been working on for a while. It's going much faster now that I can work in photoshop. The proportions are poor, and it's stiff and awkward looking, but it's a start.