Pretty Pictures For Your Amusement

3D Art

<Zibblsnrt> You do know that since you just started with bryce a few days ago you disgust me, right?

Deseret Morning: This is the picture that inspired the quote above. ^_^ I had this particular image in mind well before I started working in 3d artwork, and so once I had the program and had done a few trial runs on the program, I began work on the project now titled Deseret Morning.

This particular image shows the Mormon Exodus fleet from my IAS setting sitting on the ground, waiting for the signal to take off and flee the evil forces of secular humanism and the New Worlds Order they plan on imposing on the rest of the cosmos...

Deseret Launch: ...and there's the takeoff! Four of the several dozen Exodus colony ships in the initial launch phase, racing away from the vast Utah deserts.

Admittedly, with this piece I fudged plausibility a bit in exchange for decent visuals. Obviously huge colony arks like these couldn't (or shouldn't, at any rate) launch so close together without the risk of the shockwaves from their engines causing massive damage to the fleet. But a properly-spaced Exodus fleet doesn't make for the incredibly cool images, so I cheated.

But then, I can get away with that in art. ^_^

Masaq' Orbital: This was a bit of fanart I did for Iain M. Banks' Culture novels. Specifically, the orbital named is from his novel Look to Windward, although if I remember correctly there isn't a specific city or landscape in the book that matches the scene; I just liked the idea of doing a Orbital scene.

In late 2005, I was contacted by creatures from a group called Authentic Entertainment who wanted to buy this picture for use as stock footage in a TV documentary titled The Other Nostradamus (which aired not too long ago on the History Channel). Since they offered a fair price, I agreed. I guess this makes me a professional. Or just damn lucky, I suppose.

On The Deck: The second in my Culture series, this was an attempt at doing what it'd look like from the top deck of a General Systems Vehicle, the massive multi-kilometer super starships in Banks' universe. These things were so big that from the top, they didn't look like proper spaceships, but like mobile landmasses. This particular ship is the GSV Suppressed Transmission (entirely my own creation).

This picture was also picked up by Authentic Entertainment for use in their documentary. Sadly, this one didn't make the cut for broadcast.

And Then There Were Four: A tribute piece I did in honor of the space shuttle Columbia. One of the simplest pieces in my gallery, and one of the best.

Slip The Bonds Of Earth... and Fly: Another space shuttle picture, this time just because I liked the idea of a high-altitude shot of the shuttle soaring. Originally I was going to use this one in a LiveJournal icon, but the picture looks so good in large format that I felt it was worth presenting here.

The Quantum Dragon: This is an image of the VRDET Interdimensional Gateway from the Jihad Universe. The Gateway was designed to poke holes into other universes and let the PCs ~~rampage~~ save the day when called for. It was the (in-game) creation of my alter ego, and probably the thing that made him a leader in the Jihad.

The picture in particular was created about a year ago, as a visual aid for the Jihad Universe 3.0 campaign, since it was based out of the old VRDET HQ and the Gate became a central part of how the story came along. That, and I was itching for an excuse to model the damn thing properly; I've had that monster in my head since 1997!

Pale Blue Dot: A visual riff on a famous picture from Voyager 2, and an equally famous quote by the late Dr. Carl Sagan. It's very simple, but effective. I like that.

I intended this as a desktop wallpaper, and it's sized appropriately for a 1280x960 desktop. YMMV.

Ancestral Earth and Cambrian Snowscape are two new pieces I did as a volunteer effort for the Daily Kos convention fundraiser Kosmos. Kosmos is a collection of excellent science columns that've run on Daily Kos over the last year and a half or so, and it was for that reason I volunteered my services.

Look for Kosmos on Amazon and Barnes & Noble sometime in the spring of 2006. All proceeds go to the Yearly Kos convention fund.

The Olympos Trilogy

Dan Simmons is one of my favorite authors, and I especially liked his most recent science-fiction books Illium and Olympos. I mean, hell. It's got Greek gods battling robots and extrdimensional monsters. How cool is that, huh? Anyway, some of the imagery in Olympos got me inspired, so I ended up creating the following pieces:

The Atlantic Breach was a trench cut down the center of the Atlantic Ocean by posthuman entities, for reasons that remain mysterious. They probably felt it was a good idea at the time...

The Equatorial and Polar Rings, a million artificial structures put in place around the Earth to support the posthumans' curious plans for the human race.

The Eiffelbahn, a continent-spanning cablecar network put in place by the last human ruler of Earth. Apparently he thought it was funny to use replicas of the Eiffel Tower (destroyed many years before) as the pylons for his transport system.

"From the edge of the city, it looks like a pencil mark on the sky. All of the sky.": Nothing particularly special here, just my impression of what a space elevator would look like on the horizon. This one was quick and dirty, but it came out looking pretty sweet, don't you think?

And for the last bit of 3d work here, we have Strange Skies. This is the backdrop image for the Discordian Sky website, presented here so you can actually see all of it without the clutter in the way.

Illustrator Art

In addition to my dabbling with 3d work, I also have a bit of a fascination with doing stuff in Illustrator. My work here is hampered a bit by the fact that I can't draw worth shit, but regardless I've still got something of a flair for design, and I'm quite happy with my designs.

Non Armes Sed Artes Partitur Victoria: This was an emblem I designed for a pulp supers/Global Frequency-style campaign based loosely on the Jihad Universe. The campaign itself is on hold until my players finish Jihad Universe 3.0, but I think the logo's nice enough to share ahead of schedule.

Deus Ex Machina: Another Jihad Universe inspired doodle, this one is a basic terminal station featuring the JU's favorite AI character (who also happens to be one of mine). I did several of these as part of an experiment to expand my skillset, and of the lot I think this one came out best.

Industry For The People!: This was a bit of a joke on my part. I liked the idea of doing transhumanist propaganda with something of a classic Soviet art style, and I had just bought a package of Communist poster fonts that came with a dingbat set, and well... you see what happened. Not entirely serious, but I like it just the same.

Map Boy's Creations

These are my largest and best Illustrator creations ever. I built them for the Shining Spiral fanfic world (see the Worldbuilding page for details) when the scale of the thing demanded a proper map for the authors to figure out what was happening where.

The map on the right was the first pass, when the setting was a bit overloaded with stuff and a more confusing overall. The map on the left came from a revised version of the setting, with more consideration given to the overall scale of the galaxy in general.

Pretty Pictures For Your Amusement

3D Art

The Olympos Trilogy

Illustrator Art

Map Boy's Creations

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