Over the past few weeks I had began doodling to improve my visual language for spaceships/hard surface stuff. Eventually I ended up scanning them and then furthered them digitally. Not content with that I remembered a talk Thomas Scholes gave at IW16 where he essentially had pieces of sketches and then bashed them together in a very sophisticated way. So I figured I will give it a go also. I plonked the pieces together and came up with a fictional Industrial Space Company and see what variety of vehicles I could create. I must admit I could have gone further with this as it is such a great technique that lets you focus on just the idea. I will be making more of these for sure.
Be sure to check out Thomas Scholes whose process is far more elegant and cooler than mine. https://www.artstation.com/artwork/gXoAK
These were the initial sketches done with pen and marker before scanning it in.
The resulting 'bashed' pieces in the guise of Industrial Space Vehicles in order of size.
The beauty of this is the unexpected results you would not get otherwise and this makes you put meaning into these irregular forms which can further the design process- for example, a cluster of shapes could double as armor, a reactor for long distance propulsion or just a straight up- thingy-ma-jig. Sometimes it looks too odd and in this case it did but this can easily be remedied with a paint-over or having a repeated themes over varied designed. Which is something I did here: this is fitting as these vehicles are for differing purposes but a made by the same company so that Identity still carries. Looking back I was clearly influenced by CAT and JCB machines.
Here's is a closeup of the fleet- the roughness shows clearly when close-up... which I kind of like.
Ships and other space stuff docks here and is fixed up.
3 person capacity and its sole purpose is to get food/supplies life support stuff to other ships.
Cleans up polluted waste or air in bio domes on other worlds.
This 'earth mover' has 'flexi-tracks' that can traverse most terrains and change form when needed.
Freighter: Just lugs megatons of stuff across the system...mainly rubber ducks.
When things break down you need this guy. When things get in the way you need this guy too.
For those older generation vehicles that still run on perishable fuel - this ship has you covered... unless it runs out of fuel itself.
There you have it.
I will likely spend the rest of the year build a library of shapes to use in producing concepts. I will stick with vehicular stuff for now, though, you can easily see how these same shapes could be turned into weapons or props too. Let's see how it goes and I will happily let it grow into other stuff.
Cheers
Aaron
