Retro Starship Design

Go ahead, scare the locals.



The idea here is a company that makes space ships with a retro feel, such as flying saucers and rockets, sort of like using modern technology to make a car that looked like a Model-T, but really had a V-8 engine, air bags and the whole works.


This would be a kids space suit that would come with the ship. It has a wide array of safety features such as a padded interior, durable double layer screen (with separate mommy and daddy location devices) with heads up display and a tail that helps roll the wearer onto their side so they can get on their feet better. It also has the ability for game systems so should there be more than one child outside they can entertain them selves.

Keel Hauled

These are sketches of a corridor named the Keel as it is a large corridor that runs the length of the ship along the bottom.


This picture shows where the corridor goes and little bit of what it's used for, easy access to back up systems as well as the main corridor used to move equipment to and from the engines.


This image I was working out the shape of the gates that hold many of the cables in place.

Space case

Though I haven't been able to make as much in 3D as I would like recently, I have been able to draw quite a bit while on my breaks at work.


In these drawings I'm trying to refine the profile of the ship so the aft of the ship (on the right) looks interesting. I've also elongated the ship when compared to the first drawing at the bottom of the page.


Here I added the upper section and lowered it closer to the rest of the ship trying to give it a more stream lined look.


This is an older picture where I first liked how the aft section of the ship looked. I like the direction I've gone with the ship as a whole since this picture. I still need to work on how parts line up from the side.


This is the first picture of this ship that I drew years ago. The idea was that the ship was found abandoned by its alien builders and found by humans. As such there are a lot of features and systems that the crew doesn't have access to because of a language barrier. The weapons being one of the systems and thus "after market" weapons were added later. I have mixed feelings about leaving that point in the ships background story though.

Still kicking

I didn't have as much time the last two weeks to work on this as I would have liked. However, I found time this weekend to work on a few things.


Here's the bumper, grill and hood with the detailing on it. I'm not sure how I want to make the fins in the grill yet as that could really rack up the poly count, so I've moved on to other parts and will come back to them later.


Here's the other parts, the engine compartment so far.


Both bumpers, It did take a little time to get the shape of them right. Next I think I'll rough out the interior and make the door handles.

The Hood

One more update for the day.


Here's the chrome piece that goes on the hood.

Fast Progress

I think I'm making pretty good progress on this, a few hours here and there on the weekends. I'm just about done modeling the body, have to add the trim around the windows, details on the hood, door handles, that sort of thing. Then it's the grill, tail lights, bumpers and tires, after that I'll work on the interior. I plan to unwrap it before most of that though.

I have the doors, windows, hood and trunk detached so it can be posed when it's rigged.


I don't like how many lines lead to the tail lights but given how the "sharp edge" on the car goes it seemed unavoidable.


So far the body has 994 polys, and only six of them are triangles. That also seemed unavoidable unless I wanted the poly count to skyrocket, again because of the "sharp edge."

Fast Lines

It's fairly late so not many words this time. I worked on the front some, as well as the back of the door, I'll have to post that later as I think I'm starting to think my desk chair would be a good place to sleep.

Fast Cars

I decided that modeling something that isn't scifi would be good. So I started modeling a 68 Barracuda fast back.








Here's the line flow of it. It took about two to three hours to get to this point, finding the references, couple lights, fiddling with shaders and rendering. I think the next step will be to unwrap it before I put too much detail into it.



Here's a temp shader, and proof that I need to work on rounding a few things off and separating pieces so the hood and doors can open.

Drought

I know it seems like there's been a creative drought here, and there sort of has. The last few months has been preparing paperwork for my fiance's visa, which is quite a lengthy and involved process, but is now nearing it's end and I'll be updating again. I have a few drawings I'd like to scan and some 3D rattling around in my head I'd like to get out.

Jamie's Animation Show

Here are various animations I made while at Vancouver Film School. I focused on modeling over animation, but still enjoyed bringing things to life.


This first one I was given a model by students in another program and asked to rig it, and eventually when they got to crunch time they asked me to help with animation. I enjoyed rigging it.


This is an example of the classical animation I learned. I really enjoyed learning how animation in film started, and all of the work that went in to all of the cartoons I watched growing up. These were the later assignments where we had to draw just the key frames and not the entire animation.


The final video here is an example of my 3D animation. Also very fun to work on. With the exception of the whale, these were all weekly assignments. I'll keep posting things as I find them in the hundreds of gigabytes I accumulated while at VFS.

P-38 More pretty renders

And here is the turn a round for the P-38. I had no problems with rendering until I started rendering with a normal map.


Over all I like how this turned out. My next project is going to be some sort of competition because I want to work on something with a definite deadline.

Here are the final shots. Over all I like how this turned out.














I think the first two shots are my favorite, I know before I said the first one was, but I like the second too. It's an interesting angle to me.














I like how this shows the years of wear on the wings. Countless footsteps from pilots climbing in and out of the cockpit.














Years of dust and grime on the bottom, and on the pin up from people patting her thigh for good luck and tires slightly squished under the weight of the plane.














Another interesting angle. Despite the wear and tear it still looks like it's ready to go places.

Pretty, pretty renders.

I have some more pictures of the P-38. This is the look I was going for the whole time. Like some one was in the process of rebulding/restoring a P-38 with parts from others. The past week has been fiddling with shader, lighting and render settings. And now for the show:

I think I like this view the best:















It shows that it's not so much a bunch of plains put together, but one plain repaired with parts of others. Honestly I think if you were to see a plain in Half-Life 2 it'd be in similar condition, though probably more rusty which I didn't want to do.

Followed by this one:















Not sure why, but I just like the set up and lighting in this shot.

This one shows the rust on the bottom of the landing gear doors:















Can't see the deformation of the tires like I wanted so I'll need to fix that before I render next.

This one is to see if it's as reflective as it's supposed to be:















I think it's pretty close. Most of the reference pictures I have of the blue or green planes they have a matte paint on them. It's the polished metal and red ones that are shinier. I need to fix that and I think its good.

I've also remembered that this model is full of triangles which won't work well for ZBrush, I'll have to try something else for a normal map. In the words of Manuel (a classmate from VFS) "it's getting there."