I’m looking for help with Concept Art for several things right now for STARQUAKE. GM characters mostly, but also space ships. Can you draw? Do you want to help me? Who knows we could one day even name a planet after you!
Like CS Lewis I am writing a series of books to show eternal truths in a popular fiction setting.
STARQUAKE is a novel about a group of betrayed and abandoned GM animals who team up with a family clan of Irish Travellers, gypsies, to fight a pirate band led by a renegade military mainframe program, now calling itself Waveform, and his army of GM wolverine pirates, GM’s he himself bred from wolverine stock which he found in the Bantam Bay, the derelict Carnival Space Cruise Line ship, which featured nice earth-like recreation bio-habitats on board for the tourists to use. The GM’s under John Sabertail, the Black Labrador, have to take the fight to Waveform to save their home and family from imminent doom.
The derelict Space Cruise Line ship called the Bantam Bay is stuck in orbit around a degenerate trinary star system, one that is about to suffer a cataclysmic starquake on its primary neutron star, triggering a supernova and the creation of black hole and eject the third star from its orbit to travel the lonely reaches of space for eternity as a true cosmic traveller, a rogue High Velocity Star. But that’s just for icing on the cake. The real story is about the Genetically Modified (GM) humanized Rabbit, Fox, Bear, Dog, Boar, Mouse, Wolverine, and how they overcome their differences, fight insurmountable odds, and surf a supernova shockwave, to overcome this evil galactic threat. There are a few humans that feature in the story as well, but mostly right now we’re focused on the GM’s!
The key characters are :
John Sabertail, a five-foot two-inch tall Black Labrador Retriever-stock GM.
Golden Lars, a Golden Retriever, John’s counterpart and former CO.
Rocky, a ‘Brown /Asian Sun bear’ mix, who stands a staggering 9 feet (2.7m) tall!
Beatrix ‘flipkick,’ you guessed it, a kick-boxing rabbit, beautiful to behold, and wow does she smell like a million bucks!
Fenix, often called a super genius but that’s a complete understatement. She’s a fox, but not a red fox, a Marbled Fox.
Leonard Mus, a Gerbil basically. Tech, coder, introvert!
Arabel Reichenbach, an MD who is based on a Eurasian Boar. Big boned, she saved hundreds of colonists in the initial pirate attack. English is her THIRD language.
Then we also have:
Stanley, a Cat/Dog hybrid from NYC, who was a slave, now a janitor but later will become a multi-billionaire!
Juno, a wolverine, and in fact there’s an army of wolverines, but he is the first one rescued and has his illegal cerebral mind implant deactivated by CJ, the adolescent thinking machine!
Dr. Belair, also a boar from Reichenbach’s labs, who is rescued in the attack on the Bantam Bay.
Rodney, a pit bull, who makes only a cameo on board the decoy mercy ships, sent to evacuate all humans but leave the GM’s to be enslaved by Waveform when he takes over the colony.
There are also non-GM characters as well:
CJ, an adolescent ‘thinking machine’ who has a simple housing unit for his processors, but also has a digital form that he uses to interface with other mainframes.
Peñaflor is the original Cruise Ship mainframe, a female persona, who Waveform has enslaved when he took over the Bantam Bay. She has no physical housing unit but has a female digital image within the computer system. She’s like a mother to the GM wolverine slaves but is desperate trying to save them.
Chase Appleby, is an Irish Traveller, who they call a gypsy, and several other members of his family clan, children, cousins and Papa Morgan and Mommy Appleby. They play a pivotal role in the rescue of the colony and in both battles, in fact the GM’s could not have survived without their help, especially Blazer, Jakso, Django, Carlton, Rife, Lasky, all pilots and many of whom died fighting the pirates at the Bantam Bay; but also the teens Quill, Nicker, Bird, Mars, Stephan, Stowe, Zub and Jug, all first time fliers, and others who helped to fight off the home invasion, many of whom died, but especially heroic was Zub’s ultimate sacrifice made at the very last possible second, saving every living soul left at the colony from waveform’s impending upload. Zub!!
There are several other humans with small bit parts as well, but they don’t need concept art like these others. There are military commanders, Captain Prowse, pretending to be a mercy corps captain, Captain Doctor Betty Barry, various colonists, etc.
Then we have the PIRATES!
Waveform is a deranged computer program that has no physical form, but did make a kind grotesque automaton he uses as a body of sorts. He appears within the computer system as a dark, handsome, cruel figure.
Gravel and Kumar are lead wolverines. Kumar, Bray and Hantay are human pirates. Bray has been so enhanced he is now basically a full cyborg. There is also a ‘creature in an exo-frame’ they fight which resembles a slug inside a mech battle suit.
And I think that’s just about it. Oh and Romdorm, I mean Romstrum, ahhhh I mean Romhorn! Why is that so hard to say! And some NASU top brass, and some colonists.
I’m trying to find concept art to help define these main characters and explain them to people, but … I CANT DRAW!!
Yesterday I realized maybe I can find a website that shows morphed images of Animals and People or something like that, and wow, I did find some stock resources. It’s not awesome, its not perfect, but it’s a start.
So I’ll be posting a Character Sketch on each of the main characters, starting I think with Beatrix. And oddly enough the first real accurate concept art I found was … a kick-boxing rabbit!! Cool! But it felt wrong, so I wont use it, but that’s why I need your help!!
Authentic Fictional Space Ships
Next I am looking for space ships, and it’s AWFUL! Does anybody read SCIENCE or just science fiction written by someone who read other science fiction? The two main influences of space ship art are: 1) Star Wars and 2) earth fossil fuel burning, gravity-bound mostly ocean navy based ships. It’s just awful! Well, maybe that’s good! We can do much better than them! (I hope!) I mean yes, things have to look COOL, but why can’t they be realistic as well?
The design problems are myriad. Let’s start with THRUSTERS.
Do you REALLY think we’re going to get anywhere using solid fuel rocket boosters? Do you know how FAR away things are in space?
MUCH, MUCH worse, how do you TURN when your only trust is in the back? I know, kick the rudder and add some aileron, right? To slow down, just add more flaps … these space ships are using AIR FRICTION to maneuver … IN SPACE!! They have rear thrusters ALWAYS ON FULL POWER, and yet are slowing down and turning!
That’s just not how to turn in zero G. So I want a ship that has, as its heart, a gyroscope, maybe not protruding like a giant sphere, but maybe sometimes, but ship can pivot on this to change thrust to slow down, change direction, etc. So the people are always under positive acceleration, (unless you invent inertial dampers, which I did), but the vessel will go in a straight line for eternity unless you THRUST in the opposite direction to slow down, or turn. Having thrusters only on back, big ones, and they’re always on going FORWARD, and its turning left?? … nope.
So I also made thrusters in FRONT, like DUH. Or you got no brakes unless you turn around and blast in the other direction. I think front vented thrusters is a no-brainer. Also add maneuvering thrusters up/down, left/right, and rotationally at 8 different verticies. So my ships have a gyro (maybe not visible) and 12 positions for thrusters (maybe also not very visible). I think a computer could make it turn like an air ship if it was programmed to, and had 12 or 24 mounted thrusters, so you can still get those earth-like sweeping maneuvers, we like what we are familiar with, but right now, it’s all just WRONG.
I saw the last Star Wars movie and their space engines even left a SMOKE trail … IN SPACE, and wow were they NOISY! Why not just WALK in space, have a picnic, talk, play catch if you can suspend THAT MUCH disbelief to think a space ship burns gasoline, well, probably diesel based on the BLACK exhaust it left, and the smoke also just stayed there in a thick smoke trial, since they even disbelieved the vacuum of space away. Just shocking!
Close to this misconception is the idea of single seat fighter planes in deep space. You need to suspend disbelief, a lot of it, to make that work in deep space. Oh, ok, you just have faster than light travel, warp drives, (and we do too but not mounted on small ships) and so you just have to launch from your Carrier, zip away 100,000,000 light years, fight … come back (make sure your return FTL drive wasn’t damaged in the battle), and THEN get out and use the toilet. Sure. Or eat lunch. Or take a nap. These designs are based on WWII era fighter planes, ok, modern fighter planes in general. But what if you had to spend 3 weeks in that ship to get the tiny tiny tiny distance from Earth to Mars, let alone 3 years to go really far? Ok, so just don’t mention it, or say it has to stay close to its ‘mother ship’ or just make it more like a small house. Yes Millennium Falcon is practical, it’s a cargo ship with bunks, food, etc. but still turns like an airplane and always has the back thrusters on firing forward. And in Episode IV they did say “Oh that tie fighter is too small to get this deep in space,” so someone back in 1972 was thinking. Can’t we make them look cool AND not be stuuupid?
Design Ethos
I also have Three Main Space Unions, and the pirates, and some private vessels. And they each would have a different design concept, budget, technology base, manufacturing base, and each ship has a different function so a different design. For concept ship art, I am looking for these things in Book 1:
Cargo Ships, that’s pretty easy. There are also three disguised mercy ships, which are re-purposed cargo ships and besides being white (and carrying 10,000 people each) have no special design criteria.
Business Suites, which serves the purpose of something like a private office tower in space, (but not made to stick vertically straight up in the air) and are used by rich (and often illegal) business men. It’s the black stretch limo of the space ship genre.
Pirate ‘pods’ also, fairly easy. Home-made from a pirate outfit, low tech, rough designs. Junk yard engineering.
Then I add a few Stolen Vessels from the major Space Unions: Basta, based in South East Asian off-earth migrants, and the Aussie-based Pacifica Union. The Pacifica lost a frigate, and yes I’m using traditional navy terms for a corvette, frigate, cruiser, etc. But this does not feature much in Book 1. But Pacifica lost a frigate to the pirates and the GM’s steal it to escape later. What would the Aussies build and call a frigate? Hmm.
But the fun stuff is the Basta vessels.
They are not a homogenized, centralized Union like Pacifica and the North America Space Union, NASU, but are a decentralized clan culture with 12 main leadership clans. There is very little standardized or coordinated design among the Basta groups. This will come out only in Book 2 really, but they did have a few smaller ships stolen by the pirates that will feature in two or three battles. These ships are all named and modeled after INSECTS so far. In this book 1 I think we will have five or seven stolen Basta ships (ok, maybe 2 or 3). The names reflect their insect designs, but it’s a new concept so its not developed enough yet for me to share much on.
I think we would use terms and designs based on Spider Wasps, Wasp Hunters, Metallic Assassin, Thorntail, and Hawker … these would be like fast strike craft. For Basta they are often also family vessels, but the pirates re-purposed them a bit. Then you could have Scarabs and Koringkriek, etc., which are very tough and hard to kill, maybe more like cargo vans, but not so deadly in combat either. It’s a new idea so its not highly developed. Originally I only had the pirates use their own self-made pods, but I want to begin to introduce Basta culture now in Book 1 and have more cool looking ships to play with. And its fun for promotion materials too.
The NASU have the 12th generation strike fighter, called the Mustang. Their 11th Gen is the Vulcan.
We begin with the Vulcan X’s, the older models, until Rocky finds a small squadron of Mustangs secretly offloaded by the mercy ship corps, which are used to great effect to attack the Bantam Bay (the derelict Carnival Space Cruise liner the pirates have been using for their base), and also to defend their home from counter-invasion but at great personal cost. These need to look like they are fighter ships, but also need to have a small cabin in mid-section, a gyro, forward facing thrusters, etc., but also be aerodynamic because they are built to fly both in Space and in Atmosphere, which features prominently in the story after they surf a Supernova shock wave to get home and have a hard time to slow down to Mach 5 (from an initial speed of Mach 53,000) by flying around a planet before finally entering the atmosphere to save the colony from attack. So this will look like what a lot of people are making right now generally as space fighter. But … if they look like what’s already being done, … it’s kinda generic. Who wants that?! Surely the space gypsies don’t! And I can’t blame them! But we want two North American Space Union designs, Vulcans and Mustangs, and some variations on these designs.
Anyway also we have the Bantam Bay, a luxury tourist ship, with casino, hotels, and natural habitats for recreation (like Silent Running I suppose but HUGE). So that has to be designed based on a basic description in the story, then we destroy it!
Oh I almost forgot!! The home ‘conglomeration’ of the farming clan of Irish Travevllers, who they call gypsies!!! And a customized Harley Davidson jump-ship, made to look like a 1950’s chopper! Which I might cut. But I’ll have to get to that next time!
If you are an artist and want to help flesh out these concepts I am really grateful. I will make sure you are mentioned by name in all credits, and who knows, maybe we can even name a character, or a ship or even a Planet after you?!