So yeah, space week has been EXTENDED so that I can actually make a post. orz. This one is recycled content, albeit something I’ve never posted before.

A few years ago I went on a cruise with Sam. During the cruise we had the idea of writing (sam) and illustrating (me) a space story that was sort of in the vein of Star Trek — ship’s crew goes wandering through the universe, finds strange stuff, etc. I am temporarily naming the concept “Sam-space” because we never came up with a name for it. Today I’m going to post some concept art for some of the spacecraft from that universe.

We started with this ship, the “Cricket”. “Cricket” is the model name, not the name of any specific ship; the name comes from the two “bug eye” turrets and the cylindrical “legs”. It’s a fighter-bomber sort of thing with a crew of 3 or 4 — basically a sort of space-tank. I believe we ruled out the practicality of space fighters in this universe, so the Cricket is essentially the smallest manned space combat vehicle (see little stick figure for scale). There’s probably one pilot, a guy on each of the ball turrets on the side, and maybe one extra guy to man the big gun on the underside and do random other stuff. The big gun is probably for strafing runs against larger ships. The cylindrical things are also mounted on ball joints; they have thrusters on the ends and contain modular cargo such as additional ammo (all the guns are projectile weapons), bombs, ECM packages, etc. The whole thing folds up under the big shaded armor-plated part, so the Cricket can be clunked onto a bigger ship as a “blister” on the armor.

This leads us to the next concept:

I’m not too happy with the way this ship turned out, but it was just a demonstration. The elongated bumps on the top are Crickets.

One other reason we did the cricket first was that we had a pretty good idea of how big it was relative to people. This allowed us to scale other ships relative to the Cricket. Here’s another ship using the Cricket for scale:

I don’t remember much about that ship, so here’s another one:

If this ship looks impractical, you are absolutely correct. We came up with a faction that placed a focus on being as big, showy, and intimidating as possible. They’re pretty rich, and aren’t blowing it on stupid wars of conquest or stock market gambles or whatever. This thing is one of their planetary defense and siege vessels, which would probably float in orbit looking like some sort of misplaced medieval castle. Each one of those shells is as big as an entire Cricket. I don’t remember what the hatches in the front do (besides add visual interest), they probably cover some sort of missile launcher array.

The protagonists’ ship, a science vessel. Sam wanted it to be a modular ship whose structure was a frame the modules were attached to, with a skin then attached to the frame. It’s actually a pretty good idea; you don’t have to worry about making the outsides of the modules micrometeorite-proof or weapons-resistant, the skin will take care of that. And it’s not like changing modules on a spaceship was going to be fast in the first place anyway. The little diagram in the upper-left is Sam’s drawing of the back of the ship, showing the engines; lots of redundancy. There’s two bulges on the bottom of the ship, to accomidate some of the bigger modules. Below the ship is a list of the categories of crew you’d need; There are two captains because you have to run the ship 24 hours a day.

Two concept ships whose origins I don’t remember. The one on the left is some sort of exotic beam weapon howitzer-ship; the main engine rotates on one axis and there are big thrusters, allowing you to position the ship like a giant ball turret in space. The big fins vent heat during battle, and the docking hatch on the top rotates for some unknown reason (so you can seal off the hatch against boarding parties by hiding it in the hull? so you can board from either side of the ship? (Why wouldn’t you just make another hatch?)). The one on the right is almost certainly some sort of warship, with the guns behind hatches for some reason (sort of like an old-school sailing ship).

A vessel intended for long-term sustainable living in space. the part in the middle is a giant glass window, with a greenhouse/garden thing underneath. Presumably it uses ion propulsion or something so it can get the power via solar panels and then occasionally skims a star or something for reaction mass.

Another ship. I rather like the shape on this one, even if it is somewhat sperm-whale-like due to the unfortunate placement of the “screw-head” logo. Upper-right is a shot from behind of the engines.

Lastly, our idea for faster-than-light travel. Basically, a ship bends space-time into a tube (more like an elongated dent), and slides the dent forward. If you get too close to a planet its mass causes the tube to unfold and you drop into regular space. More powerful hyperdrives let you get closer to heavy masses (not always desirable). Since it’s elongated you have to go in the same direction you started in, so a trip may involve dropping out of hyperspace, changing direction, then rolling another tube/dent and going off in the new direction. Which would make the trip … a journey through a series of tubes.

That’s all for tonight. Actually, this may be my longest post ever. The little WordPress thingy is claiming over 1000 words.

First up, a 5-person loop. Participants: wah, J, Lushan, TV&, and Law.

The other 3 after the jump…

And as per last time, a “passing diagram”:

Of course, we weren’t done after that, so there was another one. We switched the passing direction for this one. Participants: wah, J, Lushan, TV&.

And another passing diagram:

Whew! That’s it for today. Join me next time for The Exquisite Corpse-a-thon!

That’s right, there’s still more of these.

So, after the Anime Club showing this past Friday, I asked if anyone wanted to do exquisite corpse. We actually got 5 people, so there was one comic each where one person didn’t participate.

Anyway, here are the remaining 3:

And here is a nifty diagram that shows who drew what:

I actually don’t really go to Anime Club that often anymore. In fact, I don’t really watch anime that often anymore. I’m not sure exactly what it is, but I’ve just gotten less interested in anime. I guess it could be summarized like this:

1) If it has plot, it’s usually pretty predictable, so I basically know pretty much where it’s going to wind up and roughly what path it will take, and thus decide there’s no point in watching it.

2) If it doesn’t have plot, each episode is about the same in feel, so I don’t get anything out of watching the show.

Basically, I don’t really get that much out of watching anime these days and would rather put the time towards some other activity, so I just don’t watch it that much anymore. It takes what I consider a really good show to draw me in — I watched Eden of the East because the plot was interesting and it was hard to tell how it was going to end, and I watched Kuchu Buranko because the characters were written so well that its (essentially standalone) episodes stayed interesting for me. I actually bought the box set for Eden and the book that Kuchu Buranko was based on.

So, these days, I sometimes head over to the Anime Club clubroom after showings just to hang out with people there. Going to an anime club for social interactions? It wasn’t always able to work this way … but that’s another post.

I realize I have a lot of stuff I’ve done or drawn that I never really considered for an update, but would actually work, so you guys might see those in the coming weeks.

Another pair of exquisite corpses; They’re from the same sessions as the ones in this update.

This time the participants were:

(Lushan is the same person as Lu)

I’m in the one on the left twice due to mis-syncing during that first session. Important rule: exquisite corpse requires that everyone draw at similar speeds…

[2/8/2010] Was short on time and really tired today, so I didn’t get to update. Enjoy a colored version of Drowned J, as colored by one of my friends. See her deviantART here.

Actual update to come later this week.

[9/29/08]

So yeah, this week I was hosed, so my sister provided awesome fillers! (She previously drew this filler here.) The concept behind the second one is like 3 years old by now; it was funny when we thought of it (we were fluffing a particularly fluffy pillow). I tried to get her to write the rant too, but she was busy.

So yeah, I’ve kind of been uninspired lately. Well, rather, I don’t have a particularly fine grasp of where I want the plot to go, so I should probably plan that out before it crashes *cough*Sandstorm*cough*. Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.

Okay, update next week, hopefully?

[08/13/2007]

Hi everyone! I’m back from NASA. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time during the last week to work on a comic, so my sister has prepared a filler. Her rant follows.

Hey! Auddi, reporting for duty! Though I highly doubt anyone actually bothers to read this, I guess I’ll babble anyways…

I didn’t come up with the idea for this comic, more of a combination of J’s deafness and somebody’s not-so-good english (original image). Anyhoo, I think I got a bit lazy doing this, so it’s not my best art, but if you have any comments, I’d love to hear them, though I don’t know how… *cough* fixtheguestbook. *cough* mmm…kaythnxbai.

[5/14/2007]

So, today’s comic is a tribute to xkcd, one of the more unusual webcomics out there. Very creative, though. I wish I had thought up a lot of his jokes…

But yeah. If sam ever does his own rendition of this idea, I will post it. See, me doing this instead of him is a result of burning too much filler material on this update. Oh well.

[12/25/2006] Meri Kurizumazu~! I know this messed-up wording has been seen before, but this time, I found it on my own! The line “Supervise children during baking” appeared on the back of a package of clay.

Anyway, today we’ve got some π-tan fanart from my sister! Although π-tan’s clothing may look like solidly colored blocks in the picture, there are actually shadows on the original. It was colored with colored pencils, and I guess that the different tones didn’t show up so well. It looks really good in person, though. I ought to get around to posting some of the other stuff she’s drawn.

Alright, happy holidays, everynyan~!