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Griatch-art — First Blood
Published: 2009-11-14 01:20:28 +0000 UTC; Views: 1968; Favourites: 14; Downloads: 0
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Description
My take on a "realistic" space warship. The top ship launches a volley of missiles at a target deeper in Jupiter's gravitational well.Note that the ships would never actually be within visual range of each other ... but that would make for a boring image.
The warship is nothing but a pack of sensors and missile launchers on top of a nuclear rocket engine. If it is manned (unlikely), the crew would be in the midsection of the ship. The major part of of the ship's weight is reaction mass, fuel and oxidizer. The front is a heat shield for breaking against planetary atmospheres. The side panels are not solar panels but radiators, to get rid of excess heat from the internal systems. When not in combat the radiators are extended out from the ship's body like a windmill, allowing them to radiate from both sides. As you can see they are glowing amber from radiating.
MyPaint + GIMP. Reference from Cassini space mission.
Made for a contest on GimpTalk.
Comments and feedback is always welcome.
UPDATE: After feedback here and elsewhere I went back and made several fixes and adjustments to this by rather old image. Thanks to everyone who gave critique!
- I fixed up the shading and shadows in the spaceship to make it look less "comic-y". Since space has hard, black shadows, this is probably as good as I can make it.
- Made the radiators actually glow red instead of just telling in the comments that they do.
Makes for an interesting change of colour focus actually.- Gave Jupiter a more blurred outline. Strictly speaking this is not realistic, but it is easier on the human eye.
- Gave Jupiter a terminator (night side) for more dramatic effect and to establish the direction of light better.
- Some more minor cleanups.
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Griatch
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Comments: 31
Nice! The lighting is much better.
Just a thought, I read a sci-fi story once where the ships had a giant water tank in the prow of the ship. To provide water, reaction mass, and a shield against radiation. That's kind of what this looks like to me.
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This is all academic at this point of course, but having the water tank in the prow sounds a bit strange to me considering one most likely wants to protect against radiation from the engine, and that is located near the back of the ship ... As for cosmic radiation, that comes from all directions. The reason for having protection in the front (as far as I know) is to protect against collisions with particles at high speed (space is not really empty). But if you have high enough speed for that to be necessary, I'm not sure a water tank is the best thing, but what I have seen suggested is rather some sort of electromagnetic ram. Which sci-fi story was this?
Anyway, I'm glad lighting came out better now!
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Griatch
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Well, the ships in the story used a space drive based on space sails, but, with energy fields that amplified any motion. They were able to reach the 90+% of the speed of light. So, they needed the protection in front.
And you're welcome!
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Ah, ok then, energy fields and space sails means different physics to take into account. And at 0.9c I guess you need all the front protection you can get, yes.
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Griatch
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Very nice! And the target deeper in the Jovian gravity well is toast. No way it can accelerate enough to achieve escape velocity. So, unless it has anti-missile defenses it's going to take a plunge into the gravity well never to return.
I agree that the spaceship looks a bit comicy. But, I think it's mostly from the shading. It doesn't look metallic so much as plastic.
But what really bothers me is the lighting on the ship. If the light is coming straight down (relative to our pov) then why is the ship lit as though the light is coming equally from all sides? If the light is really coming from 12 O-clock, then center line of the side of the spacecraft nearest us should be in darkness, shouldn't it?
To me Jupiter looks awesome and perfect, but, the spacecraft is what looks flat.
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Thanks for the feedback! I would think warships would indeed have anti-missile defenses, at least at close range, but sure, at this distance, and deeper into the well, the other ship is really in trouble at this point.
Good point about the lighting. Now, one can argue that the light is not coming from only one direction (the sun), but that Jupiter also reflects a considerable amount of light back at us, and at the spacecraft. So there would be no clear light/dark terminator. But I agree that it would probably not be as evenly lit as here portrayed.
I will probably go back to this image now that I've collected some very useful critique on it from you and others. Thanks a lot! And thanks for the fave too!
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Griatch
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Looking forward to First Blood part II
And you're welcome. Hope something I said helped in some way.
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Updated this image with a bunch of changes now.
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Griatch
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Lol, your imagination goes in different directions than most people when designing any kind of spaceship ^_^ I also had a private laugh when realizing that as it's also within our solar system, we're talking about human technology, so there's not even any aliens about. When you go realism, you go realism, and yes, I find that funny and refreshing at the same time! ^_^ But it's also what I don't completely like about the image, Jupiter looks great, I was torn between suspecting you had used a photograph or not. But the warship looks more like it belongs in a comic book. I suppose you could say that's the fantasy element inserted into a realistic image, but still.
Curious question about space: would there really be smoke trails like that? I've never though about smoke in space since fire would be a bit hard to create, lol.
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Yes, I can see what you mean about the difference between styles of Jupiter and the spaceship. The ship still has some hints of pencil lines in it which makes it more "comic-y" than it needed be I guess. When you point it out now, quite some time after I last looked at this image, I can surely agree with you that the ship looks a bit "inserted" in front of the lot more realistic Jupiter. I won't change this image now, but it's certainly something I must remember for future similar images.
As for "smoke trails" yes there would be, although probably not as clear as shown here, notably because the "smoke" isn't really smoke but highly accelerated reaction mass driving the projectile forward. What you need to drive a space ship is to accelerate something in the opposite direction to where you want to go. Through conservation of momentum you will then go in the opposite direction (the effect is similar to the recoil one gets when firing a gun). No (real) spaceship works differently. "Fire" works fine in space as long as you carry along your own oxidizer (like, well, oxygen).
So to answer your question, the "smoke trails" would be there, but they would not really be "hanging" in space as they seem to do in this image, they would be travelling in the opposite direction of the missiles at an extremely high velocity. I found that a little hard to draw though, at least while simultaneously showing that they came from the spaceship... 
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Griatch
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You have a point, I'm going through older images to the newer ones, so from now on I'll keep my comments simple on the old ones ^_^
When you explain it like that it seems perfectly logical for "smoke" to not only be there but behave like that. Thanks for the explanation! I guess they did it wrong in Wall-E
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Oh, and critiqe is not something that has a best-before date, if you see something weird, even in an "old" image, let me know!
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Griatch
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Well, it's very hard to do it "right" and keep things moderately visually interesting. Wall-E (and practially all sci-fi movies) is not doing much "right" in the sense of real physics, not that anyone really expects otherwise in a child-friendly movie that want to keep some sort of action going.
A classic is showing a lot of colour in space, which is usually not something we would see without long-exposure photography. Most space-related movies do this, just having a solid black is not really all that much fun to watch. Nor is the years and years of travel Wall-E would have to endure to get to the human survivor-ship. Having "speed wind" in space is kinda hilarious. It's easily forgiven considering it's a sweet movie overall.
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Griatch
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Any movie that can make a box on wheels look adorable is allowed to make it's own laws of physics ^_^
What do you mean by color in space btw? As in literally the starry space in the background?
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Many movies, especially animated ones, give a lot of colour to space, as in bright orange and green nebulae clouds [link] and special effects. Wall-E is not as extreme as others in this regards. The fact remains though, that to the naked eye space is pitch black. The stars are tiny pinholes that give off very little light by comparison and without any impressive light shows coming from them (unless you are VERY close to them). Again, this would make boring cinema of course, so I'm all for sprucing it up a bit, despite not being strictly "realistic".
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Griatch
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I agree with ~AlexiaDeath , it looks fairly flat... However, I understand your point on realistic planet-lighting. I was just wondering, would Jupiter have any "glow" (as earth's light blue one)?
Other than that, I think this is masterfully produced, in terms of technical skill, and I like the forethought which seems present in all of your larger pieces. I also enjoy your gravitational accuracy, it makes me happy that some artists actually incorporate logic.
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@SkarValidus
Jupiter has a glow, but not at this distance. The reason we see Earth's blue glow at its edge is because we are seeing through the outer edge of the atmosphere from the side. And because the planet is so small (and we are thus much closer to it in most images of this type), we can see this as a rather substantial blue blur along the edge of the planet.
Another reason for the blue glow is a high albedo, partly due to clouds but also reflection in water; Jupter has no such reflective surfaces, all we see is an ever-thickening mass of gas.
Jupter is a huge planet, Earth fits within the red spot we see in the lower right of the image. So we are much further away from the planet here (we wouldn't see any blue glow along the edge of the Earth at this distance either). Also, Jupiter has a very thick atmosphere, further alleviating the see-through effect, making it look pretty "solid" here despite all that we see are just gas.
As said, I might add a synthetic shadow along the edge just to make it easier on the eye, but this is in principle an astronomically correct depiction I think.
Thanks for the comment! I do try to keep to some realism when I can, so glad it comes across.
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Griatch
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Nice
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Yes, I know what you mean. Strangely enough, the planet does look like this though - there is no limb darkening on the planet when the sunlight hits it from the side. Take a look at some of the Cassini images of the planet and you will see exactly this effect. This is a situation when reality actually looks less "real" than it should. So maybe I'll add the shade to it just for this reason, despite not being really accurate.
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Griatch
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[link] Heres one that does have shadow from galileo mission but yeah, space can feel unreal at times.
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That's the night time (terminator) shadow and not what you were asking about I think. The terminator is also in my image (towards the lower part). It's also a side-lit image of Jupiter which is very different from face-on (the effect is is also known as limb darkening and the lack of it is clearer in other images when Jupiter is shown face-on).
At any rate, it's a fair point.
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Griatch
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Cool concept. I especially like the cloud details on the planets surface.
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Yes, Jupiter is a beautiful planet.
Thanks for the comment!
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Griatch
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That's fine.
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Griatch
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Its like if they have converted an orbital telescope to shoot beam , pretty cool
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Griatch
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