Spaceships are pretty cool.

August 4, 2008 12:33 PM

A concept spaceship and experimental aircraft art blog.

via. See also.

posted by Divine_Wino (21 comments total)

I'm involuntarily making pew pew pew and kaboosh noises.
posted by Tacodog at 12:44 PM on August 4

Oh, the irony. I was just looking around this guy's model-making website. It's not hand drawings, but it still blows me away to see a 48-inch long Star Wars Imperial Star Destroyer.
posted by fijiwriter at 12:49 PM on August 4 [1 favorite]

It seems to be the blog of conceptships.org.
posted by Kattullus at 12:50 PM on August 4

Firing salt cannon in 3, 2, 1...
posted by damn dirty ape at 12:58 PM on August 4 [1 favorite]

This takes those doodles in your notebook from the 5th grade to a whole new level.
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 1:07 PM on August 4 [1 favorite]

Wicked!
posted by drjimmy11 at 1:38 PM on August 4

I wonder if I can finally find the artist behind these who may or may not have inspired this cover.
posted by mkb at 1:43 PM on August 4

If only there was a way to connect these artists with the 3D modelers of the Infinity Project. We'd have one amazing and diverse MMO on the horizon.
posted by samsara at 1:50 PM on August 4

here's what was going through my head for the past few minutes:

oh shit yeah! spaceships!

why is scriptblocker telling me there's a flash element in their banner?

oh. a spinning logo. well, moving on.

oh fuck yeah! look at these concept illustrations! these guys are boss as hell!

what the fuck is this image being loaded as a flash object for?

oh hells yeah! that ship is cool as hell!

more flash images? really? I guess it would just be the worst thing ever if I wanted to show these designs to my friend or something.

oh noes! i'm going to go on cgtalk and pretend I drew these! seriously, the flash images are garbage.

oh. my. god. coolest ship I've ever seen. I wish i could draw like this. or at all.

wow. a flash animation of the star trek ship flying by. it looks like a gif from 1994. that's probably cool to somebody. i guess.

hot fuck, look at this one! man, this blog is the bee's knees!



so yeah, like that, for a few minutes.
posted by shmegegge at 1:56 PM on August 4

This is fucking cool. I love sci-fi concept art.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 2:13 PM on August 4

But seriously what the fuck is with those animated Flash images? It's hard to admire something when it keeps zooming in or flicking to a different image. What a fucking ridiculous way to display art.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 2:23 PM on August 4

Nice! Thanks!
posted by brundlefly at 3:16 PM on August 4

Man, these totally remind me of a book I had when I was a kid. Lot's of futuristic art depictions of starcraft and colony ships and the like.

I think the artist did some stuff with Heavy Metal and Wizard magazines too.

I remember that a lot of his stuff was a sort of a cross between a serious exploration of the engineering needed to make an alien spaceship, and a drug-fueled-fantasy about how kick ass it would be if it looked a bit like an alligator mated with a Kirby vacuum cleaner.

Cool stuff.
posted by quin at 3:17 PM on August 4

My next gaming session thanks you.
posted by eclectist at 3:31 PM on August 4

Man, these totally remind me of a book I had when I was a kid. Lot's of futuristic art depictions of starcraft and colony ships and the like.

I remember that book, I always used to browse it at Forbidden Planet in NYC, I never had enough money to buy it, but I lusted after it, there was also a book with tons of details about imaginary alien biology.
posted by Divine_Wino at 3:57 PM on August 4

With the slightest effort, all of these could become totally awesome 80's rock album covers.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 4:30 PM on August 4

I wonder if I can finally find the artist behind these who may or may not have inspired this cover.

mkb - That was painted by Tom Stimpson, who also worked on a number of movie posters back in the late 80's. The image you linked to can also be found in The New Encyclopedia of Airbrush Techniques, by Michael Leek, and it should also be in Stimpson's Professional Airbrushing.
posted by Smart Dalek at 5:03 PM on August 4

Man, these totally remind me of a book I had when I was a kid.

I don't suppose it was one of these? Somewhere, I still have the first three, bought very soon after they'd come out. I still use some of the ship names/designs in some games I play (such as Galactic Civilizations 2). Great stuff!
posted by Zack_Replica at 7:33 PM on August 4

They (mostly) look cool and all, but... how many of the concepts incorporate elements consistent with projected technology?

What are some of the propulsion technologies driving the design of spacecraft? Why the streamlining in space - are they also atmospheric capable? What are the technological limitations that define design requirements?
posted by porpoise at 9:06 PM on August 4

the real question, is why do so few of them align the center of lift,(be it wings, thrusters, whatever) with the center of mass. Even in space, especially in space, you'd better be pushing straight into the center of mass or your going to be spending a lot of time going in circles and possibly puking.
posted by TheJoven at 9:56 PM on August 4

TheJoven, isn't that why they invented inertial dampers? To prevent puking, that is...

Anyways, I love this stuff. Having real-life Apollo photos interspersed in there has really gotten me into a "goddamnit, why aren't we there yet?" sort of mood, though. =(

All those critics of manned space exploration really should only need to look at this site to see why we need manned space flight. (Hint, it looks really fucking cool.)
posted by agress at 10:52 PM on August 4