*tips hat to Big Mac*
Cheers bro!
Really makes my day that does!
You're welcome. It is only the truth after all. I'd be quite happy if there were a ton of other great artists trying to knock you off the number one spot with brilliant SJ art.
Aye, "ground" pics I can take advantage of real skies etc to make them look outstanding.
There is definately too much black in a lot of SJ art. That isn't a flaw in the art. It has to be black if it is in space, but it gives the viewer nothing to look at. In conventional fantasy art (like your Dark Sun stuff) you can have small details wherever you direct your eye.
Space pics I like a sort of stylized look, as "real" space would be kind of boring if you stick to reality
Aas nebulas in RL are tiny/far off, for the most part, unless yer "next door" to them..pics we see are massive zoom ins, and stellar lcusters etc are gorgeous but again, rare/far...so best shots are actually combo of things that's be rare
And space has little "ambient" light, everything tends ot be harshly shadowed.
When you watch popular science fiction films (like
Star Wars) they fake the space all the time to make it more interesting. They add millions of asteroids, when a few would be the most you would see, and there is always a planet, moon or sun nearby to the action.
In a way, I think that Spelljammer needs that sort of fakeness more than science fiction. I would say that 99 percent of shipboard action takes place at tactical speed (instead of spelljammer speed), and if a ship is nearby a bunch of rocks or a giant gas cloud you can imagine it being delayed for long enough for a pirate ship to make an ambush attack.
I think the part of a spelljamming voyage that occured at spelljamming speed would largely be mundane. That isn't to say that one or two pictures couldn't be interesting, but they would probably need to be non-combat pictures that focus on the characters on a ship. I suppose a bored spacehand leaning on the rail of a fast moving ship could be interesting. Especially if the "camera" was to pull back and reveal a scavver swimming along in the air envelope of the ship huging the bottom of the hull and waiting for the right time to strike.
I'm not entirely sure how spelljamming speed could be conveyed. Star Wars used a bunch of white lines to represent hyperspace, but spelljamming speed isn't really that fast. (I suppose you would need to have a ship passing an asteroid without getting close enough to drop to tactical speed. If you did that you could have a
slight blur that people would take as a "shutter speed" artifact.)
I suspect that spelljammer speed is something that could only be conveyed by an animated movie that had the ship approach the camera, pull alongside and then fly off into the distance. If that was done, small objects (that don't drop ships to tactical speed) could be seen to be whizzing past in the opposite direction to convey the speed.
Something I don't recall seeing too much of is Phlogiston based art.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan had some really evocative scenes where ships vanished into the background of a nebula. Again, I suspect that animation (rather than static pictures) might be needed to convey the constantly changing nature of the flow.
I think that an animation of someone casting the Create Portal spell and allowing their ship to pass through the portal could be something that would be an interesting way to show the contrast between The Flow and the blackness of wildspace. And, although I don't recall seeing any description of the part of the crystal sphere between the inside and the outside, I think it could be interesting to make that part of the sphere glow or flash while an artificial portal is opening.
are you scrying my computer, by any chance? Hm...
Wait to you see what I'm cooking up, at the moment!
Muahahaha!!!
I can wait. Eventually you will churn out a ton of cool new stuff. (Maybe even that 3D Whaleship that somebody else is dying for you to make.
)
And that'd be a dream!! I was sort of published in Dragon mag (my Tradesman design/artwork was used for a painting), but I've always adored Spelljammer's (and Dark Sun) look/art. Just gave me so much, loved the artists, be otustanding to be in a Spelljammer 4th ed book!!!
Well, I am certainly not in charge of the
SPELLJAMMER for D&D 3e project, but they are going to need at least three covers for the forthcoming
Player's Guide to Spelljammer,
Ships in Wildspace and
Monsters of Wildspace PDFs and anything else that comes out.
I would be disapointed if Ships in Wildspace didn't have
your artwork on the front cover.
In the style of Minsc:
"GIFF FOR EVERYONE!!"
Erm? Minsc?
<tappity, tap, tap, "google", tap, tap, tap, aha!>
I have lost myself in your words but Boo thinks you're just ducky.
<phew!>
