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[GlyphGryph]

If its flat, I have absolutely no idea how that forward v thing works. It's really confusing. Ignoring the perspective, where is that stuff in relation to each other? It doesn't seem to fit together.

And even a flat top down plan view has perspective, unless your dealing with perfectly flat surface or doing a foldout out, neither of which seems to fit here, so I'm not sure what you mean there.

[Sergius]

I like the vector style. I'm considering using vectors myself for a road-warrior 2D kinda RPGish shooter game.

However... you know what happens when you put all your engines on one side of the ship, right?

Also, one of the Alien Swarm ships looks like a pair of hairy scrotums tied together.

[GlyphGryph]

However... you know what happens when you put all your engines on one side of the ship, right?

No, what happens?


... you need to add stabilizing thrusters to stop spinning, maybe? Though technically you could still do that with them all on the same side....

[Ehndras]

I like this.

If I had the proper programs, I'd go back to making this sort of stuff. Used to use the Macs in my video production class in high school, which I used for 2 years before even getting the class because the teacher was awesome. I'd compose piano tracks, do background vocals, and screw with artwork in there heh.

Google ship designs, research star wars, star trek, stargate, firefly, all the good stuff, see what aspects, shapes, angles you like, and try to flesh our your distinct style. Right now it looks more like a mismatch of random shapes than any particular patterns, and patterns are very important for racial/social concerns in a Scifi project. You need to think of design patterns early on before you get too far into production, lest that one faction's fleet end up looking like they belong to 57 different races with entirely different technology.

The whole bridge/engines/etc thing is definite a good place to start. =)

Would you consider the very fun but inefficient orbital designs, the whole anti-grav spin thing? Those are much more difficult to design, but look very, very nice.

[GlyphGryph]

Design a ship with a big bulky weight on one side and a looooong slender bit, maybe reaching forward, on the other.


Like...
    ^
    m    ^^
   / \   mm          _
  /   |.[  ].   .'. C \\
 /           '''   \-' /
 |            ,-.   .
 |           /   '.  .
  \  O O O  |      \ |
   '._____.'        |;
                   //
                  /'

...okay, that's probably terrible, but maybe you get the idea.

[Abregado]

and try to flesh our your distinct style

This is what I'm attempting to do, and is why half the stuff so far looks mismatched.

Ill agree that the last attempt came out... not at all what I was aiming for. But I set myself a challenge to only spend an hour on it, and thats what I got.

Next I'm going to get some reference material and trace/redraw it to practice pen art...

[Ehndras]

and try to flesh our your distinct style

This is what I'm attempting to do, and is why half the stuff so far looks mismatched.

Ill agree that the last attempt came out... not at all what I was aiming for. But I set myself a challenge to only spend an hour on it, and thats what I got.

Next I'm going to get some reference material and trace/redraw it to practice pen art...

My friends and I are looking forward to your new material

[Abregado]

Todays finished product... Much faster when I had some reference material. This is actually a trace of a weapon from Halo3.

Read some tutorials for an hour before beginning. I'm becoming much faster with the pen tool and Illustrator in general. Also unlike previous attempts, I didnt do any shading in Illustrator. Lines only then used Photoshop for the coloration. Not only is it much more accurate, its faster by far.

[Ehndras]

Todays finished product... Much faster when I had some reference material. This is actually a trace of a weapon from Halo3.

Read some tutorials for an hour before beginning. I'm becoming much faster with the pen tool and Illustrator in general. Also unlike previous attempts, I didnt do any shading in Illustrator. Lines only then used Photoshop for the coloration. Not only is it much more accurate, its faster by far.

Looks great, but that vertical line at the bottom right, above the clip, with the little bend, really fucks with the perception of it. It either gives the feeling that the stock-end is flatter and longer than you can see, or its just iffy. Not sure if its just me.

[Abregado]

bottom right, above the clip, with the little bend, really fucks with the perception of it.

Im not sure which part you mean.

[Ehndras]

bottom right, above the clip, with the little bend, really fucks with the perception of it.

Im not sure which part you mean.

The thin black line going through the 6 horizontal bars

[GlyphGryph]

My problem there is the bars are angled, and the black lines (bottom, and middle) make it look square.

It's like with the ship - you've got a couple elements conferring an illusion of depth, fighting with a bunch of elements saying its perfectly flat. Definitely disorienting.

Also, your shading is pretty random - where is your light source, here?

Edit:
Looking at the pics you traced, the reason is that the butt is outset in them, and not in yours, which is why it works there and not in yours. Meaning your biggest mistakes here were with shading and colouring. The area under the butt cover, which you simply shaded, should actually be the lighter material, and you should have a harder line underneath it.

That and the fact there's absolutely no reason to put a hard line there at all, and there isn't in the original.

[Ehndras]

Have you tried removing the curve at the end of that thin line, and just extending it all the way straight across, until those 4 horizontal bars at the top of the barrel? Or some variation of that.

[Abregado]

Looking at the reference material I was trying to simplify the butt of the pistol. Clearly I failed. Here is my second attempt, taking your comments into consideration. I continued to flatten it as I was trying for too much detail. Gotta crawl first apparently.


And my reference.


The shading was very random, i didnt really think too much and later realised I didnt even refer to the REFERence material at all. Noobs mistake.

[Ehndras]

Heh. Yeah, it looks a lot better now with the full line. =) To be quite honest, the REFERENCE gun itself has some wonky dynamics, which is why your design had the same odd issues with shape and size.