The Stegodon

[eyvind]

Seems there's a contagion going around, perhaps it's limited to our Skype chat, and it's causing people to stumble down to the shipyard. I've caught it too, now, and I daresay I'm stumbling more than the rest.

A while ago I began becoming increasingly aware of two gaps in available ships.

Firstly, it doesn't feel like there are enough Liners out there. Some houses have their own liners, and of course the specialized Slave and Prison Liners, but for everyone else there's just the generic Luxury Liner. Wouldn't it be nice if each House had their own liner, just like they now have their own high-end transports?

Secondly, there isn't any DSE explorer ship. Kusari has the gunboat type explorer, I think the Zoners have some sort of explorer, the IMG have the Argus and probably some other one, and I recently heard about some other small exploration craft (Bretonian?). It is quite odd that DSE doesn't have any exploration ships. They built the LCC Edison and Einstein, the epitome of exploration ships, in the dawn of human life in Sirius. Now we have the Mastodon, which is the transport modification of those exploration ships, but what ever happened to those exploration ships?

Enter the Stegodon!

Keep in mind that this is the first model I have ever created, and though I've started over on this one at least 5 times now, I'm sure it doesn't exhibit great design choices. Not only is it very rough, it's also nowhere near being complete. It's missing a bridge, half the front section, and a dozen other large and small parts (I marked where I as thinking of putting the most obvious ones).

Originally I thought I should simply modify Jinx's Mastodon model, but that turned out to be too difficult, so I started from scratch (at least 5 times, I mentioned that right?). Doing it from scratch also let me learn as I went along, which was beneficial.

Imageshack:


TinyPic (1600x1600): http://i49.tinypic.com/2rwalp0.png

Photobucket (1024x1024): http://i923.photobucket.com/albums/ad73/Ey...on19Collage.png

[color=#ff0000]EDIT: The below images are outdated, see the most recent post to be sure you're looking at the most recent images.

Top - Orthographic


Right - Perspective


Right - Orthographic, with notes


Right Rear - Perspective


Rear - Perspective


Right Front - Perspective


Rear - Orthographic

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<span style="font-family:Agency FB">Good Morning!</span>

[Xing]

hmkay. Good first try. But you put too much poly for a ship lacking immensely in detail. Reduce poly, add up more significant details, such as bridge, armor plating, exhausts.

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[slaversunion]

Also remember to look to art deco when working with liberty design. It was popular form of artistic design in America's golden years (1930's to 1950's), naturaly it is something both liberty and digital anvil have worked into everything.

**Above Post by Nexus, forgot which account I was using**

[eyvind]

hmkay. Good first try. But you put too much poly for a ship lacking immensely in detail. Reduce poly, add up more significant details, such as bridge, armor plating, exhausts.

I hope you understand that it is nowhere near finished, I didn't mean to imply anything else.

Where does the model have too many polygons?

Also remember to look to art deco when working with liberty design. It was popular form of artistic design in America's golden years (1930's to 1950's), naturaly it is something both liberty and digital anvil have worked into everything.

**Above Post by Nexus, forgot which account I was using**

I'll do my best. Most of the ship is just a mimic of the Mastodon, and hopefully that's already in order.

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<span style="font-family:Agency FB">Good Morning!</span>

[eyvind]

I reworked it some: As Yue Fei suggested I added a few vents and exhausts, and as Nexus pointed out I tried to put it more in-line with the Liberty style. Does it look more art deco now? The fan part was a bit of a shot in the dark, but it turned out to look quite a bit like the wings on the Patriot.

Still to be done is the bridge and the top part of the front, and I am not quite sure what to put there yet. The DSE Explorer role might be better suited as a separate ship (NegligentBeast is working on one), so a sensor array might not be fitting. Perhaps some sort of domed "skylight" running along the length of the top? Perhaps a smaller up-side down version of the fan thing? I would love some more ideas.


Top - Orthographic


Rear Right - Perspective


Front Right - Perspective


Bottom - Orthographic


Rear - Orthographic

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<span style="font-family:Agency FB">Good Morning!</span>

[sean24]

Its looking alot better and more Libertyish. Maybee put like a couple of slightly ellevated plates on to of the front bit, its looking a little bit flat. Good work though.

[douglas_brad]

Wow! Night and day from the first model. As for the addition of more fan-like structure, maybe surrounding the engines to be more Patriot/Liberator like. The arch-skylight would look very good over the flat forward section.

My only criticism is the forward section has a lot of mass and the aft section seems a tad neglected.

I can't wait to see your next version!

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[eyvind]

Moving ever closer to completion. I hope so, at least.

Front Left - Perspective


Rear Right - Perspective


Rear - Orthographic


Right - Orthographic


Top - Orthographic

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<span style="font-family:Agency FB">Good Morning!</span>

[Jinx]

looks very good. - just add some modelled window / observation parts - and you re done, imo. ( except that you ll still need to texture it, which will be fun to do ) ... but its an excellent model. very liberty-ish - very elegant.

edit: - about the windows - maybe make the ones you got there a bit smaller. they are large enough so that the whole ship would only be like half the size of a current lux liner.

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Shipdesigns made for DiscoveryGC

[Bjorn]

Adorable liner model. However, I would like to see more play around engines and rear of the ship. Looks very plain compared to flashy front.

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ISS-Zapotec