WIP Wednesday! More Avenger Dev Work

Apparently, designing space ships is hard. Who knew?

A few years ago I contacted FractalSponge. Yes, the FractalSponge that creates some of the most awesome 3D models of Star Wars ships ever generated, some of which have been used in extended universe ship designs and official websites. I have an association with him through a common website we were on back in the early 2000's. I asked him for an estimate on how much it would cost to build a 3D model of the Avenger. I sent him the hand-drawn artwork I had done years ago, the stuff I have been basing all my Empires-related Avenger artwork and development on for decades. It was entirely unusable.

See, I never took the time to make sure everything lined up properly. I was in a hurry, and bashed out sketch after sketch and never bothered to make a detailed line-for-line comparison to make sure that the wings and engines and doors, etc, all lined up properly. So even though I had hoped to get this huge post done today and put it here, I am still painstakingly poring over my works and making sure everything lines up properly. The top picture is where I took my overhead view and aligned it with my side view, and as you can see, there are a lot of errors.

Using the line overlay in PhotoShop, I started introducing changes. Above: the partially edited version. Below: the original hasty sketch it evolved from. What a mess!

I developed it so long ago that I was still using standard English for lettering on the sides of the ships and their nose art. I am way, way beyond them. Yes, I am making an alphabet for the comic. No, it will not be that hard, and I will just correlate English/Latin letters for their equivalents, although there will be some... unique properties. More about it at another time.

Incorporating the corrected overlay with the original and deciding what I want to keep and edit...

The corrected version aligned properly with the "overhead" base that I use. It took most of about two days to do this and get it right, IMO. I also took another day and got 95% of the underside finished as well. Still some work to do on the details at the very tail, and clean up some mismatched details on the hull:

And because I can't punish myself enough, guess what else is under development? You guessed it! Front and eventually rear shots!

Eventually I hope to have this thing all charted out and laid out properly. Will I return to FractalSponge and inquire about another 3D model? Perhaps... it is super pricey, he doesn't come cheap, and while some people would say "consider a Kickstarter" it is a good idea but I don't have much to offer-- I won't be making a physical plastic model any time soon, and the book is still a long, looonng way off, and there are few people that are going to contribute to a Kickstarter campaign for an almost completely unknown and very obscure franchise.

While I hope to change that with the launching of the comic, BOHICA Blues has taught me that I need to seriously temper my expectations. Of course, a science-fiction action drama is very different from a family-friendly slice-of-life/workplace comedy like BOHICA Blues, so we'll see what happens when it launches.

But for now, there is a lot of development work being done on this beast. And eventually, I will have to do this for the cruiser and some other ships, too. Happy happy, joy, joy!

Until later!