io9
Massive futuristic cubes are surrounded by waiting spaceships and transports in this concept set on a moon orbiting a ringed planet. Artist Steve Burg says he intended it to look inter-dimensional.
Burg has worked as a concept artist, storyboarder, and matte painter on everything from Buckaroo Banzai to Robot Jox, and has also worked with sci directors like Robert Zemeckis on Contact, and Paul Verhoeven on Starship Troopers. In fact, given that we're going into a Terminator-laden weekend, it's only fitting that he also worked on Terminator 2: Judgement Day, and the T2:3D theme park film.
Burg frequently puts sketches and computer artwork up on his blog for people to check out, and of this spaceport picture he had this to say:
I wanted to capture the feeling of a busy port at dawn, with numerous craft of different shapes and sizes coming and going. The enormous cubes — at least in my mind — contain portals that enable inter-dimensional travel to other worlds. Large ships circle the area, waiting for clearance from traffic control to proceed to their destinations — much like jumbo jets at a modern airport.As lonely as we may find it to be, it certainly looks more inviting than LAX on a holiday weekend.
Comments
Beautifull. I love stuff like that.
This Burg guy looks like he knows what he's talking about. And "interdimensional" traffic control?...sounds like an hour on the tarmac in the fourth dimension won't take that long at all.
I hear JetBlue's got one of those cubes~
gorgeous artwork
he has good talent with 3D but the after touch needs a bit of work. on hi res versions, you can see the artificing on various edges and polygonization of spherical surfaces. anyway, nice art work.
This is a beautiful piece. I've always been really drawn to the idea of a system of portals, or wormholes, or gates, whatever you want them to be, that allow interdimensional or interstellar travel, instead of individual ships that are able to make those kinds of jumps. Perhaps because it seems less chaotic. I don't know. This is an really wonderful rendering of that idea.
btw, aren't the titanian skies orange and the ground a rocky brown?
Nah. The individual ships are cooler. Space Battles and Piracy would be virtually impossible with the Stargate concept. And we need such things for good space adventure. A combination works well, in fiction with the Star gate system amongst the well settled worlds and the "outer rim" needing the slower ships to deliver to the outlying colonies and providing adventure oppourtunities.
I had Reese's pieces tonite. Agreed with Mixmaster, this kind of interstellar storytelling is as well fascinating to me--I've for a long time had this idea that such inter-dimensional travel "hubs" would be located 'extra-terrestrially', meaning within the vaccuum of outerspace away from densely-massed objects like planets and moons. Kind of a two-tiered propulsion system physically connected to the natural network of hyper-flux 'rivers', currently hidden in the dark matter of the celestials but eventually mapped.
Like Eve online?
Is that a poem?
Then again if Titan's climatology is analogous to cryo-temperate, this makes total sense for ships embarking upon the Mercurial Rivers~
This really is breathtaking work. Especially the samurai scene in the snow. The details of the figure and horse are a real treat in direct contrast to the starkness of the bare trees. Very inspiring work for a writer's imagery in sci fi.
I'm not sure if his blog is in some way... broken...but I can't see this picture on there and it was only ever updated in Feb '06. Maybe it's me. Shame, as i love good concept art.
An obvious favourite choice, but Syd Mead has to be up there as one of the best. And Ralph McQuarrie. And I like Doug Chiang.
more ufo's please, why do all the ships have wings?
Atlantis and its STS-122 astronaut crew are now scheduled to launch at 2:47 p.m. EST (1947 GMT) on Feb. 7
The white zone is for loading and unloading only...
The only white space I see in this pic is that really hot coil of gas in the background--
@EncephelanetRepairHelperGuy: The Really Hot Coil of Gas is for loading and unloading only...
Wide Load...
I think the portal concept works much better for science fiction travel, FTL travel depends probably more on how the universe defines it. I like the idea of accelerating space portals.
Start a discussion:
Login with your username and password below. Or comment on this post via email.
Forgot your username or password? New User?