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The other day we told you about the artwork created specifically for an online version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy game that was created for the new BBC editions of the Hitchhiker's radio drama that came out a few years ago. This image, featuring a cartoony version of the Vogon Captain's quarters, was part of a set created for the same game.
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If you haven't seen the BBC television version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, then you need to get off your lazy duff and give it a whirl. It's extremely different from the movie version, and much closer to the novels and radio drama. Probably the best thing about it is the Guide itself, complete with amazing 2D animations depicting whatever the book is droning on about. Like the spaceship Heart of Gold, pictured here. Check out the glorious old school animation style that makes up the Bambleweeny 57 sub-meson Brain, which powers the Infinite Improbability Drive.
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What would have happened if Raiders of the Lost Ark met Sid and Marty Krotfft's Lost Saucer? It might have looked a little something like this. Of course, you might have a chance to see this scene for real if the rumors about extraterrestrials in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull are to be believed.
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In some circles of the steampunk Star Wars universe this is known as the "Death Star," and it generates billions of calculations all day long in an effort to work with Arcane Mathematics and find a "Unified Force Theory" that can destroy entire planets.
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Once we finally have flying cars, authorities are going to have a bitch of a time keeping people from doing what these two hotshot pilots are planning: scaring the ever-living shit out of a pleasure boater. Granted, these are minijets with funky wings and not flying cars, but it makes you think about what might start happening in the skies once anyone can just flit around.
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The coolest thing about the cover artwork for Queen's 1977 album News of the World was that it was inspired by a cover from the October 1953 edition of Astounding Science Fiction magazine (later called Analog). The caption for the image was "Please... fix it, Daddy?"
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It's not clear if the two travelers in this concept art have crashed into this glowing cavern, or if that's simply their parking place. Maybe there's a swarm of flesh-peeling mites just out of view, but it looks like a good place for an adventure to us.
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Actually, we aren't sure if this is Orion, but we just couldn't pass up a nice Blade Runner reference. This spaceship or space station looks like it's been attacked and is about to fall victim to the gravity of the planet below, and it couldn't be more beautiful.
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This awesome model of a starfighter, complete with a helpful little refueling probe-bot, is one of the models available at The Museum of the Improbable.
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Guild Wars isn't really known for having a science fiction element to it, but this concept art shows off an extremely steampunked Crab Fort, lumbering across the horizon. Enormous cogs and gears are evident in the construction work that looks like something straight out of a psychotic version of Burning Man. Everyone is standing around fairly calmly, not paying much attention to the GIANT FREAKING WALKING CRAB VILLAGE!
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Syd Mead's concept artwork for Blade Runner has always looked a bit like a jazz painting. It's meant to portray a saturnine view of downtown Los Angeles in the future, but the only things in it that are even slightly futuristic are the armored-looking dumptruck on the street, and the hulking mega-skyscraper in the background which is probably meant to be the Tyrell corporation. Besides that, the image is a wash of signage, mostly featuring Asian text. All it needs is an accompanying saxophone track and this could serve as the cover image to an album, circa 1963.
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We hope that upcoming MMOThe Day manages to look like its sumptuous concept art, pictured above. That image of the Arc de Triomphe being repaired, upgraded, or duplicated is just simply amazing. The premise of The Day is that two parallel worlds smash together, and we've got a whole gallery of strange history-mashup imagery from The Day for you to gawk at.
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io9 took a spin through Gallery 1988 and Golden Apple Comics last night in Los Angeles as artists like Ruben Rude, Travis Lampe, Brandon Bird, Patrick Gannon, Misha, Angry Woebots, Jeff McMillan, Sarah Coleman and Daniel Danger paid tribute to Stan "The Man" Lee through reinterpretations of some of his most famous characters. The result was some seriously trippy artwork ranging from X-Men plushies to a sort of wacky Mickey Mouse meets The Hulk on acid painting. Take a look for yourself in the gallery below.
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In the series of Oddworld video games, where you play the messianic, farting mudokon Abe, you come across a city of the dead called Necrum. It's a very creepy place, as you can see from this artwork, and looks like a landscaper's nightmare. Just scaling those palm tree tower things along would be fairly death-defying, and that's just if you could manage to quit looking at the Chuck-Jones-on-acid landscape.
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When a conceptual artist imagines a futuristic sewer system, you'd expect something that would give Dr. Seuss nightmares. Not so in this glance down a sewer corridor from artist Ben Procter. It looks spartan, utilitarian, orderly, and just plain gorgeous. It's enough to make you want to dive underground and look for crawly aliens in toilet water.
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