We particularly like the attention to small details, like the Hyperspace bypass plans on the wall, and the Babel Fish in the cup. Artist Nolan Worthington creates artwork for numerous projects, including some cool environments and vehicles for an unnamed science fiction project for toymaker Mattel. His art varies from architectural to cartoonish, and he's also in a band called The Cans, which makes him a real renaissance man. His artwork along with Andrew Wyld's helped the game win a BAFTA award. Not too shabby.

Andrew Wyld crearted this piece of art as part of a competition by the BBC to win a very small part in the new radio drama versions of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. They were creating an online adventure game set in the world of the books, and Andrew and Nolan Worthington (we'll be talking about him soon) were declared co-winners of the competition. He drew his pictures as a homage to the 2D look of the Guide in the television series, with a bit of an update, and he's created several other pictures from the series that you can take a look at in his gallery. You can hear Andrew as a bass player falling out of a window in one of the episodes, as well as play the game online.

Artist Jim Nichols has been painting scenes of spaceships and flying saucers for years, and he's even co-hosted a cable show called UFOAZ all about visitors from outer space. In 1980, Jim met with retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Wendelle Stevens who was researching UFOs, and this inspired him to pursue a career in UFO illustration. Most of his pieces are on sale at his website, which features six pages worth of prints. There's bound to be something in there you're interested it since he runs the gamut from a saucer hovering over a lone farmhouse in "Country Road," to Nazi spaceships in "World War II UFO."

Artist Eric Poulton has put together a series of pieces that reimagine Star Wars in a steampunk setting, and the coolest piece is probably this Engine/Death Star. Poulton says:

Inside is kilometer after kilometer of tubes and wheels, cranks and gears, all spinning and clacking, spitting out an endless series of numbers for the Imperials scientists to decipher.

We've taken a look at Scott Robertson's flying sea-pods before, and these minijets confirm that he's obsessed with cool personal transports, and water. In his original painting for this piece, the planes had pusher propellers mounted on the back, but in subsequent "drafts" he decided to change them to jet engines because people weren't able to tell which way the planes were flying. Robertson opened up a studio with Cloverfield monster designer Neville Page, right after graduating, and their collaboration continues to this day. Maybe they'll spawn a water-born tech-creature hybrid that'll terrorize pedestrians everywhere.

Drummer Roger Taylor brought this to the band's attention, and they decided to gank it for their next cover. They contacted the artist of the original piece, Frank Kelly Freas, who painted the cover based on his own work. It features Freddie Mercury and Brian May dead in the robot's giant hand, while Taylor and bassist John Deacon plummet to the ground. It's definitely one of Queen's most identifiable album covers, which also contained the hits "We Will Rock You" and "We Are The Champions."

Artist Frank Kelly Freas was involved in the science fiction field from 1950, until his death in 2005. He painted everything from pieces for NASA, to book covers, to magazine covers, to buxom beauties as nose art on fighter planes to Mad Magazine, and even the covers for the GURPS books for Lensman and Planet Krishna. He won numerous awards, and was often hailed of "The Dean of Science Fiction Artists." You can check out his awards, browse his art, and even buy pieces of his work at his website, which is chock full of information including a brief documentary by his wife Laura.

French artist Mathias Verhasselt works as a concept artist at Blizzard Entertainment in Irvine California, although his art tends to lean more towards science fiction than it does World of Warcraft. Maybe he's working on some of the designs for the much anticipated Starcraft 2. If you want see a lot more (and we mean a lot more) of his designs, check out his website, which is basically one giant gallery of images so be warned when you click on the link. He's tossed everything from steampunk tankbots to alien species in there, and most of it is very impressive.

John Berkey is one of those old-school concept artists whose work doesn't look hyper-realistic like Photoshop on steroids. He uses an old school smeary oils approach that look both futuristic and retro at the same time. Berkey has done numerous pieces of freelance futuristic artwork featuring ships in battle above our world and others, and also did some of the original concept and poster artwork for Star Wars.

Artist Greg deSantis has also created incredible concept models of a reimagined Nautilus from 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, amazing steampunk British tanks, space pirates boarding a ship through a still red-hot sliced open hole, and even scifi handguns that come complete with their own carrying case.

Sadly, the museum has disappeared and no longer offers models for sale. This is tragic, because these are probably some of the coolest scifi models we've seen, and the attention to detail is incredible. We hope deSantis returns to making these one day, because those tanks would look awesome on our desk.

Daniel Dociu of ArenaNet has worked on many pieces of award winning art, including the Crab Fort above, and the Fish Fort, which looks like it could be a great model for a drive through fish restaurant. He won two Master Awards from EXPOSÉ 4, one for Environment Design (the crab fort), and one for his Urban Canal which won in the Cityscape category. You'll get 'em both if you pick up the book from the showcase.

He was raised in Transylvania, worked as a toy designer for years, and now focuses on creating concept artwork for Guild Wars. If we can find proof that he's actually a vampire, he might officially the coolest concept artist haunting the halls of gaming companies to this day. The link below includes massive versions of the above artwork that make for perfect wallpapers. [ConceptArt.org]

When Blade Runner came out in 1982, Cinefex devoted an entire issue to the movie, complete with scads of Syd Mead's concept art. They later became collector's editions, and were hard to track down. If you were lucky enough to find one, it would usually set you back a hundred bucks. However, Titan Books put out a special edition hardcover edition a few years ago, and you can pick one up for about sixteen bucks. It may not come with an accompanying floppy record full of jazz riffs or even Vangelis tunes, but it does featuring some truly amazing concept design from one of the masters.

Choosing a main image was especially difficult because here's this amazing crashed FedEx plane with a bridge for a wing, these enormous turrets that look like they've grown out of the landscape, or this massive coastal battle.

Korean developer Reloaded Studios has only been open for a month, and this ambitious massively multiplayer action game is scheduled for release in 2010 and will be their first.

Set in the near future, The Day finds mankind discovering a way to travel between two connected parallel worlds. Players will face a changing world never before seen in an online game as they travel back and forth between the past and present, accomplishing critical missions that extremely influence and affect their present-day world. With the fate of mankind at stake, players are thrown into brutal warfare and a fight to keep humanity from slipping into self-destruction across time.

The Day screenshots [Gamers Hell]

Struzan came to George Lucas' attention when he helped an artist friend who was uncomfortable with portrait work by painting the human figures on a Star Wars poster. Struzan stepped in and painted Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia on the "Star Wars Circus" poster, and that started his long career of painting movie posters for George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.

You've probably seen his work dozens of times without realizing it. From Hellboy to Harry Potter to Back to the Future to The Thing, Struzan's been there. While we see the need for posters advertising the Academy Awards as about as necessary as a screen door on a deep-space cargo ship, it's cool that they're using an artist who loves and appreciates science fiction so much.

Academy unveils Oscar poster [Variety]

My favorite SF car, besides Corey's, is Katie Horn's Red Five X-wing car. It started out as an early 90s Toyota Tercel, then she gave it a new base coat of paint and then spray-painted on X-wing markings. But what puts her car over the top is the blast marks she spray-painted on.

There's also Shawn Crosby's A-wing car, which has been featured in Wired. Another fan turned his pick-up truck into an X-wing fighter, complete with R2DT in back. And then there was the Fiat that someone tricked out as a Hoth ice cruiser and tried to sell on eBay for $40,000.

Unfortunately, Star Trek fans have fallen short in the pimped-out cars category. The main Trek car seems to be the Seven Of Nine Car, which has a model of the Starship Voyager on its hood and pics of Jeri Ryan all over the body. Must try harder, Trek fans. Where are the cars with warp nacelles?

There's a lot more to see — just click on an image to get to the full gallery.

While the gallery was packed tighter than Emma Frost's pants, next door at Golden Apple artists were signing pieces and doing original sketches for fans, with all proceeds going to The Hero Initiative, a non-profit organization that helps comic book artists and writers in hard times. Stan Lee came in, flashed his grin around the gallery, flitted over to the comic book shop to sign some items for the charity, and then vanished into the night.

We spoke briefly to artist Sarah Coleman who painted a huge Scarlet Witch piece for the show. Admittedly not a "comic book person" to begin with, Coleman struck out on her own and did a lot of research on Marvel characters before settling on Wanda Maximoff and her magical powers. Although she was quick to point out to us that Wanda's powers "were initially math-based, giving her the ability to affect probability." Rewrites over the past few years have changed her ability from "hex magic" to "chaos magic," and she's now one of the most powerful mutants in the Marvel universe.

So, you do learn something new every day, true believer. We feel like we should have known this and retreated into the night ourselves, but not before shouting "Excelsior!" at several random passers by.

The Necrum level had quite an impact on fans of Oddworld even inspiring fanart around the net. People loved the spooky setting the level took place in, and were drawn to the reverence of the resting place of the mudokon dead. In this part of the game, you have to drive out the baddies in the mines below and return the city to a place of mourning, which artist Rob Brown took into account while designing it.

Brown has worked as an artist and art director for a slew of companies from Disney to Activision, but his stint on the Oddworld games is probably what he's best known for, since he provided a real look and feel to this alien world. He brings a dark, brooding intensity to his artwork, which normally isn't seen in such a lighthearted game, and made it seem like a living, breathing world. Check out some of his other concept art on his website, and lament the loss of Oddworld.

I had to visit the sewer and water treatment plant in Lubbock, Texas once for a paper I was writing in college, and it didn't look anything close to this. It was filthy, dark, and full of rusty pipes. This look at Procter's sewer looks clean enough to eat off its floor, and even that yellow duct on the right-hand side doesn't look out of place, despite it's Brazil-esque patchy installation work. Give us something like this to process our waste with, and folks wouldn't mind working there anymore.

You can check out more of Ben's excellent concept art and film visuals at his website.

Giger painted "Necronom IV" (above) in 1976, and it later ended up becoming the inspiration for the Alien design he did for Ridley Scott when he began working on the film. You can definitely see the beginnings of the final Alien creature here, except for those sunglasses and what can only be described as an alien dickhead.

Giger's painting "Necronom V" (seen below) presents an alien being in stark contrast to the one shown in IV, and looks much more sensuous and feminine than the one in IV. Thank god he lost the sunglasses and shortened that head up a bit, because it looks a bit more ridiculous than scary. Of course, if we saw anything coming at us that had been drawn by Giger, it would surely result in a bladder-emptying race in the opposite direction.

Check out the video below where he explains what went into the design, and how he loathes the light. We always figured him for some sort of undead creature of the night.