Cobalt

Hangar 83

Here's a peek at another one of the sets for Starship Awesome: Hangar 83,  way down in the basement of the Stellar Alliance Planetary Operations Center, which is where the ship is parked when it's not flying around the universe.

With the exception of the ship itself, this was actually the first set designed and built way back at the beginning of the project. It's loosely based on the design of the sets from the old 70's Battlestar Galactica, and Buck Rogers tv shows, with that classic 80'...

Adventure Has A New Outfit

Didn't get much done on Starship Awesome last month, because I started to tackle a couple of the more tedious, difficult jobs. Namely, creating outfits for the characters. This means not just designing, and building, but also rigging. However, the end result of all the work is a real payoff. 

So here's Moonmist posing in his new Pilot's outfit. A little Indy Jones, a little MacGyver, and a little Duran Duran all rolled into one. The pilot's pin on his chest is loosely based on a Space Shu...

Foxy Lady

Third Patron request image, this time for Samdahir, who asked for this, as a gift for Germaine The Vixen, the lady in question. 

And it's supposed to be a surprise, so nobody tell her.

Best Seat In The House

Yet another patron request image, this time for Kithpine - who wanter her pocket-sized opossum snuggled into some huge bunny boobies. 

There were few specifics about the bunny herself, so I went with a character who I haven't drawn for..ooh... ten years? Yes, it's the Goddess Of Spring, from COBALT Issue #5, the Easter Special.

Enjoy!

Desert Fox

The first patron request image of 2017 goes to... rnixon, who asked for the "oddly specific" request of a female fennec fox in "the wrong desert" standing next to a Saugauro cactus and holding a map.

The little adventuring outfit was my idea.

Enjoy!

Cobalt's Mom Has Got It Goin' On - Episode 6

Patron request for Samadhir.

The final porn of 2016 - our three bares basking in the afterglow of six months of gettin' it on. 

Thank you for your patronage through the year, folks. Hope you and yours have a good New Year's celebration, and hope to see you back here for many more to come.

No pun intended.

Ah, what the hell. Make it pun intended. 

Cheers!

A little piece of the 80s

Since the house has been full of relatives over the holiday weekend, I've had to temporarily curtail my usual pornographing. 

In the meantime I took the opportunity to fiddle with a small prop for Starship Awesome that needed building.

And here it is, sined, sealed, and delivered. 

Nobody tell John Bigbooty.

Here Comes Trouble - Fullsize

Aw, what the hell. It's Xmas. 

Fullsize catbike picture for everybody. 

Attached fullsize PNG is attached and fullsize.

Cheers!

Here Comes Trouble

The first of this month's patron request images, for Rnixon, who wanted to see Cleo from the old Catillac Cats / Heatcliff cartoon show on a motorcycle.

Background painting is a heavily modified photo I took during my trip out west to California, last year. 

Inside SA - Bed

And finally, all the way at the back of the passenger cabin is another of the holdovers from the original concept of a hippy bus in space. Like any Groovy 70's van, there's a bed in the back. Suitable for sleeping on, as seating for oversize or four-legged guests, or for other more entertaining purposes. 

And of course, as Moonmist here is happy to demonstrate, one of the benefits of having an autopilot running the ship, is that he can put the lights down and make use of it any time he wa...

Inside SA - Flight Deck 03

A process vehicle is all about camera access. Directors would remove windows, remove doors, in some cases, remove the entire front, back or side, just to get the camera in there.

Also, some vehicles had their interior and exterior as seperate sets. A full size prop for the outside, and a seperae "interior" three-walled set. The Galactica Shuttle is like this, for example.

I decided I wanted all of this available to me, so Starship Awesome was designed to allow for maximum camera placemen...

Inside SA - Flight Deck 02

All told there are about seven months worth of work just on this ship alone. And one of the reasons that it took so much time was due to the complexity building something that would function almost as a swiss-army knife. It serves the duty of a filming miniature, and a full size interior set. But I also went a bit mad, and decided that it also needed to work as a Process Vehicle.

A Process Vehicle is a vehicle which has been modified specifically for filming purposes. The oldest version of thi...

Inside SA - Flight Deck

And here we are, up on the flight deck, looking out over the dashboard and controls. You can also see how snug Microbot is in his navi-pod, which is sometimes called a "Trainer Box." 

As mentioned earlier, the original design concept for the ship was a hippie van in space, and one of the aspects of that design that has carried through to the final version, is that the Starflight 700 is, like a van, a multipurpose vehicle which could be retrofit to perform various jobs. The Navi-Pod is one...

Inside SA - Foreward

The view looking towards the fore end of the ship, up onto the flight deck. 

At left you can see the fold-away table in its folded-down position. Once closed away for storage, a push of a button will send it into self-cleaning mode.

At right you can see the control panel for the airlock and ramp. Green means the ramp is up, and blue means the airshield is on. The two other buttons allow for the ramp to be fully lowered, or half-lowered, as a sort of gangplank. The controls at bottom...

Inside SA - Replicator

A closer look at the "Food And Beverage Synthesizer" with its Montgomery Ward branding. Gotta love that early-80s industrial design. The overall design of the unit, and especially the keypad, are based on my former family microwave, which was a 1982 model which served us faithfully for 34 years.

You can also get a closer look at the official diplomatic certificate. Squint a bit and I bet you can read it.

Oh, the uh...cup. I'm not sure how they did it, but somebody hacked the programming ...

Inside SA - Kitchenette

And what would a workspace be without a breakroom, for those times you just need to unwind with a cuppa. Located conveniently within arm's reach, on the port side of the ship, it features built-in cabinets, a mini-fridge, a self-cleaning, fold-away table, bench seating, and a disposal slot which allows the ship's fusion reactor to run on pretty much anything you'd care to throw into it.

Mounted on the wall is the certificate identifying the ship and it's crew as an official diplomatic enteroug...

Inside SA - Computer and Airshield

As it's finally the weekend again, I've been able to poke my nose back into working on Starship Awesome, as it's the current piece of the big hobby project being tinkered with. 

I thought I'd take the opportunity to take you on a little tour. The ship's mostly done now, just a few little things left to fix up. 

Anyway, here we are inside looking at the computer, which sits on the starboard side of the passenger cabin, next to the access ramp. It serves multiple functions and ca...

I Love A Rainy Night

One final image before I call it quits for the night. A "beauty shot" I left running through the render queue during dinner. 

Playing with atmospherics, lighting and film grain. Some photoshop tweaks to color, and levels.

AWESOME!

Now, let's talk about the paintjob. My initial concept was far different from how things ended up: since this was basically going to be our Scooby Van to the stars, my initial idea was to give it a hippy paintjob. A dirty, beat-up hippy bus in space. But the more I played with that idea, the less it worked. So I sat myself down and started analyzing the designs of the ships of the era I was trying to evoke.

Overall, ships of the era tended to follow some guidelines. They were usually light gra...

STARSHIP!

It's been a little over two months since your last look at Starship Awesome, and in that time, the exterior has been completed, and the interior has been... mostly completed. 

I already touched on the insane level of research that went into some of the exterior detail, but I wanted to also touch on the overall exterior design. 

There's a little bit of everything in the design - elements of everything from the (70s) Battlestar Galactica, the Galactica Vipers, shuttlecraft and La...

Snowberry's Office 06

So, anyway... There you go, your first actual peek behind the scenes on Starship Awesome. This is just one of the sets - there are others built, and others still to be built. 

So you'll be seeing more of this eventually. 

And if you're wondering why everybody's naked in these pictures, it's because I haven't actually completed the costumes yet. The only one really kitted out is Cobalt who will be wearing his space ambassador getup. 

If you're wondering why he's also ...

Snowberry's Office 05

One of the challenges of working on these sets was that I needed to rearrange my usual thought process, in regards to set design. Working in 3D means you can build pretty much anything you want, and make it as fantastical as your mind can imagine. There is no limit to what you can do. Not even physics.

I needed to break myself of the habit of thinking big, and start thinking small. 

There's a story about the making of the Star Wars Holiday special - Lucas had started on the project,...

Snowberry's Office 04

Meanwhile, over on the other side of the room, there's a small lounge area with sofas and chairs, and a coffee table, and some futuristic lamps. 

The sofa and chairs here were inspired by bits of furniture used on the Enterprise during Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The coffee table was something I saw in a photo someplace.

Snowberry's Office 03

Another shot from even further back. That red thing next to the door is the door control. Wave your hand in front of it and the door opens. 

The hallway outside is made from more of those corrugated wall panels, which are actually plastic cargo pallettes My study of various sci-fi sets turned up an amazing number of sets that use cargo pallettes as "techno industrial wall pattern" pieces. 

Snowberry's Office 02

Another shot from further back, so you can see more of the room. Including one of those Modern Props computer banks. 

What's not really obvious from the pictures is that, since Snowberry is in a position where he would likely end up meeting alien ambassadors, the furniture in his office is all of normal, human size... except for his desk and chair.  The chair, while designed to look identical to the two available to guests, is much shorter to accomodate his dminutive Delosian height....

Snowberry's Office 01

I said I was going to show you folks some of the preliminary work on Starship Awesome, so here's the first batch of pix. This is Snowberry's office at the Planetary Operations Center for the local branch of the Stellar Alliance  - loosely inspired by the look of various sets from the old Buck Rogers TV show.  You may notice that his shelf is made from those plastic bin-things that so many of the sets on Buck Rogers were made from.

Cobalt's Mom has Got It Goin' On - Episode 5

Yes, sliding in just under the wire, once again... here's the fifth chapter in this little tale - in a Patron request for Samadhir.

Lots of squirty in this one. 

Hope you brought a mop.

Return Of The Pudgy Foozle

Patron request time.. for rnixon, who asked for the return of the Pudgy Foozle, this time in male mode, and enjoying life to excess. 

Your choice of horrible pun for the title:

"Handling the waiter's tip"

or

"The Lap Of Luxury"

Pleasurella

Last week, on Evil Twin... 

I drew Talboc and Pleasure in atypical "evil robes." In order to do this, I did some rough sketches of their outfits beforehand to nail down the look.

This started life as one of those sketches. But as I was sketching it, I started messing with the smudge tool, then added a bit of color just to see how it would look. Anyway, long story short, quite a bit later it ended up as this. A full-bore finished painting with backdrop. 

So, here's Pleasur...

An explanation, of sorts

I just admit, that I'm hesitant to write this. 

A lot of the joy I get out of working on a project, is in the revelation of it to a receptive audience. My moment in the spotlight, when I take a bow after a job well done. However, I also have a bad track record of finishing things. It goes with having ADHD, and being a bit autistic, both of which I am or have.  I have in the past revealed that I was working on somethng, and then... it never got finished. And I always feel bad about th...