[shanesemler]

These are a few of the illustrations for a music project and interactive ebook I'm working on. The music tells the story of humankind's development of faster than light travel; expansion into the galaxy; encounter with an alien species; and mutual decline after nearly wiping each other out. The book is a companion piece that focuses on important spacecraft from the same 200 year period. It's very much inspired by the old Terran Trade Authority books from the 1970's.

The bright colours and style are a response to the dark, dull, grey space imagery that has dominated scifi for the last 30 years. I'll take a Chris Foss design over Ralph Mcquarrie or Giger any day. Not that I don't appreciate latter two artists work, it's just that their style has dominated scifi for decades.

I don't use a single tool. The images are made with a mix of Blender, Photoshop and in future images, ZBrush. I will be reworking the first one a bit. The rest are more or less complete. The illustrations are displayed here in the order in which I created them, not in the order they will appear in the book.

Thanks for looking.