The Teraport Wars cover art is done
Posted June 16th, 2008 by Howard TaylerSubmitted without comment.
(which of course means you’ll post your comments below…)
57 Comments on “The Teraport Wars cover art is done”
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June 16th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
oh yes i like been too long since we say PDCL
juenger1701
June 16th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Have you considered doing a batch of like 20 space backgrounds in various desktop sized JPGs for download? You do a great job on all the backgrounds with colorful, vibrant, yet realistic looking space. Next time you are thinking of doing one of those “donation of any sizes gets this extra goody” things, that might be an option (albeit probably more time consuming than your average one though).
Cover looks quite sharp. Nothing less than one would expect from one of your print pieces.
June 16th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Sadly, a good starfield takes a LONG time. This one has about fifteen hours sunk into it. Sure there are elements I can (and will!) re-use the next time I need stars, but there’s a limit to how far I can stretch it if I’m doing full desktop backgrounds and giant prints.
June 16th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Have you considered finding a way to automate it? Obviously, quite a bit of it will require an artistic touch, but you can surely cut down on the workload by having some sort of script or program that throws images of individual stars around semi-randomly, with the occasional colour and size variation.
June 16th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Starfields aren’t random. They are interesting to look at, and tell stories of gravitational interaction, stellar death and rebirth, and hide-and-seek.
Any program good enough to randomly generate is going to be beyond my ability to script. I already have some automated tools for creating the starting points, but turning those into believable starfields still takes hours.
June 16th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
well … then have you considered moonlighting for NASA as a “space prettifier?
June 16th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
I emailed their “make everybody keep thinking we landed on the moon” department and was told we actually DID land on the moon.
Those lying liars.
June 16th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
Of course, he could cheap out and just take a screen shot from Celestia, filter it, and toss on some nebulae. I’m glad he takes the personal, handcrafted approach.
The bad thing about Celestia is it’s based on real astronomy, so some egghead, boffin, nerd, dweeb, or Phil Plait or Sir Patrick Moore could figure out where in the galaxy the shot was taken, given enough time. Plus, Celestia’s starfields are realistically low-density and monochromatic. The notional camera of the strip must shoot in broad-spectrum false color for the scenery to be so pretty.
June 16th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Oh, yes. All Schlock Mercenary starfields are portrayed as an A.I. would see them with the help of the Very Dangerous Array. Combining the angles from fly-eye w/ parallax to single-camera is SO tedious, though…
June 16th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
I would pay for that as wallpaper.
Awesome.
June 16th, 2008 at 8:53 pm
Very nice. Any chance of getting that as a poster?
Time to start thinking about who I’d like sketched in my book.
Keep up the great work!
June 16th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
Pretty.
Front of shirt: pretty view.
Back of shirt: the stuff teraported away which was blocking the view.
June 16th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
I’d totally pay for that in a background size.
June 16th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
In regards to the moon landings.
As you know, Microsoft is virtually synonymous with Big Brother, and interestingly so is the Federal Government. In the couple months I’ve been back here, I’ve discovered through careful research (i.e. I read the “wall art” in the hallways) that the moon landings really were faked
…from a sound stage…
…on Mars!
June 16th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
I want THAT as a poster for my bedroom! Right NOW!
Howard, DO something! ;-)
June 16th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
Sorry for the doublepost, but, for those of you who want it as a wallpaper for your desktop: I know Howard by now – if you buy “The Teraport Wars”, you should get a link to a page where you can download this pic in a variety of formats for your desktop experience!
(another incentive to buy “The Teraport Wars”… as if you`d need more ^^)
June 16th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
Oh, WOW. And that’s a Buuthandi along the bottom?
Man, I can’t wait to see this in person.
June 17th, 2008 at 1:46 am
I love the detail on Petey. Perfect glory shot. And it’s the first time a notice, but this Tausennigan Thunderhead Superfortresses kind of look like the psycho bears manning… I mean bearring them.
June 17th, 2008 at 3:11 am
>I would pay for that as wallpaper.
usually that’s called pre-ordering the book around here :P
juenger1701
June 17th, 2008 at 5:03 am
That’s no small moon…
June 17th, 2008 at 6:24 am
What was the bumper sticker from Spaceballs?
“I stop for NOBODY”…
;)
June 17th, 2008 at 8:01 am
Hey, Howard? Didja ever consider cheating by using some of the techniques described by David Simon (www.davidcsimon.com)? He does a ton of that stuff photographically for Crimson Dark.
But regardless: I, too, would pay a good chunk o’ change for that as a poster size or desktop size piece. Hey, I put out for the Schlock “Yee-HAH!” image. Possibly because he was uttering one of my favorite phrases.
June 17th, 2008 at 10:42 am
I haven’t looked at David Simon’s techniques. I’m already using a bunch of different techniques I’ve lifted from tutorials and discovered on my own. The “cheats” that come next are probably Photoshop brushes that automatically throw down clusters, nebula, or near-field stars.
June 17th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
I hope to see this as a wallpaper for my computer when I preorder a sketch edition of the book (which I hope is coming out soon), but I agree that it would make a lovely edition to the store as a poster so that I could place it on my wall next to the rule 37 poster.
June 17th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Ohhhhhhhhhhhh! Pretty!
June 17th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
“All Schlock Mercenary starfields are portrayed as an A.I. would see them with the help of the Very Dangerous Array”
But have they named the new constellations?
June 17th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
when you said wallpaper something clicked with me…
could it be printed out SOOO BIIGGGG that it could be used as REAL wallpaper, like for a 15X12 foot wall???
now, that would be cool
really really cool
maybe someone has another one they think could be used for a wall? something that does not have too strong a comic element??
Howard, is there a starscape that does not have a large spacecraft in the foreground??
June 17th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Beautiful work! I’ll have to get the poster WHEN Howard offers them through his Schlock store. Would it work as A Paint By Numbers?
>>
June 17th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Post hypnotic suggestion – Make this picture into a Poster. Make this picture into a Poster. Make this picture into a Poster.
June 17th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
I doubt this image would do well resized for a 15′x12′ wall. I could, however, do this image without the Bu’uthandi or the PDCL in it. That’s easy. Boring, but easy.
June 17th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
Well, if you can’t wait for a real poster to be produced one day, you could try the Rasterbator … http://homokaasu.org/rasterbator/
June 18th, 2008 at 12:09 am
Couldn’t you be clever and do that whole “tile” technique to replicate the image over and over. That might work for wallpaper. We’d have to be willing to accept the visual “pattern” that would result.
Say, if you sell the poster for $10, just think how much $$ you’ll get when they buy enough to cover a wall. :)
June 18th, 2008 at 12:31 am
dafydd: Close:
“WE BRAKE FOR NOBODY.”
(I need one for my truck — on the *front* bumper…. >:) )
On the cover art: If I had my choice for a “fanboy” drawing, I’d
want a drawing of all the ships Tagon’s Toughs have used over the
course of the comic, in the manner of Pocock’s painting of Nelson’s
commands all in one place. But this will do until I can get that.
Nice work. :)
June 18th, 2008 at 1:42 am
Please, please,PLEASE! Let a desktop image of that be a bonus for pre-orders.
(puppy dog eyes)
June 18th, 2008 at 4:25 am
I’d love it as a desktop, period. Can I “Tip the Cartoonist” for that? purrrrrretty please with filet mignon on top?
June 18th, 2008 at 6:08 am
Psychosomatic: Crimson Dark’s in my list of comics to start reading when I’ve got time for an archive binge. I’ve seen the first few, though, and I like Howard’s starfields better. Maybe David’s get better later, but if not, I wouldn’t expect Howard to use David’s techniques.
Long ago, I saw a CG art site that had some good starfields. I have no idea where, but I do remember that pretty much everything on the site was generated using multifractals. Next year, when I (hopefully) have more time, I’ll probably write something like that as part of a larger project.
csadn: I think a picture of all the Tough’s ships would be great as a front-cover illustration for Schlock Mercenary: The First Ten Years. We already know the spine and back cover are mauve.
Everyone who’s begging for the cover art as a desktop: Stop that! Wait until pre-orders open, and if you don’t get it when you pre-order, then pester Howard about it.
June 18th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Aaand, since odds are good that you’ll continue your practice of Preorder Defacement For Extra Cash Bucks, I have to decide which character I want on *this* one.
June 18th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Lizzibabe, where`s the question? Petey for this one, of course! Who else would fit a book with the PDCL on its cover? ^^
June 18th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Pretty cover, Howard, good work. I know how hard a nice starfield is to make, because I’ve tried. (No worries for you about competition from this direction.)
I wonder if a galaxy can in fact be close enough to look like the one on your cover. I mean, pretty, but wouldn’t a galaxy that’s that close interact pretty massively with the galaxy from where the picture is taken. Take Andromeda, which is a bit larger than our galaxy, and the closest one to us. In a few billion years it will start to cannibalize ours, and yet right now it’s just a faint smudge in the sky, not a spectacular sight like the one on your cover…
June 18th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
Which thing are you thinking is a galaxy? The reddish one top-center that resembles the sombreo is actually a nearby star-and-accretion-disk. Or that was what I was thinking when I painted it.
June 18th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
The more facts you know, the less magic you feel.
I’m delighted that I got to see it without explanation.
D.
June 18th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
CmdrBone: But you could argue that Petey’s already on the cover, so he doesn’t need to be on the sketch page. Breya’s an obvious choice, since she’s leading the Teraport Wars. Or Gav, since by the end of the book there’s so many of him – you could argue that he’s statistically the most likely person to show up at the back of the book. Or maybe Gasht’g'd’g'tang, or…
hmoulding: SagDEG is pretty close. Of course, it’s being pretty heavily disrupted by our galaxy, but it’s still got its elliptical shape. (Incidentally, the fact that it’s kept its shape seems to indicate that it has an unusually high concentration of dark matter.)
The Andromeda Galaxy is certainly wider than our galaxy, but our galaxy may be heavier. Or it may not – the error bars are fairly wide. (Again, the Milky Way apparently contains more dark matter.) We can say confidently that the two are similar enough in mass that if they do collide (which still isn’t certain – we don’t know the transverse velocity well enough to be sure they won’t miss), it will be more of a merger than a cannibalisation.
Howard: I was going to tell hmoulding that it looks like a nearby (probably part of the same system) star with a proplyd around it. A galactic disk’d have smudges of blue where the bright young stars shine out past the dust, and I’d expect the core to be yellow rather than red. So it’s nice to see that we both think it looks like the same thing.
Dev Dot Nul: Ah, but there’s nothing quite as awe-inspiring as something you do understand, but only in the sense that you can do the maths. Deep down, there’s a part of the brain that just registers the size of a proplyd or a buuthandi as “incomprehensibly huge”.
June 19th, 2008 at 5:15 am
Sam: *That* is why I want to “tip the cartoonist”. I don’t HAVE enough $ to get the books right now, but “tipping” the cartoonist is within my budget. (Howard’s not the only one I tip!)
June 19th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
Sam, I’ve been doing “the maths” (sic) for decades. There’s nothing wrong with sitting back and enjoying the ride.
If you truly have a handle on {ahem} “the maths,” there’s no such thing as “incomprehensibly. . .” anything.
Still, why not kick back, pop the shoes off, shed your skepticism, and just enjoy the heck out of the ride? If you feel the need to quantify everything, the chances are you’re in need of a psych evaluation.
D.
June 19th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
Dev Dot Nul –
Most of the world says it that way (”do the maths.”) We in the US are the odd balls.
My friends who are from India typically talk about “maths.”
If you think about it, it makes sense, if you think of each sub-catagory being a seperate “math.” (i.e. Calculus, Algebra, Geometry, etc.)
June 19th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
“‘the maths’ (sic)”? I speak English. It’s you Yanks that get it wrong. It’s an abbreviation of “mathematics”, which is clearly plural.
And the inner parts of the brain can’t do the maths. They take the cortex’s word for it that a buuthandi’s really big, but only the parts of the brain that can do maths understand how big.
For example, if you’re close to average height, and you’re standing on a sphere 1 AU in radius, the distance to the horizon is about the distance from Brisbane to Sydney. I can (and did) figure that out, but there’s still a part of my brain that just registers 1 AU as “off the scale”.
“If you feel the need to quantify everything, the chances are you’re in need of a psych evaluation.”
Eh. Mild Asperger’s. Easy to identify.
June 19th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
rbliss: Thank you for making me look slow. :-)
June 19th, 2008 at 11:51 pm
Never fear, gents (?). US Yanks have never let looking silly stop us from being silly.
Regardless, taking the time to solve the (ahem) “maths” (Sorry, but U.S. English is the de facto production version in the world today) robs my pitiful world, at least, of magic. It’s unavoidable when the time comes to figure a med dosage (somewhat) or proportions for a chemical or engineering solution but why should I have to go out of my way to validate my entertainment? There are so bleeding many places that seem to go out of their way to offend a rational mind that I’m pathetically grateful to have a source of entertainment that doesn’t just slap me in the face every time I sit down to read it.
Sheesh, give it a name and let it be.
D “or not, d00dz”.
June 20th, 2008 at 7:43 am
> The reddish one top-center that resembles the sombreo is actually
> a nearby star-and-accretion-disk. Or that was what I was thinking
> when I painted it.
Aha. I need to get out more.
June 20th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Wow, this looks cool. This is going to be one good-looking book.
By the way, Howard, do you know when you’re going to do a LepreCon report?
June 20th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
csadn Says:
“On the cover art: If I had my choice for a “fanboy” drawing, I’d
want a drawing of all the ships Tagon’s Toughs have used over the
course of the comic, in the manner of Pocock’s painting of Nelson’s
commands all in one place.”
… as small little models, hanging on obvious string from an unseen ceiling above, and a grinning Schlock poke-prodding one with a finger. ^_^
June 21st, 2008 at 12:24 am
Pax: No, actually — for this, I want to go for a “serious” look, like
Tagon had commissioned a drawing of the ships he’s owned over
the years. (The idea of Tagon being that interested in art of any
kind is comedic enough. :) )
June 21st, 2008 at 7:58 am
>could it be printed out SOOO BIIGGGG that it could be used as
>REAL wallpaper, like for a 15X12 foot wall???
For that I would redecorate my office! (Only because I don’t think my wife would allow it in the living room or bedroom.)
June 21st, 2008 at 4:19 pm
Aaaaaw, but I *like* the image of Schlock owning wee little models of all the ships the company has owned …
;)
June 23rd, 2008 at 12:39 am
Pax: Schlock does not strike me as the “model-collecting” type.
Kevyn — a distant “maybe”; apart from that, none of the rest
seem the type, either.
June 23rd, 2008 at 12:40 am
Sidebar: Yes — I know they aren’t “Model Citizens”…. >;)
June 23rd, 2008 at 2:16 pm
I don’t know, the Toughs get pretty attached to their ships – with good reason, too. I mean, it’s all that sits between them, and hard vacuum and/or lots and lots of missiles.
I wonder, were there any ships before the Kitesfear? (And did I spell that right? I expect that I’ll know soon – if I find myself looking down the barrel of a plasma cannon, I probably spelled it wrong.)