January Entry: Mission on Mars

[pindercarl]

In the latter half of the twenty-first century, man established the first outpost on Mars: Mars Base Alpha, nicknamed the Magic Kingdom. This was followed soon after by a second settlement, Nuevo Los Angeles and finally by a mining outpost at New Pittsburgh. Then, a decade layer, Earth went dark. Word spread to the Magic Kingdom that the terraforming operations at New LA were working. Rumors, too, that microbes that hitched a ride on the first Viking lander had mutated into horrible monsters and that mining outpost had been overrun by something from underground.

It's going to be risky, but a small group is setting from the Magic Kingdom to find New LA. They'd have to go first to the mining outpost at Sirtis Major and hope that they'd find enough rations for the trip. Then to the Opportunity rover for solar panels parts. Then the Viking I lander to salvage the radio transmitter. Lastly the push on the Nuevo Los Angeles. They promised to send word to the others if they made it.

I wanted to do something other than a fantasy setting for this map. Most of my time so far has been putting together the map of Mars. Fortunately there is a wealth of NASA data on the web. The names on the map, as well as the landing sites for various NASA missions, are all accurate--even if the narrative for visiting them is pretty contrived.

I want to so the various hazards and sites on the Martian mission with photos and notes that have been taped to the map. The checklist for the mission (rations, part, solar panels) will be on a Post-It note at the start of the mission. Apparently, they thought to bring Post-Its and Scotch tape to Mars.

The photo sketches are all temp, none of the handwritten text has been added yet, the grid needs work, etc, but I wanted to get something up to motivate me to finish. The image uploaded is half of the working size.

Wish me luck, there are some pretty stand-out pieces to compete with already.

### Latest WIP ###

[moutarde]

Very cool looking so far Love the big purple worm

[pindercarl]

Since you liked the worm, I thought I post a WIP of the Viking I Landing Site. I'm painting overtop of the original sketch. After painting, I'll need to add some details, like photo info in the border and maybe the registration marks you see in all the NASA photos from the moon. Once it's finished, it gets mapped onto a plane in 3DSMax and rendered with a little bend and a shadow before "taping" it to the map.

[Steel General]

Coming along quite nicely, the font you chose is a great fit.

[RjBeals]

This is great and very creative - nice work!

[Gidde]

The map itself is looking quite nice; I'm partial to Mars maps and this one looks great. The snapshots are very well done as well - very webcomic-esque, and they really look like they're tacked on top of it. Loving it so far

[pindercarl]

I finished the worm picture and "taped" it onto the map.

[moutarde]

Man, even your scotch tape looks good I think the photos could probably use some very subtle shading and highlighting on the front though. The curled shape is there, but if you don't look at the corners it still looks flat.

Edit: Just noticed your post-it note has shading and highlighting on it, so I assume you just havn't gotten to that yet on the photos!

[pindercarl]

Thanks for catching the hightlight on the photo, I forgot to add it.

Another photo done.

mission_on_mars_02.jpg

[pindercarl]

Finished the last photo.

### Latest WIP ###