February 2023 Challenge: PanOPTiCA 477315 alpha/beta

[jshoer]

Sigh...this month is crazy at work and I'm already buried in projects at home, but okay, I've developed a unique space style and the challenge is a space map, so...

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It's hard to believe that, after generations on this ship, we're finally closing in on our destination. Telescopic views are starting to come in at decent enough resolution to make out the planets that will form our new home.

All the generations before us put off giving the star system any poetic names, instead opting to wait for our vantage point. So, for now, this system is merely the alpha and beta stars of the 477,315th identified star system of the PanOPTiCA habitable star survey. It's up to us to come up with something better, as we settle on the worlds here.

[Ilanthar]

Nice start! Always curious and amazed by your method for those.

[jshoer]

Thank you, I appreciate that! For a while I hesitated to do space or sci-fi maps because of my preference for working by hand, until eventually I realized, why not just do it? And I built a style around that. At this point I love my chunky stars and hand-lined spaceships and wouldn't do them any other way!

Finished the major pen line work on the planets and stars today. When I get this into Photoshop, I'm planning to add rectangular image frames around each planet and moon so that it's clear they are telescopic views located at their approximate positions. There are a couple goofs here that I will edit out digitally.

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Such promise! The 477315 system has two rocky planets with liquid surface water, a blasted rocky inner planet, and two gas giants with a number of appreciably sized moons. We look forward to selecting the host planets for our settlement, and the isru teams are eagerly assessing spectroscopy of the smaller bodies. We give thanks to the planners who sent us on our journey, and offer our hope that the other generation ships were as lucky as we.

[jshoer]

Added a background star field to act as a frame, did a bunch of work on the ship, and erased many of the construction lines. I'm planning ahead to some lighting effects that I will add digitally; I'm going to put an overall diffuse glow of the stars lighting up dust, but the planets will cast shadows so more of the background stars will show up there.

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[Greason Wolfe]

Really liked the Cathedral Galaxy map set you did a while back, and liking this as well. For me it has a bit of a pulpish feel, and I love me some pulp sci-fi and fantasy.

[jshoer]

Thanks, GW! I'm glad you liked those.

Last night I took the photo that I'll work with from here on out...

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Of course, the primary purpose of the PanOPTiCA sky survey was to locate and confirm signs of intelligent life. The spectral data from system 477315 was compelling, but we had no idea what exactly it meant until our generation ship arrived to bring greetings from Earth. Finally, we have some inkling: a kind of antenna array...and it's pointed to a fixed location in the galaxy. We have evidence of other artifacts on the planet surfaces in this system, but the most intriguing thing is that the array gives us a signpost...pointing somewhere else.

[jshoer]

I had fun today.

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[jshoer]

Working on shading the starship so that it integrates with the scene...

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[jshoer]

Enhanced shadows, starlight, and trying out some labels:

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[jshoer]

Actually, here's a question for you all. I'm trying a few tweaks and trying to decide what makes it better.

* I'm trying a new color scheme for the ship, to make it look more space-age-y. I'll probably also darken the gray panels to appear more black, a la Saturn V colors.
* Are inner glows for the orbits an improvement?
* Is cropping to the 4:3 ratio better?

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Thanks!