The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Hey all. Here's some SC fanart I'm working on. I wanted to make different variants of the characteristic ships.

Syreen - Phallic galore
(http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/sce/syreen.jpg)

Mmrnmhrm - More monolith-mystical
(http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/sce/mmm.jpg)

The Spathi gave me trouble. I made a lot of versions but I don't know how well they correspond to people's mental image of the Spathi. Any feedback and ideas here will be appreciated!
1 (http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/sce/spathi.jpg)
2 (http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/sce/spathi2b.jpg)
3 (http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/sce/spathi3.jpg)

I also have a very geeky wet dream / project page here (http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/main.php?id=sce) with more comments on the designs.

I'll be updating once in a while, or not. I tend to abondon my projects after a week, and it's already been 5 days!

Well, I just wanted say that your work is amazing! I really like how detailed the sketches and concepts are. Great coloring, too. My favorites are the Spathi peices.

As for what exactly the spathi look like (or what I imagine they would look like) is pictured here (http://elfwood.lysator.liu.se/fanq/a/u/aumala2/vuxspathi.jpg.html) ,which is really well illustrated by another artist. Personally should I ever see a full profile of a Spathi, I'd imagine that's what one would look like.

Anyways, awesome stuff. It's always great to see more artists around here.

Say ,that's pretty good.

Thanks. I saw that design when I did research. It's interesting but a bit too realistic and detailed for my taste. I can imagine the Spathi command bridge being decorated like a balloon party for kids with lots of alien toys in simple colors, except it's serious stuff for the Spathi.


New:

I didn't like the Utwig design so I changed it, a lot, but kept the mask concept.
(http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/sce/utwig.jpg)

Mycon. Gave it 4 legs.
(http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/sce/mycon.jpg)

The blue is half close to the original, but the others are new. Tried to tie the designs together with the eyes, knobs or whatever it is. I included the now extinct predator too.
(http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/sce/three.jpg)

*claps* your very talented. I love the utwig.

The Penetrator is supposed to resemble a dildo. Yours is good, but do you think a miniature version of that would fit in there comfortably? I think not. Not smooth enough, too many bumps. You fail Syreen architecture school.

(Kidding.)

The Utwig drawing is especially nice.

I agree. The Utwig drawing is great. Even if it is a little different from the game. As far as the design of the Penetrator is concerned. Well, I guess that
depends on what you like :P

Er, no. I'm not really in the demographic that uses those, being male and all.

Not sure I agree with the linked Elfwood drawing of a full-body Spathi. Paul and Fred did say that Spathi, like clams, have a single muscular foot, and I just think the idea of a Spathi slithering around madly on a sluglike lower body is funny.

I like your Mmrrnrmhrrm design. Very modular, alien and mechanical, though I did mistake it for a Kohr-Ah Marauder at first. The Utwig are also good; for the ZFP, they are cute, though I miss the idea of the middle guy having an enormous eye and being able to see much more clearly than the other two, but, being unable to speak, having a hard time communicating this information.

That notwithstanding, this is amazing art. Kudos to you.

WOW, excellent draws, keep up the good work!  ;D

Excuse me, while I go and get my lower jaw back..  It dropped, ysee...

*mumbling in the background...

Ah! Got it!
Well, all I can say is that... You own!  :)
Seriously, that's all a damn nice piece of work you've got there!
Now I only wonder, how you made the colored ones. They look so nice...
I'd love to see a full-sized-version (probably in perspective?) of your Mother Ark.. That thing looks so damn nice.. But I'm sure it's not an easy task..

The supox looks nice, too.. Same for the Utwig, but I think it looks too much like a badger.. (the shape of it's mask and all) :P

Okay, here are some resources for the Spathi:
(from www.star-control.com's Sc2 database)

(http://www.classicgaming.com/starcontrol/fan/images/urq1_sc1_funny.jpg)
I wonder if that's from one of the original Sc2 manual authors... It seems like it is, because of the "Kick Me"  sign looking rather.. edited.. :) The Umgah also looks like it's edited in, so it seems as if this is the number 1 evidence of how a Spathi looks like from below.. You might want to ask Fred Ford of Paul Reiche III for help on this, though..

About the Mycon: Mycon don't need the ability to walk. In fact, they don't need ship maintenance, as the ship "lives".... Removing the legs would make sense...

Get the Sc2 manual here, for more info about the races and all: http://www.classicgaming.com/starcontrol/files/sc2.shtml

Good luck with your project, I think it might turn out into something fun.. :)
No.. It IS going to turn out into something fun.. :)

Reminds me a lot of some of the more industrial-looking items and ships in the "Metabarons" comic book series.

Aye, you're right. Thanks for clearing that up for me.



The image is art from the SC1 manual, and the original unaltered version can be found here (http://www.classicgaming.com/starcontrol/sc1/urqtech.shtml). So I assume that it can give a good idea for what a Spathi moves on or how it gets around.

But anyways, great new art. I like the Utwig design and the ZFP concepts.

One interesting thing about that image is that it gives away the scale of the Spathi. The text accompanying it states:

"(...) a fully grown Ur-Quan is formed of segmented body tube ten meters long and two meters in diameter. (...)"

...whereas Arne's scale comparison of Spathi and human shows the Spathi to be roughly 1/3 of normal human size:

http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/sce/spathi3.jpg

Thanks a lot for the feedback!

It almost seems like the spathi has many eyestalks drom that description. My guess is that the artists weren't that well coordinated (noticed how the cockpit Yehat has finger joints on different places btw?)

I'm not following the original designs too strictly. They're very inconsistant so I need to tie them together, not only render-wise but design-wise too, which means I need to do some changes here and there (the smaller the better). I'm also utilizing some artistic freedom and taste, because it's fun.

For the Spathi size I thought half the size of a human max. They just look and act small to me. It would be boring if all aliens are almost the same size.


It's a pretty good Spathi body configuration on that SC1 comic image. No shell though. Maybe I'll use a red shell (because it's the hull color of their ship) and 6 little tentacle legs.

The Mycon has a quite humanoid shape on the comic art. see (http://www.classicgaming.com/starcontrol/sc1/mycotech.shtml)


Updated the page (http://itchstudios.com/psg/main.php?id=sce) a bit with planets (near bottom).


I got some notes on how I color on my site... or maybe not, I'm a little lazy with updating...

*Bleep* Head a splode!

Those are ... insurmountable. I like every ship design (with more details, they actually look like spaceships), especially Supox Blade.

I also like the big mouthed version of Supox. Gives a "Gishy" feeling.

Those Melnormes look dumb though. =P

Utwig looks like an old traditioned samurai. Nothing bad at it, at all.

EDIT: Oh and I would like to see functional Zoq, Fot and Pik. :P

Arne: that's odd... I never saw that picture..
But then, I take a look at http://www.classicgaming.com/starcontrol/sc2/aliens/mycon.shtml where you can CLEARLY see a mycon having no legs, and I don't think that blob under it is a leg or anything like that.
(And sorry for the nitpicking here, :P)

Mycon are expert gengineers. I expect that they can grow legs and then let them fall off as necessary, depending on whether they need them at a given moment.

Just because the Podship is organic doesn't mean it's entirely self-regulating and self-repairing; it makes sense for there to be little humanoid Mycon that can run around and perform tasks within the ship, while the smart, leader Mycon sits around with a big brain and gives orders.

big brain? Big enough to say "Juffo-wup fills my fibers. I grow turgid. Violent Action Ensues." I suppose.

Can anyone tell me where that picture with the Mycon with legs came from? Isn't it just fan-art?

And I agree that the new pictures look great. But while I acknowledge an artists right to reinterpret "official" material, I don't think inconsistency should be put forward as a reason. All the material I've seen has been pretty consistent, except for this Mycon (if it is "official").

The Mycon image might be SC1 manual art?

There's a lot of inconsistancies. It seems like they loaned a lot of designs from StarTrek and more or less combined with some funny creature drawings they made during a coffe break (It worked quite well though, hehe). Then they got another artist to do some more art and s/he made some guesses where the source art was unclear. I know how it is, because I'm a freelance artist. Sometimes the client goes 'nonono, the Githyanki has curved sword blades' and sometimes it just slips by with an 'ok, It'll have to do, we're running it in the presses in 5 hrs'.


Examples of inconsitancies:

Generally when species are related, they share the same structure, but the proportions change. The Pkunk has hair whilst the Yehat has a knob. The Yehat's eyes are glowing whilst the pkunk has a normal iris. The Yehat has a trunk-like skin beak whist the Pkunk seem to have a hard bird beak almost.
They do share the collar and basic anatomy though, the Pkunk dropped the wing skin and wasp pattern. That's what I'm gonna go on. I'll just make the Pkunk a parrot version of the Yehat.

The Yehat's knob has different colors on the cockpit images, and the cockpits doesn't match.

I could imagine the Yehat ship design playing more on 'bat wing'. Overall I don't think the ships match the species. I'd expect a frog species to invent a ship like Zow-Fot-Pik's for example. Now it seems like they just drew some ships and almost randomly gave them to the different species.

The finger joints on the Yehats are placed differently on the two cockpit Yehats.


The Shofixi cockpit is curved, but the ship is wedge shaped with hard angles.

The Shofixi cockpit images doesn't match.

Judging from the ship pics, there's very little rear view, unlike what the cockpit suggests.

The shofixi could look more speedy-fighter-samurai-kamikaze like, since that's their role.


The Syreen on the large cockpit image looks like a space princess, whilst the one on the little image looks more like a 'dancer', if you know what I mean.

The Syreens are either white, cyan or blue, judging from the pics. Different clothing style on all the pics aswell.

---

That's just 3 races.

However, now it is as it is. People got used to the designs. If I was doing an official sequel I might be more respectful, but I'm more like doing a... parallell universe version.
I still want people to recognize the designs though. Hearing your input is very interesting, so keep the nitpicking coming!

I think as long as I don't do what SC3 did to the Syreens I'm safe no? ;D


I'm doing this for myself. It's highly unlikely that I finish anything, so those who have asked for permission to use 'my' designs or my art, I can't really answer that yet.

Would be cool to make some intro slideshow pics though, as someone suggested.

Ok, there are some inconsistencies, but they are rather small. I think what you did with the Syreen ship or the ZFP is a much bigger change.
Though there are bound to be several variants of ships around, so variations in ships are not that big a deal. Variations on alien physiology are.
Also, even with related species there can be a lot of differences. With some Earth species there's even a huge difference between the male and the female variants. Especially when you concider that the Pkunk and Yehat have been in different environments for a very long time, I think the differences are very defendable.

I don't think a ship should necessarilly have to match the appearance or the character of the species. Just like with human technology, a ship with a very specific purpose (like a fighter ship) will be designed with that purpose as the prime concern. Exterior appearance will be of minor importance (unless (part of) the purpose is its apppearance, like with a cruise ship, or space hotel).

I have a .pdf file of the SC1 manual (from http://www.classicgaming.com/starcontrol/files/sc1.shtml I think). Unless the paper manual is significantly different, that Mycon is not from the SC1 manual.

As for SC3... what SC3? :)

A slide show would be nice. Just like with the music, there could be a separate pack with updated slides. Just a single replaced slide would not work, as it would have to fit in with the others.
Slightly related, I personally think it would be nice to have a "group photo" with all the (friendly?) species on it. The Spathi of course in the back, with its eye peeking out behind someone else.

Actually, I do have the original manual for SC1 (Amiga Version) and the Mycon art peice in question is indeed there.

The linked pdf file on PNF is also alot different than the actual manual that I have. It does contain the original text from the SC1 manual, but all the artwork there was used from SC2. I'm not sure if the pdf file was a fan-made one or a different, more recent version of my own.

Yes, of course, if you think about it logically then a space traveling jellyfish might use a bulky grey ship that looks pretty much like all spaceships. Maybe plausible to assume that combat spaceships would be optimized to a certain primitive shape, and take advantage of weapons that fire very rapid or lightspeed shizzle nizzle.

...but it wouldn't be very interesting if all species flies around in silver orbs or wedges shooting instant lasers would it?

Of course humans can't fly around in pink skinned humanoid looking ships, but that's because we are humans and know our own architecture pretty well. When it comes to aliens, I think they have to be a lot more clear on what they are, more stereotyphical and playing on preconceptions.
SC does this a lot, the crazy species look crazy (wobbly eye Spathi), the foul ones look foul (pig Druuge) etc. It's about taking something from our world that we know what it stands for and paraphrase it. Of course it's allowed to surprise the audience with designs that aren't what they seem, but it's only effective if you do it once or twice.
Otherwise it might be hard to 'read' the game. I think (particulary in 2D) the game elements should be symbols that quicky can be associated with something, and not plausible designs. That's why I work mainly with silhuettes and color for the ships.

My grudge against the Yehat and Pkunk difference is that there's too may differences. Sure, earth species can vary a lot, but they're just changing details that are already there, not removing one detail and add another that belongs to a different order. Is it likely that the Pkunk would drop the whole solid glowing eye construction and develop a completely new eye system with a pupil? It might be that the Yehats actually has a pupil that's very expanded and a retina that is glowing, but I think it's important to use obvious visual indications rather than long hidden explainations that's up to the viewer to guess.

A group photo is a great idea!

Even if his thought processes don't always make sense to us, his brain does contain memories from thousands of ancestors dating back to the days of the Precursors (or whoever the Mycon's creators were). Gotta give props for that.



Nope, it's SC1 manual art. And the Mycon on the combat screen, while they don't have visible legs, are much more humanoid-looking with spindly torsos and arms, compared to the big bulky brain-thing in the comm screen. It's usually obvious that the combat screen aliens are based on the older, more stereotypical-looking conception of the aliens while the comm screens have the most "evolved" and interesting look for the aliens.



The ZFP always seemed frog-like to me, at least the middle guy and right guy. But I really disagree that for it to make sense for a race to have a "tongue" weapon that must be because the race has a natural extending tongue that they catch food with. (Anyway, a better analogue to a frog would be a tongue that reached out and reeled enemy ships in, not that did direct damage to them.) As you say, we don't fly around in pink fleshy ships, and we don't fire rockets because our bodies naturally fire rockets.

I think you *can* pick a middle path between saying froglike aliens have to have froglike ships -- you can make a ship design that's a realistic, mechanical design for a ship that doesn't *directly* reflect a species' actual appearance, but reflects the state of their technology, their culture and their personality. The Spathi Eluder doesn't have to look like a real Spathi -- it just has to play into the Spathi's apparent love of bright color and their intense, irrational agoraphobia and paranoia, leading to a ship made of interconnected cramped little chambers. The ZFP are basically a weak race that's not too good at getting things done, so it makes sense that their ship is a kind of rickety bucket of bolts with a rather impractical design for a main weapon -- some sort of laser or ram that doesn't go very far. (Making a ship that was actually a tribute to their own physiology would probably be too advanced for the ZFP, and would probably also be impossible given that all three of them look pretty different.) The Melnorme Traders should be big and bulky to carry lots of cargo, and have an exotic, weird weapon system. And so on.



Nuh-uh. Not in historical time. The difference between us and other hominids is something that developed over millions of years, thousands of times the age of our oldest recorded history. I highly doubt that the Pkunk split off so long ago from the Yehat that evolution had time to make all of the rather significant changes we see, given that they remember when the exile happened in historical time, remember the name of the first Pkunk, and so on Biologists do consider things like a radically differently shaped skull or a differently structured eye to be significant changes, things for which the genes won't magically appear overnight. The differences between human males and females are many, many times older than our history, but even then the differences are in scale and in development of secondary structures -- human males are *not* as hugely different in the basic shape of their bones as Pkunk seem to be from Yehat. Nor do they have a dramatically different eye structure, something else that signifies a pretty big gulf between species.

Either Pkunk and Yehat were originally different subspecies from the beginning (and there are signs that the Pkunk are the descendants of some kind of servant caste among the Yehat) or else the Pkunk's changes are the result of supernatural mutation from their contact with divine forces (very in character for the Pkunk).

 

The ZFP, in my view, seem to be pretty primative when it comes to space travel and it doesn't seem as if they've had much assistance from other races over the years.  Hence their ship is weak.  Their "tongue" is merely a tube that attempts to drill into the other ship's hull and fill it with some hot plasma, most likely a byproduct of the engines/reactor.

The Spathi ship does have bright colors.  This may be due to their like of bright colors or possibly even a primative defense mechanism.  They believe that hostiles will automatically target the brighter colors of the ship rather than the central sphere.
Also, I believe I have read that the parts extending off of the central sphere are mainly used as decoys of sorts.  They hope enemy fire will hit those spheres rather than the center mass.

I do definately agree with your assessment of the Melnrome Trader vessel.  Heck, their weapons could even be designed after the Rainbow worlds.  Maybe they've discovered a way to utilize the worlds themselves as some sort of energy source.  That would explain their interest as well as their seemingly exotic weapon.

On the subject of the Earthling Cruiser, it's brought up that it's too Star Trek-like.  Well, if Star Trek still exists by that time, why WOULDN'T they make their ships similar to that?  Generations would have grown up thinking that's what starships should look like.  Makes sense, no?

Weapons are also dependant on a designer's mindset and the technology available.  Earth had a crapload of Nukes and leftover missile interception lasers.  They installed them on their ships.  The Human mindset is also that if you fire a laser, you can hit them before they hit you.  In some cases, that's true.  The Spathi put more development time in a REAR-firing missile system.  It matches their mental state.  They expected to flee more than fight head to head.

I'd try to go into more depth...  But tired.  lol

I wouldn't put it beyond the Pkunk to have acquired ancient knowledge through supernatural means (memories from previous incarnations?). But further research shows some more convincing support for your claim: "To be more specific, we are an off-shoot of the Yehat species
-- a peaceful, empathic off-shoot! -- which fractured from the Yehat race early in its Space Age."
Point for you.


There's another genetic trick that could features things like this. Genes can become inactive and remain inactive for a very long time, and resurface many generations later, because of some random mutation.
Perhaps these traits were already present in the genetic structure of the species from an earlier age.


Or artificial mutation...

Very nice work, I'd honestly like to see you try your hand at a Yehat. So far most of your work is very pleasing, except for the ZFP, the eye guy must have but a single eye only, :)

With regards to the ZFP spaceship design though, it highly resembles an insect. It's design is very insect like, it's weapons are also very insect like. Even it's accuracy is insect like (insects can do amazing stuff, but fumble on accuracy). I'd say that the ZFP based their ship design on the insects native to their planet.

This could only mean one thing. FRUNGY HAS SOMETHING TO DO WITH INSECTS!

Yes, it all comes back to frungy in the end :)

To clear up the spathi ship-design and decoy projections:
http://www.classicgaming.com/starcontrol/sc1/spattech.shtml
Move your mouse over the image of the ship..

It's quite easy to know why they did this, though: they imagine an alien would target the CENTER of the thing first, as that is the biggest thing.. The colorisation makes sense, too: If you were to shoot at one of the outer 4 orbs, you would probably shoot at the blue or purple ones, simply because those make you look at them because of their colorisation....

About the Pkunk appearing to be a "newborn" race because they knew the name of the one that said "rup-rup-BGAAAK!": Didn't they also know that you were going to destroy the Sa-Matra? :) Makes sense for them to know about the "first pkunk"...

This is kinda off topic, but you have to wonder what the Spathi do with all the extra space. Think about it, 30 (I think) can fit in the smallest module, so what does that say about the bigger ones?  ::)

I'm not sure if this is from SC2 or SC3 but a Spathi has indeed said that all the modules sticking out from the central module are decoys. The central module might even be a decoy as well. Anyways, only one of the pods is 'real'.

The main module (at least according to the link, which I think is correct) says that the main module is a fake, along with everyone of the pods except one of the small ones.

Yes, yes, agreed. This is the kind of stuff I need your assistance with. I'm not yet familiar with the personalities of all the species, just their appearance.

To tell the truth I haven't gotten very far into the game yet. I got UQM a week or less ago, and being a fan of unlinear exploration games, I liked it. I'm very disappointed at modern games, it's a pity all this processing power isn't used for 2D awesomeness.

I found a page with all the quotes on, but I don't want to spoil the surprises for myself. At the same time I must, if I want to do better designs, sigh.


I updated the project page (http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/main.php?id=scemain) with subpages and stuff. I got some roughs up of the Yehat and Pkunk if You scroll down.

Damn I cracked when I saw the Pkunk parrot. :D

I must say I like the right-most Yehat Terminator the best. The bottom-most has too many Kilrathi features and the upper-most looks like a ... bulk. :P Pkunk Fury look weird though.

I was actually waiting to see a B-2 Spirit styled Earthling ship as well. It's "cornery". And alltogether, "wing" designs have been popular.

And the Chenjesu looks too metallic for my taste, not enough crystalline construction. But that's just me.

Hmm... if you really haven't gotten that far in the game yet, it may be early for you to be making design decisions, since some of the coolest stuff about the races is stuff that doesn't get revealed until later on.

The biggest thing I can think of is the Mycon -- I don't know whether your choice to change the Mycon's history was a deliberate one or not, but it omits the single most interesting and cool aspect of the Mycon. (I won't give it away; let's just say that it *does* make sense for the Mycon to have tons and tons of subspecies, each very, very well adapted to a very specific task.)

There's a few other details from the games that affect your choices, too. For example you've made the Yehat truly humanoid with large, well-developed legs, which makes them look a little more humanlike and makes it easier to identify with them, but makes it a lot harder to imagine them actually flying, and there are aspects of their personality that depend on the fact that they're a flying, not walking, species. (Like their natural, homing-pigeon-like ability to navigate over long distances using magnetic fields; the fact that the Yehat can naturally sense magnetic fields ties into some of their unique features, like their ability to devise a magnetic energy-shield for their ships.) In general I think the idea of Yehat who can't walk and move by flying makes them much more alien to us humans, and it's important that they be alien in little ways like this because they're so... well... human in other ways.

The idea that Furies are based on an actual animal is cute; perhaps the "lowly Pootworm" has a short-lived adult flying form? Furies should look very "organic" -- not literally made of biological parts, but as though they're designed so that a Pkunk pilot can very naturally control it with the direct movements of his body. They're intimately linked to their pilots to the degree that their weapons are powered by the pilots' own emotional rage, and the ships themselves resurrect when the pilots' spirits do.

No real quarrels with the Earthling ships, though I do think it is a cool idea that humans in the future should be influenced by our ancient fictions, like Star Trek, when building their real-life ships. (It's not that far-fetched when you think about it.) Obviously there are problems with having a ship that's *too* detailed and obviously based on the Enterprise, but it would be a cool idea in general for human ships to be built with many nods to real-life traditional ideas of what spaceships would look like -- I like your idea of using real-life naval designs for inspiration, but perhaps some stylings from early NASA spacecraft can be brought in too. I can't imagine a human ship designer wouldn't be thinking about the Apollo missions and the Space Shuttles when making the first Cruisers.

About the Utwig: their place in the story might be silly, but they're actually one of the least silly ideas in the game, from my perspective. I think the idea of having a skeletal, never-seen Utwig body, constantly changing into different masks (and perhaps whole outfits based around the mask) for different moods and different social positions, is quite cool. It would be interesting to see an Utwig wearing a very ornate, martial costume for going into battle, and then see what's somehow recognizably the same Utwig dressed completely differently in plain, drab clothes for mourning or light, casual clothes for leisure.

Also, my main problem with your drawing of the ZFP is that they *are* linked by the big googly eyes. The big joke with the ZFP is that the three species are almost completely unlike each other (except in their small size and relative weakness) and the juxtaposition of their having to constantly cooperate is funny. Hence one species with an enormous eye and no mouth, one species that bounces around without limbs, one delicate, plantlike species waving in the wind... The Zebranky should be similarly different from all three, and should probably also be much larger and more threatening-looking. (That was the picture in my head, anyway, and why I laughed so loudly when the ZFP matter-of-factly describe how their grand alliance annihilated their predators.)

All that aside, I really love your drawings so far and hope you keep it up. Hope one fan's perspective of the personality behind the series helps you find inspiration.

Other comment: I don't know what you mean by the Mmrnrhrrm and Chenjesu engaging in "total war"; if you mean that they warred against each other, this is really out of character for both races as they're (vaguely) portrayed in the SC2 universe. The Unification Process was a specific plan agreed upon by both races in order to oppose the Ur-Quan, not something forced by one race upon another -- the races were good friends since the Mmrrnmhrm's arrival, and the Mmrrnmhrm might've had a much tougher time surviving if not for Chenjesu help.

Also, we're meant to be given the impression that the Unification is the result of the amazingly ridiculously powerful Chenjesu technology and not because of any natural compatibility between the two species. Heck, the Chenjesu might've merged with humans if they'd had to, though that might be a good deal harder because of how delicate humans are. In any case the Process was an incredibly technologically intensive procedure that took lots of investment to do, not a natural merging of the two races.

The alien-ness of the Chenjesu comes mainly through the fact that they *are* "technology" (refined and powerful on the level that other races only get through artifice). Their crystalline bodies naturally create the machines they need in crystalline form, from the soup of exotic compounds they live in -- they have to, since they don't have any appendages to do "normal" work with. Thus everything made by Chenjesu, including the Broodhome, is crystalline -- and the existence of "robot" crystals like the Broodhome's DOGI may mean that the line between Chenjesu reproduction and manufacture of smart machines, and the line between Chenjesu and their machines, is blurry. That's one of the major factors that probably allowed the Chenjesu as a species to be able to merge with the Mmrrnmhrrm. We're meant to look at them kind of in awe as thoug their whole society were a gigantic, pulsing, crystalline super-machine, and their Broodhomes reflect that. So while I like your design as one for a Chmmr ship, I think making Chenjesu ships more "realistically" technological-looking takes a lot away from the spirit of the Chenjesu.

Here's some new ZFP color roughs, more like the originals. I just ran into them but when I goto their system I get killed by tons of wormships after talking to ZFP on their planet. I guess you have to be quick in and quick out.
The green one got a root with some leafs on. I'm not sure if the vines are drum-sticks or eyes, but I attached them more at the root of the creature. The Eye is just a 'bag' with a silly head popping out, and a trunk/tongue.

(http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/zfp.jpg)

Where I'm currently at: Spathi has shielded, ZFP invited me (I get killed by worms), probes replicating (their homeworld is too far away), I talked to the Syreens and got the Mycon egg, but I read I need to talk to the trader to 'activate' the Syreen.

I'll be changing stuff as I make my way through the game. As said, I need some more info on the species before I can draw stuff, but... well, it's very hard for me not to draw nonstop, and it's not like it's impossible to just change things as I go.


As for the human ships, I might make them NASA black and white style for the fighters.

The reason I had for making the Yehat more humaniod was that I thought the wings would be too clumpsy. I read somewhere, that if a human had wings, they'd need to be 6+6 meter to support flight, and the muscles would need to be huge. Those wings attached to the arms-hands would make it hard to cook and construct microprocessors (well, zfp managed and they pretty much only have torsos).
I thought about putting them on the back, like on an angel, or figure out some new joint and fold system.

A lot of things can be pushed in one direction or the other when I color. For the Chmmr/Chenjesu my idea was that they kept some of the 'avatar' fighter look after my proposed split. Why the split? Well, I didn't like Chmrr much, and I liked Mhrhrm* a lot. I thought Chenjesu was rather boring so I sort of made them something inbetween.

I'll probably change the Mycon story later. It was just a theaory I had when I saw the blue plasma ball on their head.


It's really fun to design life planets. Here's one with just a big 'golf-green' and mystical walking metal tripods (no explaination).

(http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/grassplanet.jpg)

Can't you tell? Its a precursor weather station!  :D

Anyway, the Zot-Fot-Pik look VERY good. Just have one question about it though. For some reason, I don't remember or don't picture the green one having a belly like that. The blue one looks perfect to me though....

Good job!

Ooh, nice ZFP designs. They definitely make the little guys look more like real, complete living animals rather than doodles.

The thing about the Yehat is that one of the things that makes them alien is that they don't necessarily come from a planet that looks like Earth. I forget whatever the actual stats were for the Yehat homeworld in the game, but I believe the surface gravity was meant to be a lot lower than Earth's, allowing something Yehat-sized to at least glide with its wings, if not fly continuously under its own power. I agree, though, that there is a difficult trade-off between limbs that are flexible manipulators (arms) and limbs that have a lot of surface area to catch lift (wings), and making the wings more vestigial might be a good idea. I don't know, it's just that to me the Yehat with big strong legs looks distorted, especially since the Yehat's design resembles a pterodactyl more than anything else and it's weird to me to see a pterodactyl on ostrich legs.

I think the creators may have shared your disdain for Chenjesu appearance, given that we never see Chenjesu in the game nor get a clear idea of what Chenjesu look like (they may not even have a consistent appearance -- every crystal may look different). But I do find it fascinating to speculate about the Chmmr and just how the Process worked. I personally think looking at a Mmrrnmhrrm body that's been encrusted and warped out of shape with crystalline structures all over would be pretty cool, though that might just be me. (It can look distorted and painful, if you intention is to show that the Process is flawed and slowly undoing itself.)

Nice pictures. I especially like the Fot.


I suspect that's mostly because Humans have solid bones, while birds' bones are hollow. Yehat are bound to have hollow bones too if they can fly.


Yikes! One big cricket planet, with the wickets already in place. Well, as long as they stand still.

While I would prefer to remain silent (the talent showcased here speaks well enough for itself, and needs no help from me), I figured I'd throw some ideas on the fire, if you're looking for conceptual designs for ships and races.  Here's something I wrote on PNF regarding a seperate project:

---
In my mind's eye, when I just imagine the characteristics of the races, and try to visualize appropriate tech for them, ignoring the ships from the game, I imagine Ur-Quan ships as gigantic floating cities, capable of raining several square miles of concentrated fire on a planetary target.  An attack from one would look like a "rain of fire", with millions of fiery bolts emanating in any direction they choose, and with a range capable of laying waste to an entire hemisphere simultaneously.  In other words, a "planetary siege unit", enormous, unstoppable, and unbelievably powerful.
 
I imagine the Chenjesu, in a similar vein, as commanding enormous "battle snowflakes", intricate crystalline structures, crackling with energy (of course, electricity needs an atmosphere to arc through, so maybe it's atmospheric containment :) ) and capable of raining billions of crystalline shards upon their intended targets, tearing them to pieces.
 
The Yehat, I have always imagined as partial to beautifying their weapons of war, as well as finding glory in one-on-one combat.  As such, their ships would be large, elegant-looking carriers, filled with vast numbers of single-person fighters, each equipped with shielding (cuz they're Yehat) and packed with weaponry capable of annihilating a vessel several times its size.
 
The only ship design I cannot re-imagine is the Mycon Podship.  I think the aesthetic is just perfect there. ;) I am also partial to the Spathi design, but I like to imagine them as much bigger, more asymmetric, and occasionally I think it would be funny if the ship could break itself into pieces, casting fully-functional, well-armed "decoys" into harms' way while the crew sections flee to safer locations.
 
As for the rest, well, I've tried not to think about this thing too much, lest I go mad.  ;)

Oy! Interesting to hear battleship ideas.

I just did the Ultron mission, and the Supox+Utwig moved into battle. Are there any game mechanics behind that or does the fleet spheres just move (and shrink it seems)?

After encountering the utwig, I realized that I need to give them a more depressed suit, the one I drew looks too neutral. Maybe I'll give the mask a 'the crow' makeup and toss on a hood, make sad eye holes. Mainly black colors. Would it be out of character to give them a colorful party suit? Are they ever balloon party happy?

I got a new Yehat concept I'll scan in a bit. I made them very tall, and wrapped the wings around their body like a cloak, sort of. Might work better.


I also had the idea of Spathi dumping parts of their ship. It's so them somehow.

ZFP could have some sort of grapling arms at the front on their ships. I'm not sure what the insect legs are doing there now. I made some sketches for the zebranky. I'm not sure if they were a similar species, or a large predator like say the T-rex. Maybe the zebranky is the model behind the ZFP ships? (ie. a licky tounge ZFP-style toad)

Unfortunately, you'll never get to see whole fleets of ships in combat with other ships. It's a shame; the only way to learn about the battle is to watch the sphere of influence shrink, and to hear about it by interviewing the Utwig, Supox and Zoq-Fot-Pik.



POSSIBLE SPOILER:















Yes, the crippling depression is actually a fairly recent thing. They're quite chipper when they have a working Ultron. (Though, unfortunately, they have no time to manufacture any new masks and costumes during the game, so you don't get to see what a happy Utwig looks like.)



Grappling arms would make the tongue-like weapon make a lot more sense, if the tongue does in fact work by directly injecting reactor fuel from the core. (Pretty unwieldy idea for a weapon, as far as I can tell; you'd *have* to be able to hold the other ship in place for that to work at all well in real life.) Though I always thought of the arms as being exposed magnetic-field generators to contain the cone of antimatter pellets that Stingers fire as their primary weapon.

My impression was always that Zebranky were enormous (to a ZFP) predators that were much larger and more horrifying than the the ZFP. It better justifies the awed, hushed tones in which the ZFP seem to speak of their ancient predators, and it makes sense if a single Zoq, Fot or Pik is a meal to a Zebranky the way one rocky fungal clinger or cloud of airborne zooplankton is to one Zoq, Fot or Pik. And of course it's all about the humorous ironic juxtaposition of the tiny Zoq, Fot and Pik somehow being able to ally and kill off enormous T-Rex like predators. :)

Updated with some scribbles and nerdy text: Project page (http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/main.php?id=sce)

Changed the chenjesu-chmmr thing.

(http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/sce/chenjesu2.jpg)

(http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/sce/chmmr.jpg)


And I just completed the game, so now I'm familiar with the stuff a bit better. Is there anywhere I can see the extro sequence?

I like what you've done so far but I dont really like what you've done with the Shofixti so far. They're meant to be the suicidal, honourable, half feral Samurai style society that impressed the Yehat so much that they took it upon themselves to "Uplift" their race.

Cute does not suit them. Thats what the Zoq-Fot are for, the Shofixti are meant to tear you to shreds or die trying (and die a lot :P).

Still you've been doing some excellent work.

I also read that part about the bases you mentioned. Try giving Star Control 1 a whirl and see how that pans out. It had a fairly balanced resource system and each world had a use (Life Worlds for Crew, Mineral Worlds for StarBucks, dead worlds as... fortification fodder :)).

That chenjesu/chmmr looks nice... ^^


About the ending movie:
http://www.classicgaming.com/starcontrol/3do/movies.shtml
either that, or open the content zip (\content\packagesuqm-0.3-content.zip) and extract all files in the "slides\ending" folder (from within the zip, that is). Now you can read the PC ending sequence, and look at it's images... Nothing much, though...

Oh, you mean you didn't find Tanaka in the original game to be cute? You're weird. :)

Seriously, a lot of the fun in this game comes from the wacky juxtaposition of a species' culture with how humans happen to view that species' physiology. Shofixti are *super*-cute, because they're all tough and honorable and stuff while also happening to be little fuzzy kangaroo things.

Not really, the humorous juxtaposition with the Yehat and the Shofixti were that the Yehat were birds of prey that admired the Shofixti.

Thing is, Birds of prey often eat rats and the like :)

They were never "Cute". As I said thats what the Zoq-Fot are for.

For ugliness though, I think it's stiff competition between the Umgah (Har har har!) and the Ilwrath.

Umm... they *were* cute. You seriously never reacted to the Tanaka comm screen with "Awww..."?

The trope of "aggressive, tough, bellicose little cute guy" is pretty old, and it's *especially* common in anime, which the whole Shofixti comm screen, music and voice acting were meant to evoke. The ZFP are *also* cute, but in a "we're helpless and stupid bickering little guys" kind of way, which is a very different kind of cute.

And the Yehat didn't "admire" the Shofixti, per se. They nurtured and cared for them like parents for children; the Yehat were definitely the superiors and the Shofixti inferiors (at least before the Yehat betrayal), so the whole birds of prey vs. little mammals thing actually made some sense. I never thought of it as being particularly ironic. I never thought much about the Yehat being supposed to be like Earth birds anyway -- the Pkunk were much more birdlike, while the Yehat looked like some kind of pterodactyl. The Shofixti weren't exactly supposed to be based on field mice, either, even if they're supposed to be smaller than humans -- they were carnivores and predators, after all.

From the manual:

Touche. But it's still a condescending sort of admiration, no? They didn't look *up* to the Shofixti; they admired them for being so primitive yet embodying so many good Yehat values, and took it upon themselves to teach them and lead them.

I haven't read anything in the manual or the game that would suggest any condescending attitude.

The fact that the Yehat admired the Shofixti doesn't mean they value every aspect of the race. I would guess it's just (part of) their culture that they admire.
It may be that in other aspects the Yehat look down on the Shofixti, but considering the choice of words ("foster-species", "adopted"), it looks more like a parental relation to me, with the Yehat stimulating the development of the Shofixti.

The whole idea of "uplifting" and of one whole species becoming the "parent-species" of another "child-species" seems sort of condescending to me. Not in a truly negative way, just meaning that the Yehat consider themselves to have reached a superior level of culture and feel duty-bound to help the Shofixti reach it; the relationship is still one where the Yehat are in the superior position and the Shofixti in the inferior. (The person who brought up this point made it sound like the Yehat worshiped the Shofixti or thought of the Shofixti as *their* superiors.)

It is stated that their helping the Shofixti includes giving them a real cultural and social infrastructure, teaching them the doctrines of Yehat ancestor-worship, and so on besides just giving them technology.

If you call that condescending, you could call any parent-child or techer-pupil relationship condescending.
It's just a matter of definition then.

Yes, it is a matter of definition. The first poster said that it was funny that the Yehat admired the Shofixti because the Shofixti were smaller and weaker than they were; this is only ironic if the Yehat "admire" the Shofixti in terms of being frightened or awed by them, and seeing themselves as inferior. There's nothing ironic about it if it's admiration from superior to inferior (whether you want to use the word "condescending" with its negative connotations or not).

Some creatures from the game.

(http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/c_stiletto_urchin.jpg)

(http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/c_fungal_squid.jpg)

Experimenting with faces.
(http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/c_blood_monkey.jpg)

(http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/c_blood_monkey2.jpg)

Wow, those look great! I especially like your rendering of the octopi-thingies. Do you plan on drawing ZEX's Beauty at some point?

Indeed the "Fungal Squid" is done well. You'll find somewhat detailed (read: none) information of them here (http://www.classicgaming.com/starcontrol/sc2/bio.shtml).
Well, at least all the creatures are there.

Most interested I am of Yompin Yiminy and Penguin Cyclops. Especially the latter, since they are so valuable. ;D

I made my own creature ref sheet with the gfx from the game folder so I get all the frames. I think the carousel beast is my favourite.

(http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/c_misc.jpg)

(http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/c_zexbeast.jpg)

Bahahahaha! That is so damn cool. Do you mind if I use your fine drawing of the beast as my avatar?

Hey Arne, draw a Merry Whumpet.

Whoa.. that Fungal Squid looks nice! ^^

Perhaps try a Whackin' Bush? (this has nothing to do with the elections)

Or a penguin cyclops?

I'll try to do them all ;D

Silly:
p1 (http://itchstudios.com/psg/junk/versus.jpg)
p2 (http://itchstudios.com/psg/junk/versus2.jpg)
p3 (http://itchstudios.com/psg/junk/versus3.jpg)


Hall> sure.

I *love* that comic.  For posterity, the matchups depicted are as follows:

Matchup	Winner
Humans vs. Cyberdyne model T-800	Cyberdyne model T-800
Cyberdyne model T-800 vs. Daleks	Daleks
Daleks vs. Giger's Alien	Giger's Alien
Giger's Alien vs. Godzilla	Godzilla
Godzilla vs. Galactus	Galactus
Galactus vs. Superman	Superman
Superman vs. The Borg Collective	The Borg Collective
The Borg Collective vs. The Ur-Quan Hierarchy	The Ur-Quan Hierarchy
The Ur-Quan Hierarchy vs. The LEXX	The LEXX

I disagree with everything after the Godzilla battle on general principle.  Godzilla would defeat them all!  :)

You forgot the Triffids?

(http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/c_merry.jpg)

I asked before but it got lost in the backlog- do you mind if I use your fine drawing of the beast as my avatar?

Hey, I'm a long time lurker whom finally decided to make himself known.

Arne, Dude, your art is nothing short of awesome. I espically like the first few drawings of the yehat and the pkunk. I honestly can't wait till we get to see some more ship designs, cute fuzzy aliens, and perhaps even some of the illwrath's evil house pets.

I have to say I'm incredibly impressed myself. What I wouldn't do to have UQM updated with high-res Arne art...

*SWIPE*

I would agree with you, good sir! Hell, I'd figure out some way that I could help out with the UQM project so we could have his art in an update of the game!

I can see it now, animated Arne art as the the backdrop, the precursers providing the BGM, and... um... I doono, a pro voice cast reproducing the original dialogue, with variations on diffrent aliens, so that way, you don't always talk to the same voiced pkunk or spathi!

It will be grand!

edit:
Arne, If I may, add a suggestion to one thing, the illwrath ship, I noticed that it has a second pair of -wings-, what would you think of ditching the curved wing for the shorter ones, or perhaps give it three wings in a foreward swept configuration. The thrid, being on the underside, giving the ship a profile similar to a Y.

I need to balance the highlights/values on this one, but the detail is there. It's a bit too bright and bouncy. I might add a 'FRIED' weapons dome at the center.
(http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/sce/kohr-ah.jpg)

As for making UQM art, I'm just going to paint up as much as I feel like, then what happens with it is undecided. My main idea with this project was to do different shiptypes for each species.



Hall> Answered above...

Kaaht> I changed the wings on the Ilwrath ship but didn't erase, that's why it looks a  bit strange. I'll probably go for the  --C wingstyle rather than (--  ...or maybe not. I'll do some tests.

Shiver> you can crop and resize to 64^2, and maybe upload the avatar to this server or your own.

Ah, I didn't see that! Thanks!
Ok, GIMPin' time.

(edit)By the way, the Kohr-ah looks fantastic.

(http://biology.swau.edu/faculty/petr/ftphotos/hawaii/steve/ng2.jpg)


here is a nice Kohr-Ah, to go with that ship of yours.
can't wait to see more of the evil aliens.

Why bother? The auto-resize thing that normally messes up all the avatars I try to use makes this thing look okay.

Shiver> The image loads from my server, which is bad for my bandwidth. Since the image is rescaled with a HTML attribute, namely width and height, the file size remains the same (24KB), and it takes longer to load. It's also distorted since the full image isn't an exact square. Furthermore, most browsers use bad scaling algoritm, greating a gritty look (see below).

Anyways, here's an example of how it can look if you crop a bit, rescale to 65x65 and sharpen a tad. I'm not sure if GIF (or PNG) loads faster than JPG, but it might. These are just 3-4KB too.
JPG --------- GIF
(http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/sce/c_merry_a1.jpg) (http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/sce/c_merry_a1.gif)
(http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/sce/c_merry_a2.jpg) (http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/sce/c_merry_a2.gif)


As for scaling down to sprite/avatar size, see this Illustration (http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/junk/knightscale.jpg)
(Screenshot from a program of mine)

1a. is PS with one sample pixel per 10x10 source pixels. This gives a crisp result, but it's a very bad representation of the original. It might miss stuff like the pupil in an eye because it samples a bad pixel. When rotating or animating this becomes much more obvious, and it flickers and jags terribly.  

1b. is PS and bilinear (AntiAliasing) scaling. It works well for larger images and gives a good representation of the source image since all the source pixels are used to produce the result. However, it doesn't work so well for scaling down to small sizes, since it blurs the image with all the averaging. A cure to this can be:

1bS. ...sharpening (66% fade), but it still doesn't look as good as:

2. ...my own scaling algoritm and something of an inbetween of the above methods. I used the 10X original and 4 [::] sample points per 10x10 source pixels. It also outlines the alpha edges properly.
Here's my 5X scaling. Note how the 1 sample point scaling ruins the edges with a dark background.
Illustration (http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/junk/5xscaletest.jpg)

Okay, but I don't have any server of my own so there's nowhere to store it. I can either switch to the bottom right GIF with your permission or use something different.

This (http://www.imageshack.us/) will help you.

In that case, I'll just use this Jet thing instead.

Wow, what a total non-sequitur!  ;D

oh well...

Drall (B/W)
(http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/sce/drall.jpg)

Brown Ur-Quan destroyer WIP. The round holes are turret slots.
(http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/sce/ur-quan.jpg)


I'm going to design an antagonist to replace Kohr-Ah / Kzer-Za. I'm thinking since the worm guys survived a loop around the galaxy they are probably one of the most powerful things out in normal space.

The Androsynth-Orz thing is interesting. Maybe the Orz don't want to discuss Androsynth cuz that would bring up the evil-ghost thing they encountered (that also the lander crewman found out about and locked himself in).
Maybe this evil is beaten by the other-dimensional sentients and is forced to manifest in normal space.... corny?
Of course, it doesn't have to be explained thoroughly, it's more interesting to just give clues and let the player have theories.

More Kohr-Ah
(http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/sce/kohr-ah2.jpg)


As I said earlier, I'm going for battle ship designs with lot's of turrets for the larger ships. Also, I'm designing ships all the way from weak to really powerful for all the species, so the potential is there.

Here's a pretty expensive Earthling destroyer I'm working on. It's a little gritty but on the other hand it's quite big. It has over 30 turrets, and of course giant forward 'torpedo' nukes. The internal space (engines, cargo, scanners, etc) and turrets can be customized. Earthlings will probably use turrets such as short range zaps, flak, guns/cannons, nuke-torpedos, in different sizes.
(http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/sce/earthlings_c.jpg)

Could you do the Precursor ship? That would be awsome considering the way you do art.......

Kohr-Ah ships remind me of Freespace 2 (Shivans) and partly Tyrian. That's good. :P

I would have to agree with Fsi-Dib, They look suprisingly like shevans... Which is awesome, considering that those aliens have some scarry looking ships...

*remembers the Satanis encounter*

Yep, they look a LOT like those.. :)
Only they need to turn red, and have those eerie "arms"... :)

Arne- are you planning to eventually turn this into a playable game, or are you just designing and drawing these cool ships for fun?

Just for fun. Since I code (quite badly) I've looked into the programming part a bit, but I think it's beyond me and my BASIC skills. I'm not so good at C/C++
I don't think the coding part would be that complicated compared to modern 3d games with all the... clipping, normal mapping, bsp ninja stuff. My engine would basically be an RTS thing without any pathfinding (A* and such). The strategy AI would probably be the toughest to code, since the aliens are so diverse. The gfx engine would be very simple, just some rotations and scaling. I'm not even sure I need alpha transperency.

(http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/pkunk_c.jpg)
I was thinking these could sit in a little command tree and tap on floating... console discs or whatever.

What's shivans? I've only seen Lexx, Andromeda and StarTrek (Borg=win).
Edit: Oh, Freespace 2 is a game right?

Arne: Yes, Freespace 2 is probably the best space-simulation game ever made. (see, it's a sequel of an equally good game, just like Star Control!) It's way too hard to find any good picture of the Shivan juggernaut, Sathanas, since the ship is black and the space is black, too (or filled with reb nebulae).

Here (http://www.merzo.net/10mpp.htm) you can find it with other ships too to compare.

Update: Okay, this (http://freespace.volitionwatch.com/techfs/ships/sathanas.shtml) is too, but it's, as I said, black on rather black space with some red nebulae.

Your pkunk looks fabulous!

That page with all the spaceship comparisons would be awesome as a poster.

(http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/mycon_ships.jpg)

Derelict ship (http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/sce/derelicts.jpg)
It would be cool with varios derelict ships floating around in space, to add clues or more mystery. This one is sort of spongy and pretty big. maybe an exploration vessel.
There could also be a 'Bermuda triangle' with lots of stuff floating around.
...and a forgotten Dreadnaught fleet as in the SW Thrawn comics.

Taalo asteroid ship (50% scale) (http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/sce/taalo.jpg)
Taalo astroid ship I'm going to use as a story/intro component. (Gotta add some hues on it, too mono grey)

Wow, a deluge of awesomeness! ;D
That size comparison thing was really cool.
Arne, fantastic work on the mycon and taalo. That's the first drawing i've ever seen done of a taalo ship.

And i'm sure that if you really wanted to make it into a game, there'd be plenty of crack programmers with no graphical skill at all that would want to team up with you. :P

Quoted to bring his selfish request back to the table.....

Here's the Taalo. For my story I was thinking they could appear in normal space with their giant asteroid ship hail the captain, but without saying anything...
Pic (http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/sce/taalo_variants.jpg)

Then the camera zooms out and reveals...
Pic (http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/sce/ur-quan2.jpg)

...who apologizes for his little friend not being very talkative. I flipped the eyes upside down and made a mouth-like line to make it look more friendly.

Maybe there's some sort of emergency in another part of the universe where they bring the captain and some allies, or the original SC2 map just expands, revealing new systems.

edit: I'll be getting to the precursor ships sooner or later...

Supox battle platform WIP (http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/supox2.jpg) - I drew in some turrets here, but they'll be separate later.

Arnie... Wow, just... Wow

I love the Brown ur-quan!
just...


Wow

Edit:
I like the mouth line, sort of...
First off, I like how it makes the ur-quan look happy, but I don't think it should be an actual mouth line... perhaps just one of the many lines that cover the body of the creature and it simply appears like a mouth line... it does make it look almost friendly. The little um... squiggilie thinggys on the lower part of its head, I always though was its mouth. Anyway, any chance we may be able to see the rest of the urquan's body? have it wraped around something or clinging to some sort of insturment pannel?

Anyway, Excelent work. Truly, I am envious of your tallent

I really like the brown ur-quan too. However, all of those ships look the same, or at least share a lot of design features -- many many more than in the game.

Ok. It's decided. THAT is the face of my new house-pet. So cute....must resist...awww.

I love the supox platform!
I think it could use some red or purple for contrast, but it looks awsome.

Kaaht> Yeah the Ur-Quan mouth line is just a decor line, and not a mouth. I could make that clearer by adding other similar lines to the head, but it might make it look gritty.

Death> What ships?


One of my own species. Needs some tweaking but the basic stuff is there. Drew in some temporary turrets.
(http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/crabs_red.jpg)

When I first saw that, I thought: "Burvixeese"... Because of the design of their 'caster...

I always thought Taalo were rocklike creatures? As in: probably not being able to move that much?

Yeah, and it can vacuum your floor AND carry your golf clubs.
Just kidding. It looks great.

I thought the Taalo were different from Chenjesu so I tried making them more creature like, but still a bit odd and artificial looking. I wanted to avoid the, 'just a little round rock'-look.
Maybe they have a stiff silicon-based skin and rock like brain / organs? I would assume they have some sort of limbs, since they are 'slow'. I did draw some other more rock-like designs, but they didn't turn out very well. Maybe I'll post later.


I was toying with the thought of adding a Precursor into the story.

There's a system called 'Hell' which is particulary nasty... hence the name. Lots of hostile nebulas with lightning and sensor/radar jamming properties. All the planets have some sort of hellish atmosphere. This is not a system you want to be in.

On planet 5, or V, an alien ship can be found (with a lot of difficulty).
(http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/hell-v_site.jpg)
Balls of lighning suspected to be sentient.



Because of the nasty conditions, excavating it will take tons and tons of effort.
Once excavated, it will become clear that the ship is a Precursor scout. Inside are the jockeys fossilized remains:
(http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/precursorjockey.jpg)

(Hell V = LV,  so clevar!1)


(http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/precursor2.jpg)
Scout (the one with lights) and a Precursor reconstruction, although I'm not sure if I should have such a clear pic of them.

Ok. The scout does look magnificent; very precursor-y. Quite similar to the Vindicator in style, too. How about a scale comparison? ;)

The fossilized jockey looks wonderfully moody, too; reminds me a lot of the wrecked spaceship in Alien, and the strange figures sitting in their control chairs. (Giger is amazing!)

I think your vision of the big, hairy (blue!), lumbering Precursors look very nice, and pretty close to how I would have imagined them to look, as well.

Only one thing to say: keep up the good work! :D Always looking forawrd to more artwork to please the eye.

Yeah, Giger did a really good job with the Alien designs. They had some early concepts (before Giger came on the project) and if they had used those... well... the alien looked like a x-mas turkey.
Sometimes one person comes along and changes everything to awesome. Sometimes the opposite. :(

Pic (http://itchstudios.com/psg/misc4/giger1.jpg) - Giger inspired pic I did a while ago.

NITPICK: The Burvix Caster was actually built by the Druuge.

Not that that actually matters in this context.

You're sure you're not referring to Giger's actual sketch for the chestburster? It does, in fact, bear a close resemblance to a turkey: http://www.fred-katrin.de/giger/alien/hr_giger_chestburster.jpg

After all, (AFAIK) we never get to see much more of the little fella in the movie than the neck up. Could be this design was actually used... ? It's certainly a disturbing image, perhaps in part because of the familiar yet outlandish appearance.


And the resemblance to a certain portrait of Giger's wife is more than fleeting. ;) But it's a very good piece of work.

You have a very good, pure line in your drawings. Have you considered doing any animation work?

Ah, I see, I was mistaken somewhat, Giger did do that one. The turkey design wasn't used in the movie according to my 'Making of'-book. I think they went for a smaller alien head, perhaps with a lizard/snake body.

Nice Giger site. I haven't looked at his other art really. The pic I did was inspired by someone else's Giger pic, so it was an indirect ripoff I guess. I just wanted to have a go at the flippy thing. It took something like an hr to make.

Ron Cobb did some other alien concepts. Although nicely rendered and designed, they wasn't particulary dramatic or scary. Scroll down on this site (http://www.planetavp.com/al/Alien/BehindtheTerror/).
It's a giant Lobster! The pilot scene can't really stand up to Giger's either.


Animation? I dunno. Never tried it. I'm not very good with posing character in relation to stuff. Gotta brush up my enviroment and perspective skills too.

---

The Space Amazons (aka sexdolls) left earth together with the Androsynth, but diverted. Their ships are mainly small scouts, but there's also a large hangar/mothership.
They keep tentacled creatures as pets, and might pay for information on new tentacled species.
Pic (http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/sce/space_amazons2.jpg)
The inspiration here is manga, Protoss ships, wasps. Yellow and black is my fav color scheme.
You might see certain similarities to the MetalSlug alien/squid, but that 'tako' design is common in many mangas.

Here's (http://itchstudios.com/psg/avatar/ripleyavatar.jpg) another reason why Alien r0x0r my b0x0rz! (also inspired my design)

(Yes this species/design isn't entirely serious, but I couldn't resist)

Wow, I leave for a month, and this whole topic is filled with new art. Excellent work. I also really like the coloring style. The colors you provide make the drawings, literally, “pop” out, giving a cool three-dimensional look to it. Sorry for the seemingly lame and amateurish observation, but I particularly enjoy this aspect in your pictures.

I give you HAPPYHEARTS. As for your drawings, yes, I give them happyhearts too. A winner is you, Arne, and for once I'm using that phrase in a non-sarcastic sort of way.

hahaha I'm so stupid.

That drawing of the female face (that Giger-inspired drawing of yours) looks a LOT like Shodan from the System Shock games.

Just an inane observation from yours truly.

Thanks! I'm glad you like them.

Random ZFP (http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/zfp_c.jpg) doodles. I was thinking since most races have wierd weapons already. Maybe ZFP should have very impractical ...wierd weapons.
Their huge battleplatform might have an absurdly oversized tongue weapon, or a lot of small ones extending in all directions once activated.
Their guns are pretty much inaccurate like tommyguns that go "piupp-piupp-piupp!"

Other weapons they could use are grapling hooks (tractor beams are too complicated), grip claws, maybe some sort of reactor grenade/mine that shoots out a cable to the target and winds itself in?

A bola/ball-chain is another idea. Ther were used back in the day to cut ship masts with. Buckshots. Old battleship stuff maybe? That would connect well with ramming and graplinghooking.


Edit: Pic (http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/zfp_cx.jpg) - Quick paintpucket + doodling to show how it looks in relation to the original ship. This version could be a giga tongue version.

Wow, I love the Taalo! I had envisioned them as hulking, rocky creatures. You make them look so cute and friendly! :D

As for the Precursors, they were almost exactly as I had envisioned them. The only difference is the large, bony neck and head, which is way cooler than anything I have come up with.

I think that your designs for the ZFP look almost too menacing. It looks to me like that it might actually fire something powerful. The long barrel reminds me of a cannon more than a pea-shooter. Also, your doodle of their large ship looks a lot like the Kohr-Ah, dunno if that was intentional or not.

Also something you might want to do is draw up how a game of frungy works. I know I had a blast thinking of the cooperative roles the Zoq, Fot, and Pik would play, and in what kind of strange arena. I did make a few sketches, but I reaaaaaly suck at drawing so I don't plan on posting them. :-/

The sexdoll idea is excelent! I tell ya, the idea to throw the tenticled 'tako' style creatures was pure genious. Simply Excelent.

Perhaps the Amazons have a grudge against the Syreen as well as the humans for reasons I shouldnt need to mention ;D

The thought of designing a frungy game certainly occured to me, but at the same time, maybe it's one of those mysteries that should be kept a mystery, just like who's fot.

I'll see how the ZFP ships turns out when painted up. Maybe I'll have to 'cutify' them.


I'm probably gonna use the red ships for another species than the crabs, now I'm leaning more towards these two versions..
(http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/crabs_orange.jpg)



btw, I coded some games myself, including an asteroid shooter with some physics and particle effects. Not sure if I showed it.
open dir (screenshots) (http://w1.485.telia.com/~u48508900/games/)

*Transforms into a South Park episode*

"Crab people ... crab people..."

Actually, the game code is pretty clear about who's the fot.

Meep> Does it matter if the code says it though, as that's not ingame information?



(http://itchstudios.com/psg/sce/crabs_orange2.jpg)

As with all ships, I tried to mimic how nature works, ie. by morphing details and shapes in small steps. I'll end up with a lot of designs but I think that's cooler than having two versions that looks like they don't belong together.


Since it will be difficult to see what going on if there's too many shiptypes, the AI will go for certain combos and/or there is a flat-rate for inventing ships, preventing them from getting too many types.


The stats for the ships will be calculated by a formula. I will simply draw an outline around the ship in a certain color, then a routine will calculate the volume by producing slices. The color of the line indicates the rough shape of the hull, like round, flat oval, box, flat box, rhomb, flat rhomb. It should give much better results than estimates while being very simple to draw.

After that I'll assign how many percent is armour, it's weight, how much is free internal space, engines, etc.

So for these crabs, I'll specify that the hull is thin/flat and oval, the armour is thick chitinoid, they have a single front weapon, powerful side thrusters (they're crabs yo) and a lot of other stuff I can't think of now.

Because they only have one front weapon, it will automatically be powerful since all the weapon energy will be assigned to it. It will all be multiplied with the efficiency of the technology for the species.

It shows the intent of the creators. And that's what most people consider canon.

!

Which one's the Fot?!  The middle guy?

The earthling destroyer and carrier and large destroyer look almost identical to the Mmrnmhrm ship. The Kzer-Za design is roughly similar, at least displaying similar esthetics.

The Kohr-Ah ships posted on Oct 26/27 (depending on time zone) and the Supox battlestation have a very similar wide turret style, though they differ in color (big deal). I think it's the way the Supox come out to blade-like protrusions, much like the sweep of the Kohr-Ah ship you drew. Note that this is sharply in contrast to the blocky industrially simple Kohr-Ah ship design we see in the game.

The Mycon and Chenjesu are well-differentiated from the other races. Similarly with the Yehat and Pkunk, though I was surprised that the Pkunk ended up so angular; in SC2, their ship was one of the more flowing designs, and this fits with their attitude.

Yes! As I understand it, the game code refers to the Green guy as the Zoq, the middle one as the Fot, and the blue thingy as the Pik.

I would like to say your work is AWSOME!

It just makes me sad that no big company is going to invest its time and money into this great universe that is created.... they should hire you as the artist.....

The only race I don't agree with is the Shofixti, they looked better while they were rat-fox like..... instead of mouse like.... at least they looked cool from waht I saw in SC2

Hey the top right of the 1st picture.... is that the animal the the Spathi were so scared of...?


I never got that... did they ACTUALLY harm the spathi, or were the spathi just really scared of them?

I thought the Taalo where um.... like the chenjestu all like crystal like... hmm :-\

From the resource guide:

The Spathi High Council mentions about the Evil Ones enjoying the "sweet Spathi flesh" too, so I'm guessing yes, they munched on Spathi.

I thought the spathi high counsil was just so scared they made stuff up... being as they were cute, and I don't even thing touching them made em attack you....

Maybe the Evil Ones go into hibernation when there's not enough food around? I believe there are species that employ this particular survival technique on Earth, although I'm not sure which ones , so don't quote me on that.

actually, when you touch them, they cause massive damage... don't ever run over one unless you have the special lander shield.

and I also agree... they are cute... EVILY CUTE... with... evil... and such...

Aye.  They cause alot of damage.  I even lost my lander to one the first time I was playing with UQM.  Still getting used to the controls.  meh.

I imagined the Syreen world when it was being terraformed by the Mycon.

(http://www.classicgaming.com/starcontrol/fan/images/pablo/syreavolcano1b_small.jpg)

See bigger pic at  http://www.classicgaming.com/starcontrol/fan/3drender13.shtml

What do you think?

I think it looks great! I remember looking through the PONAF 3d Gallery a little while ago and seeing all your stuff, it's really top notch. The one you made of the slave-shielded earth is fantastic- that was my desktop backgroud for a few months.

May people think that you need a top notch computer or doftware.  But they are wrong.  Computers are rigid, unlike pencils.

To make those pics I used MicrograFX Picture Publisher 7 (which is some sort of simpler Photoshop that runs in an AT-80486.  That software came with my cheap scanner.

The 3D software I used is called Trispectives and it is a demo that is somehow buggy.  That demo came with a generic video card that had not hardware acceleration.  The only shapes that could be built were merely geometric.  Forget about modeling plants or human with that software.  Forget even about a smooth japanese-style mecha.

I learned that computer is like a rigid pen.  It brings better finishing but you need to master pen before mastering computer.

So IMO a pencilled work worth far more than a shiny and neat computer graphic.

I also brought that concept of mixing drawings and computer graphics to a comic called "Atarsia" (Copyright (c) José Pablo Luna Sánchez)

See gallery of pics contained in the comic at http://www.geocities.com/galerias01/atarsia.html

The "Atarsia" comic is being published by Plan 9 magazine in Costa Rica.  It's a scifi story of a space cop who had been told a legend about a goddess.  The presence of a strange ship with very high tech (unseen to those days) that hunts criminals brought her (the cop) the idea that it could be the goddess of the legend.

Since then, she is after, as she wants to uncover the mistery of the goddess.

I guess I must than Starcon for keeping the scifi spirit alive.

In Japan, scifi is having a boom.  My guess it is a matter of time before it reaches us.

Hey Arne,

I'd just like to tell you that your artwork is AWSOME!

You have talent enough to work as an artist for the sucessor of Star Control 2 (the one I hope TFB will do some day). Why don't you aply for a job at TFB?

Maybe you get lucky.

Great work man... It's all very !StarControl2' ish"... ;)

In one of your drawings one of the non-sentient creatures is a walking metal tripod walking without a purpose. LMAO! Thats really funny, i mean, ive seen some really bizzare ideas for creatures and some wierd creatures in UQM but that was wierd. Good job though, if they made a Star Control 4, id hope the'd put that in it!

Good work, you should get a job making Star Control 4!!!!

The Pkunk, Utwig, Spathi are the best.
we all wait for finishing the Ultimate Evil drawin :)

(http://forums.ort.org.il/files/30/2257470/2408414.jpg)
[[latest scene]]

Gorgeous.

Don't suppose you'd be up for redoing those 3DO videos, eh? Nudge nudge wink wink say no more. ;D

Arne, would you mind if I used your fanart in the SCII sequel i've just started to make? Looks good - the game will be open-source freeware and you'll get full credit, of course.

- Dean

That goes for Sylandro and anyone else! I'm looking for 3D designs, hand-drawing, concepts, or anything else you can come up with.

- Dean

...so, are you making this sequel all by yourself?

i'm making a mod right now by myself, doing graphics and code, when im done the ships will be updated and there should be some new races. and then after that, if i feel up to it, i'll make a different storyline.

Yes, i'm coding the sequel (called Star Control 2.5 for now, because it will occur in between SCII and SCIII even though SCIII sucked) by myself. I want all the coding glory, plus shared coding with others just causes more confusion than it's worth (IMHO).

All I need are graphics artists, voice actors and composers. Don't jump in yet; i'm only halfway through coding the melee (and need some text ships like on this thread) which I want to get done before I make the main game. I'll release more and put out a public call once I have somthing proper to show for myself. Rest assured that it will be similar to SCII in design (main flag ship, and a large universe you can ACTUALLY TRAVEL, unlike &^%&^% SCIII) but with a few additions, storyline and new ships.

- Dean

Well, are you planning on putting up a webpage (nothing fancy, just something quick and dirty for the ones who are interested)?

Hmm. I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but here goes:

Is there a comprehensive (and by comprehensive, I mean complete) list of all the different fan projects based on the SC2 universe? The list in the Wikipedia includes TimeWarp and Aftermath only. http://uqm.stack.nl/wiki/index.php?title=Links#Similar_games

Thesis: If all the different mods and new games are included in a Wikipedia listing, it will be easier for all of us to check up on progress, and we're less likely to forget all about them.

I'll put up a site once the melee's done. There's a LOT of physics (vectors, gravity, etc.) to consider plus plenty of other stuff. I'm writing the engine to be completly dynamic, so pretty much EVERYTHING can change. Think turrets that only aim in a 50 degree arc, lightning, lasers, guded missles, etc.

This is my second game attempt - the first died after I realised I couldn't do 3D models to save my life. This time it's different, I have SDL and other helper libraries, and the motivation.

The story is yet to be finalised, but will bridge SCII and SCIII. Unlike Timewarp all the ships will be balanced in power and I WILL actually make a game to go with the melee ;).

Before any of you suggests it, YES I will finish this despite the odds. I've always wanted to make a decent game instead of utility programs/embedded systems and now I have the tools.

VOiD, I think that TimeWarp, Aftermath and a derivetive of TimeWarp is it (apart from what i'm doing now and user's mods).

- Dean

In the last few months(in a very slow progress), I animated some scenes of the movie, which is kinda mixed  of the intro and ending.  =]

will include an old alliance vs old hierrarchy battle.  =]
and the ending, starbase and  chmmr removing slaveshield.  =]
now I can work more on it! =] yesterday was my last exam for  the year.  =]

=]
(http://forums.ort.org.il/files/30/2258154/9097577.jpg)

=]

Well, my memory is more fuzzy when it comes to all the different mods out there. It seems like several times a month, someone announces they're working on a mod of some sort, then they're never heard of again; hence my inherent scepticism to solo fan projects. It takes some, well, chutzpah to get things off the ground. If you think you have the chutzpah needed, then good luck! :)

Further developments of this project of yours could be better off in a new thread, mind. I think we've stolen enough of this one as it is.


EDIT: Well, Slylendro, them's some nice-looking graphics. How about  a video snippet?

It's aAHaailive!

Thanks for the compliments!

My project is in hibernation though. It's indeed too much for one man to finish, but I'm doing it cuz I enjoy drawing stuff (the journey). I have no expectations of ever seeing it finished.


Edit: the thread over at PoNaF is slightly more updated than this one.

that is some awesome fan art guys. keep it up!

is there a site i can go to see all your star control art? i mean all in one spot, that is. i want to add it to my star control collection( if you don't mind) on my pc. i have just about everything star control, outside of owning the original games. i do have the the pc versions of both star control 1 and 2 on CD. that's a keeper in my book. again, great art. i love it. thanks.

request: a precursor ship cruising through space with a single earthing cruiser escort for size reference.
if you do requests, that is. ;D

I wish you lots of energy and persistence to finish the job.  It will be a great thing if you could finish it.

I am working on a gaming project too.  It's a fan made clone of Master of Orion 2 (MOO2).  It won't be just a clone, for the arts and stuff are different.  I'm in charge of arts and sound.

The other guy is the programmer.

"Unlike Timewarp all the ships will be balanced in power "

 :P

I've started and stopped many projects before after an initial burst of enthusiasm, usualyl after a number of small problems getting started. Despite that, I've also FINISHED a number of difficult projects.

I'm confident that i'll get this done no matter how long it takes. I want this done, dammit! And yes, by "balanced" I mean that the ships will be a fair match against each other (like SCII) instead of all over the place like in Timewarp. But of course, you can always add in your own ships once I release the source....

Now back to the topic at hand - i'll start a new thread soon. Arne, do you mind if I borrow your your art for the moment?

- Dean

Here is my latest scene (http://uqm.stack.nl/files/other/slylendro/scene14.avi)

Nice! I LOVE the decloking!

Only problem is that it kinda seems like the eluder and the drones are going through the avanger... but only kinda.

*wanders back.....

Hey guys! Nice to be back for a bit - I think I'll be around more often now...

Anyway - nice job slyrendro - what software did you use to make that?

PS - Seems like most of the old regulars are still around - except luki - Has he dropped off the end of the world too or did I miss his post?

His post might have been inadvertantly deleted in the culling.  I believe he was unhappy with the level of discourse at the time (as was Mika).  http://uqm.stack.nl/forum/index.php?topic=2249.0 (the kohr-ah came for a visit)