...about fictional spaceship design.
A couple of weeks ago I attended a short panel at Boskone titled "Spaceship Design for Artists." The panelists were Irene Gallo, art director at Tor, Jordin Kare, physicist at Lawrence Livermore, artist Gregory Manchess, and artist Dave Seeley, who appeared to be a late addition (he was not originally listed in the program).The discussion was mostly dominated by the artists as they had put together several examples (Vincent Di Fate, Jean Pierre Normand, Syd Mead, John Berkey and others). Mr. Seeley was also kind enough to have several of his images available for more detailed discussion about how his illustrations were developed. He described how he used a combination of different methods in his work, from traditional painting to computer tools and physical models. An hour was unfortunately not quite long enough as there wasn't any time to ask more questions about design and get a sense of what they "thought" about design, as opposed to the mechanics of coming up with something. Jordin Kare, who could have addressed some "hard" design issues, and Irene Gallo who could have addressed some of the production issues, hardly got said anything at all. I wish there had been more time to flesh the topic out a bit more (in fact there is a really good posting by Irene Gallo on the development of the Tor.com logo, named Stubby The Rocket, and the development of the steampunk version, the HMS Stubbington).
Needless to say, I was left a little hungry on the subject, so I figure I would organize my thoughts around a little essay here (and a couple of threads on starship modeler's forum). I do like spaceships, but I really wasn't sure what to expect from the discussion on design or what I would get out of it. What it did do was make me think more about what actually goes into the design of a very large technical piece of equipment that is really absolutely fictional. My first thoughts were the following:
- First: A prevalence of certain conventional design elements about what is up and down. Dave Seeley pointed out early in his slide set that many designs are designed with a terrestrial "up" and "down" sense like ships or aircraft, even when they encounter each other such as a battle sequence. This may make little sense in free-fall conditions
- There's a range between "realistic" (within an sf context) and "non-realistic" or perhaps more kindly put as "fantastical" designs. This range tracks nicely with velocity: the faster it goes the more fantastical it becomes. Einstein might say at "c" it races to fantastical infinitely fast, but actually I say there are efforts to do ftl in a way that "works" with more theoretical (and perhaps wacky) ideas for finding a loophole to current physical limits (wormholes, space/time warps, etc.).
- A "spaceship" is not designed apart from a certain "culture" of design. What I mean is that certain design elements can sometimes become very central to a certain look in currency, such as oversized V-2s in the 50s, over-greeblied post "2001"ships, colorful Chris Foss-like ships, or folding current aerospace elements into "SF" craft. This last bit probably explains how the "rocketship" seems to be the fundamental unit of SF craft.
First stop: What's Up Doc?
Table Of Contents
- What's Up Doc - talking about how what is up and down influences designs
- Realistic to Fantastic - how does realism fit into sf ship designs
- The Frameworks - how does our environment influence designs
- The Refs - a short compilation of some of the references used
The "Heart of Gold" which is like a "sleek white running shoe"
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