I don't post too much any more, but here's a couple of renderings I did the other day that I thought you'd enjoy. The models were built in SolidWorks & rendered in Keyshot. As always, any comments are welcome!
Compositionally, I think the first one is stronger than the second one. On the second one, the more distant shuttlecraft seems to fit too neatly into the frame of the interconnecting dorsal structure of the starship, especially as the tonal values between ship and shuttle are closer. They way everything overlaps in the first one, and the more familiar angle on the ships, gives a sense of pushing forward, but, somehow being right underneath them seems more static, at least to my eye. As a weird technical aside, it's strange to see shuttles in flight with their landing gear still down. And I note that there are two red stripes on the structure surrounding the planetary sensor dome on the starship in the second image, but not the first. Anyhow, the actual models look great and the rendering is beautiful in both images. Great work! I'd love to see more. You should post more often! --Alex
Thanks for the response. I agree the first one is probably stronger. I rendered the second one first & and changed it for pretty much all the reasons you you mentioned. (BTW, the red stripes you mention are a remnant from the rectangle on the B/C deck above.) The thing I do like about the second one is seeing a hint of the Bussard Collector. Also, I actually like seeing the landing gear deployed regardless of whether it should be. I guess I just think it looks cool. I used to post quite frequently, but people generally didn't seem interested in my work, so I stopped. Even with this post, there are over a hundred views, but only your comment so far. I'm sure I'll still stop in from time to time, but posting hardly seems worth the trouble. (I hope that doesn't sound like too much of a downer...)
something that may help the overall composition: The shuttles are in focus, and the Enterprise is blurred, indicating a fairly shallow focus, but the stars are in focus. It might help to reduce the number of stars too, if you look at photos of ISS, almost no stars are visible, due to the short exposure time used to take the photos. The renderings are awesome though!