Inspiration & Information

[Ptrope]

Just thought of a couple more sources of my own inspiration:

The Art of Star Wars - all films. These books are highly informative, not to mention just plain entertaining, with extensive artwork and concepts from the most insignificant props to the most lavish sets and scenes, as well as an exhaustive collection of costume designs. It's been my opinion for quite some time that the film series could have been so much better if it had actually looked much more like the paintings from Ralph McQuarrie, Doug Chiang and others.

The Art of Star Trek - this is something of a no-brainer for our particular membership ; much of the same things stated above apply here, as well.

Spectrum - The Best in Contemporary Fantasy Art - an annual collection of fantasy and science fiction art from a vast selection of (mostly American) publications, as well as a great deal of unpublished art. Illustrations, book covers, comic artwork, sculpture - it's all here and it's all fantastic. Even some of our own members have appeared in several of these coffee-table volumes .

Illustration magazine - a quarterly magazine devoted to the history of American illustration art. Folks like Norman Rockwell to Frank Frazetta to Robert Peak (who did the poster for ST:TMP and Rollerball, among many others); art from comics to pulp magazines to advertising to model car boxes.

John Berkey - Prolific and popular science fiction and science illustrator, whose art has been on hundreds of book covers, as well as frequent appearances illustrating articles in magazines like Popular Science. His art is characterized by brash, seemingly-freeform strokes that, looked at closely, don't seem to even try to achieve any kind of realism, but the impressions of his complete paintings are of extensive detail and realism. One of the true kings of spaceship paintings!

[Admiral2]

There's one more source of inspiration we can add. I present to you Elfwood:

http://elfwood.lysator.liu.se/elfwood.pike

It's a massive gallery for people who want to display their art on the net. I have a couple of galleries myself. (One in "Fantasy and Sci-Fi" and one in "Fanquarter".) There's a lot of great artwork of all stripes, along with the usual chance to review and be reviewed. Unfortunately there's more fantasy there than sci-fi, but enough die-hard trekkie artists joining up might start to tip the balance. (Hint, hint. )

[backstept]

I have a gallery on Elfwood
haven't updated in YEARS!!

Scifi-Meshes.com is a good place to go. Mainly a 3D site with great forums and a huge gallery. one of my favorite sites, many great artists there (even a couple that have worked on well-known shows )

Feng Zhu Design one of the best concept artists I've ever seen

Starship Dimensions - a site with just about every scifi universe's ships scaled relative to eachother.

Classic Space has a gallery with hundreds of concept pics from just about anywhere you can imagine

that's all I got for now

[Mr. Cellophane]

backstept said:
I have a gallery on Elfwood
haven't updated in YEARS!!

Same for me, actually.

[Admiral2]

Ushaan said:

Same for me, actually.

I've got one up on both of you! Literally. I've updated once in the past several years.

Also, I have to mention Burne Hogarth. His book Dynamic Figure Drawing was one of my most important learning tools, and he has a whole series of books.

[Blamo]

Lee Sullivan
The first comic strip I ever read with any real interest was "Nemesis of the Daleks" drawn by Lee Sullivan. Perhaps more so then all the Manga artists, this guy is the reason I became interested in drawing comic strips. Forgetting his character art for a second, he has to be the best Dalek artist I've seen.



I'd add some Manga artists to the list, however most of the offical sites contain little to no artwork.

Kia Asamiya's Studio Tron site
Okay, I'll admit I don't like his characters noses. Forgetting that for a second, his artwork is great. The site has a wide variety of artwork ranging from Nadesico to Batman

[Admiral2]

How about Masamune Shirow?

[Gibraltar]

Appleseed! Appleseed!

[Admiral2]

Gibraltar said:
Appleseed! Appleseed!

I'm more obsessed with Ghost In The shell. Appleseed completley confused me when I first read it.

[Harry]

Good stuff in here!

Let me contribute some of my inspirational links, sort of biased towards TOS/pre-TOS 'retrofuturistic' material:

http://www.projectrho.com/index.html
Winchell Chung's site has two major attractions (and a lot more Good Stuff): in-depth analysis of building a 'real' old school intrasystem 'rocketship', and lots of background material and related information on the 1960s Jefferies-design Leif Ericson spaceship model, which is a nice inspiration for Jefferies-style (TOS-)work.

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homep...ceguideA-E.htm
"The Tough Guide to the Known Galaxy" is a sobering review of common scifi elements. Nice to read if you want to bring in some realism into your scifi designs/fanfiction.

[MikeGainer]

Enough tutorials to start your own 3d movie!

Maya Tutorials

[MikeGainer]

Another link to share with you guys. A free video tutorial website to execute your artistic vision!

Wikivid

[MikeGainer]

Stephen Youll has some really good works of art. He did the covers for the Foundation and Robot Series in the 80's.

http://www.stephenyoull.com/home.html

[Harry]

http://www.paleofuture.com/ A blog on retrofuturism. Recently, a selection of Syd Mead's United Steel concepts.

[Devorah]

Mirror Universe will feature new works by Devorah Sperber based on images from the television series Star Trek. The title, Mirror Universe, alludes to the 1967 Star Trek episode Mirror, Mirror in which a transporter mishap swaps the crew of the Enterprise with evil counterparts, trapping them in a “savage parallel universe.” The concept of a mirror or parallel universe is a dominant theme in the show, and, in keeping with this metaphor, many of the works incorporate mirrors to view the work. For Sperber the exhibition is an opportunity to look at the relationship between popular science and art, and how they relate to larger metaphysical issues. In particular, she is interested in how consciousness and the act of seeing create the illusion of a stable, predictable, singular world.

In addition to Sperber’s signature “Thread Spool” pieces and works comprised of chenille stems, Mirror Universe will introduce a series of standing figures composed of semi translucent beads; depicting the familiar Star Trek characters in the process of “beaming up”. For Sperber the individual works, and the exhibition in general, serve to support the idea that ‘reality’ is merely an illusion created by the brain in collaboration with the human eye. The ideas at the heart of Mirror Universe recall the writings of phenomenological philosophers such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty who claimed that one’s understanding of any physical object is contingent on the observer’s psychological and physical perspective on it. He held that every object is a "mirror of all others" whereby all things reflect meaning off one another, complicating how they are perceived. Sperber echoes Merleau-Ponty’s thoughts as the latent images in her work compete with its component objects – thread spools, beads and chenille stems – to engage the viewer with a combination of poetic illusion and clarity.

Images:
http://www.devorahsperber.com/caren_..._08/index.html
http://carengoldenfineart.com/