Cyfa's art challenges and other bits & bobs

[Cyfa]

I've started this thread mainly as somewhere to place my hastily slapped together efforts for the monthly Art Challenges, be they good, bad - or most likely - unfinished. I thought I'd plop them all in one place to save cluttering up the board with a new thread every month. I'll also post other Trek-related flotsam and jetsam here - if and when I get around to any.
Feel free to critique anything - I welcome any pointers, advice, or "Good gods! What is that travesty?!"s - but I may not act upon your suggestions, mostly because I'm very lazy (when time permits)...

So. First up are a couple of VERY quick sketches and a physical cut-n-paste job for February's Art Challenge "Pilot" as set by @LeeDrawsStuff . Ideally, neither of these will be my final entry, but as there're only two more days left in this month, the likelyhood is that I won't get anything else done.
Just in case my creations are so appalling that you can't recognise them (I hope not ), I went with DS9's "Emissary" and the scene where Jadzia Dax as a Tear of the Prophets is ejected from the Celestial Temple/wormhole:

Previous Art Challenges were:
October - Star Trek horror novels,
November - A Vulcan Winter Solstice greetings card, and
December - A stegosaurus in a Starfleet uniform.

 

[Kaiser]

Coolies

 

[Albertese]

You should submit the folded foil orb of the prophets. There's a good chance I'd vote for that as is.

--Alex

 

[sojourner]

I like the cut&paste abstract. Looks like it would fit right in on the wall of a Captain's ready room on TNG.

 

[Cyfa]

Thanks guys! My entry is almost certainly going to be the Orb, but I'm just trying a few different photos with it as near to a Verteron Node as I can get...

 

[Klaus]

very nice...

 

[LeeDrawsStuff]

That orb is great - so creative!!!

 

[Cyfa]

Thank you! I tried stuffing the orb in the demijohn with the lights, but it just looked all wobbly like a soap opera flashback/dream sequence...

 

[publiusr]

One idea you might try.

Someone holds the stone of Gol so the open section is placed near the tear's most narrow middle--so as to stop the Dominion from coming through:

http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Stone_of_Gol
http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Psionic_weapon

 

[Cyfa]

That should be pretty effective considering the violent thoughts of the Jem'Hadar!
I quite like the idea of a montage of ancient devices, but I fear my very laziness may scupper it. One day. One day...

 

[Cyfa]

As I still have no idea what to redesign/reimagine for the March Art Challenge, I thought I'd have a look through this book for ideas:

Publisher's description: Photographing Starships is a lavish coffee table book packed to the docking ports with glossy, full colour photographs of Starfleet starships from all corners of the United Federation of Planets - and beyond!
Seventeen solar years in the making, Gyils and Sim take you on a journey around the Federation, including the Antares Shipyards, Star Station India, Zeta Aurigae IV in the Taurus Reach, Deep Space 9, the Starfleet Museum of Deep Space Exploration, and the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards. Starships of all eras, regions, classes and variations are shown in harsh candidness, as well as in breathtaking majesty.
Photographing Starships is a book that the starship aficionado cannot afford to miss!

Well, the back cover blurb doesn't lie: it is lavish, and it is absolutely full of photos of starships. The Betazoid authors/photographers have done a brilliant job of displaying the sheer diversity of Starfleet's most visible assets. A couple of my particular favourites are of the refit Constitution-class USS Olympia (NCC-2091) gleaming in the sunlight departing Starbase 117 for its deep space mission into the Beta Quadrant (made somewhat bittersweet by the fact that it never made it home), and the Wasp-class USS van Dyne (NCC-9748) in orbit above the rings of Chand Aad.

Then there's this magazine I found in a departure lounge. Although I don't know how useful it'll be...

I was so fascinated with the article about the once fashionable Betazoid practice of caging small animals in elaborate wigs, that I couldn't put it down. Speaking of Betazoids, Deanna Troi's head-in-a-replicator styling trick isn't something I would recommend. Mr Mot's top ten tips are far more palatable. Except number eight...
Ooh, and Janice Rand's basket-weave 'do is easier to accomplish than one might think!

(In case it's not immediately obvious, both of these were created in MS Paint - because that's about as technical as I can manage - using screencaps from TrekCore. I made Photographing Starships back in October, and Voice of the Beehive in January 2015. My skills haven't really improved since then...)

 

[Kaiser]

Thats some great MSPaint work

 

[Cyfa]

Thanks, Kaiser. I'd really like to get to grips with something a little more sophisticated than Paint, but my old computron needs replacing before I attempt to inflict Photoshop or some other program on it. Then I'd have to learn how to use the new program - It's taken me years just to use Paint without cursing and grinding my teeth

 

[BorgMan]

Can you give us the specs to your PC? I'm running CS6 on a Xeon that is, by now, five years old and it runs just fine. If you want to, for all intents and purposes Photoshop CS2 is free. Adobe just doesn't care about it anymore, which means that you can download a copy and use a key provided to run it without having to authorize it. It's kind of a grey area, so a mod could come in and disagree, but I think it's fine for me to give you this information. This should at least give you an idea of what you're working with before shelling out the money to buy one of the Creative Suites :-) You could also try GIMP, of course, but in all honesty Photoshop is better.

 

[Cyfa]

Wow, thanks for the assist/advice, Borgman! However, you lost me at "CS6 on a Xeon" (what's Xeon - a type/make of PC, or some sort of software?) I'm hopeless with this type of technical jiggery-pokery, sorry.
My PC is a Dell Inspiron (nearly 10 years old) and it has Windows Vista, which I think is out of date as a pop-up keeps telling me the support is going to end soon...

 

[BorgMan]

Oh my...
If you right-click on the My Computer icon and hit Manage (with probably a yellow-and-blue shield in front of it), you'll get a window in which Windows will have classified your computer by giving it a rating. In there it should also mention what type of processor you're using, and how fast it's running (mentioned in MHz or GHz).

Xeon is a processor (or CPU) type, like Core 2 Duo/Quad (which I'm suspecting you're having), Pentium and Celeron, or more recent stuff like Core i3 or i7. And... Well, yes, I think it's time to upgrade. Don't fall for "upgrade kits"; you need a new computer, with a modern operating system. Vista is going the way of the dodo fast... For what you're doing with it, a computer in the price range of around $350 should do the trick.

Adobe (who makes Photoshop and Illustrator, among other things) has bundled their software into "Creative Suites" for some time now. Each new release is held out until the rest is also done and then released as "CS6", for example. As you might have guessed, CS2 was released a long time ago but it offers everything a starter with Photoshop would need. Seeing as it was released in 2005, I think it should run on your computer as well!

 

[Cyfa]

After a few wild goose chases I found it: Rating 3.8; Processor AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5000+ 2.60 GHz - I think Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner are stuck in an endless lightcycle loop in my PC's innards...

Oh my...

- Heh! I told you so And thank you so much for your help (and patience) - I'm just going to get a new PC, then look into these Photoshops and the like. I think you're right in that the CS2 will be all I need - especially as I've managed for the past 10 years with just Paint!

 

[BorgMan]

Seriously, I'd download CS2 right now and play around with it. That CPU is a bit dated but it's a good one. You can't lose anything with it eh?

 

[Arpy]

That wouldn't make a bad TOS starship insignia either.

 

[Sibyl]

N/M I made a stupid.

On the design, it's great! And yes, it would look good as a TOS insignia.