Don't mind Sojourner, he's just the resident grumpy old man. I'm sure someone will be able to answer your question. Unfortunately, that someone isn't me.
Also, unfortunately, it's not a matter of "simple pointers" that make it all fit.
Nobody can "teach" you to do something like this. The very first thing you need to be able to do is to be able to do the entire project in your mind. Yes, as you develop it, and transfer your work into a medium other people can look at, you'll inevitably make tweaks... but the "real work" happens inside your head, not on paper or inside a computer (regardless of your tool).
Sojourner's point, while perhaps on the "grumpy" side (been there, done that, myself, by the way!) is essentially correct. Nobody can teach you how to "easily" do this.
It simply takes work. A LOT OF WORK.
Once you have the concepts in your head, you can't just "press a button" and have it appear. You're looking at this the wrong way, I'm afraid...
I'm just wondering how one would go about creating something like this?
I was tinkering around making a modified version of this in MSPaint to get a feel for it until I hit a wall and realized MSPaint lacks the functionality needed. I tried GiMP but I can't even figure out how to draw straight lines and circles in it so that's out. I tried Paint.NET today but when I try to rotate a selection, instead of rotating it simply ... vanishes.
Unfortunately, you need to master a tool in order to do what you're trying to do. You will need to practice, and experience the tricks of the tool you've chosen.
I'm of the opinion that learning GIMP is a good place to start. GIMP can do everything you need to do in order to develop pretty much what you've seen here. But again, you need to know TECHNIQUE, and you need to have the design... 3 DIMENSIONALLY... inside of your head before you even start playing on the computer.
You get that, not from someone telling you how... but by doing it. "We learn by doing..." And making mistakes is the best way to figure things out, so expect to flail around a bit while learning, and not to have your first effort be "perfect" (or even "remotely acceptable" for that matter!)
I'm starting to get a bit frustrated because I have a really cool idea for a ship I want to make "real" by drawing it out.
There are as many ways of putting your idea into a viewable form as there are people who do it.
My own approach is an "inside-out" approach... and always, entirely in 3D. This is a bit tougher, but it's by far my own preferred approach. This is quite popular and is used on here regularly... there are several very accomplished "movie-quality" modelers right here on this site. Others, like me, are more "figuring out how it all works" and worry much more about the guts than the texturing and the like. Both approaches are entirely valid, but give different types of results. (One of the images I most like to show off is this one...
http://img176.imageshack.us/img176/1909/animation5ch0.gif )
Other people, like Ancient or like Aridas or CRA or, for that matter, any of the other guys who did this sort of thing so well back in the heyday of Trek fan publishing, like to do 2D drawings. But they've still thought everything out in 3D, and they are only TRANSLATING their 3D ideas into 2D. You have to know the techniques to do 2D drawings of 3D concepts. That's far beyond what you can learn in an online forum... I recommend you pick up a reference book on old-fashioned drafting techniques, if you plan to use 2D primarily.
Things I'm particularly frustrated over:
Drawing correctly aligned concentric circles
Rotating selections (I need more than the 90 degrees MSPaint offers)
Edit: Scaling and shading for that "3D" look, although that's a much more minor concern.
Choose a tool... GIMP is a good place to start, though I prefer Corel's tools, and have also used Photoshop and Paintshop Pro... Photoshop is too pricey, but between PSP and Corel, I just know Corel's tools better. But for "FREE," you simply can't do better than GIMP, as far as I'm concerned.
EDIT: Also, as Sojourner points out, you should use a mix of vector-based graphics and pixel-based graphics. GIMP and Inkscape work together very well... and both are free.
READ THE LITERATURE. Learn your tool... read the help, read the instructions, buy a book if you need to. Read up on how to do 2D drafting (there are tricks you NEED to know if you're going to do this stuff... you can't just "start drawing" and have any chance of making things match up between different projection views otherwise!)
Again, I have to agree with the gyst of Sojourner's comments. You need to learn your tool, first.
What you're doing is, in essence, asking for directions on how to fly from New York to Thailand, without having learned how to fly a plane first.
Thanks for the kind words.
