January 2015 Challenge - Ptrope

[Ptrope]

What?? Two months in a row and Ptrope has something to show in less than a week from the start of the challenge? This must be an alternate universe!

Well, this isn't anywhere near finished, obviously - I just wanted to post a real, actual WIP, and hopefully it'll also spark some interest or spur some imagination. Being a poster kind of guy, I'm working on something loosely inspired by Soviet propaganda posters (the coloring, at least ); I hope to include a line-up of the characters in a somewhat-typical fashion of some of those images, but for now, I have the ship and the chevron, suitably modified.

As a bit of artistic license, I intend to make any text on the poster something like 'Russ-lish', as I've already done with the title, which means absolutely nothing in Russian ...

 

[Albertese]

Love it.

--Alex

 

[Ptrope]

Another WIP - a bit more done to it, still not totally satisfied, but I don't really know what to do with it to 'complete' it.

 

[RobHops]

Awesome so far! Don't think there's much work to be done atall, I love it!

 

[Albertese]

Maybe a black "CENSORED" strip over the dude's package.

--Alex

 

[Ptrope]

I've subdued the proletariat a bit ...

 

[Nightowl1701]

"First, Russia! Then, the world! Tomorrow - THE UNIVERSE!!!"

So, is there a Spock in this alternate Trek? Or is that who the chick's supposed to be (just add ears, hint hint)?

 

[BK613]

Very nice. I think the CCИ-1701 is a nice touch.

The elbow coming out of the back looks a bit odd. Not sure why...

 

[Ptrope]

Thanks! (Nice catch, too - you're the first ) I agree - it's not necessarily a clear angle to show the overall pose and the elbow sticking back may be a little odd; I may retry that pose a bit, as well as possibly putting an additional character in - whether or not that's Spock.

 

[B.J.]

The artwork itself looks great (great use of color too!), but the text is bugging me. I understand this is supposed to be faux-Cyrillic, but there's too many errors for me to ignore. (Relatively recently, I had to translate some Russian blueprints without any actual background in the language, teaching myself along the way, so this jumps out at me.)

Still, overall:

 

[Ptrope]

I'm open to critiques . I know the "Λ" in "SPΛCE" is actually a delta and not part of the Cyrillic alphabet at all, and the "И" describes a different sound altogether. I'm just concerned that going with accurate characters or even a Russian translation will make the poster incomprehensible (more than it is already ).

 

[B.J.]

I know the "Λ" in "SPΛCE" is actually a delta and not part of the Cyrillic alphabet at all...

That's a Greek alphabet Lambda, not Delta. But it actually is part of the Cyrillic alphabet as an alternative way to write Л. Personally, I've seen it written Л in typewritten text, but Λ only in handwritten or italics. (I think that may be a Russian thing, not necessarily extending to all Cyrillic-based languages. I swear the more I dig into this the more questions I find! )

The backwards "P" is not a real character, and I'm not sure where you got the second-to-last letter of frontier.

In any case, this is art, not typography or literature, so do what looks right to you! And here's a nifty fake Cyrillic generator if you're interested - it just replaces similar looking letters.

 

[Ptrope]

D'oh! Yeah, I knew that was a lambda, back when I memorized the Greek alphabet from the Starfleet Technical Manual . That second-to-last character was my ill-formed attempt to make something similar to "Ю" (remembering "COЮЗ" on the Soyuz program).

Thanks for the link - I'll definitely have to try that out! .

Here's the latest WIP - because I added Spock and moved some arms around, everything else had to be adjusted somewhat ... and I've changed "The Final Frontier" to read a little better.

 

[Albertese]

Yeah, I wasn't gonna say it, but the faux-Russian hurts my brain and makes my urge to kill rise. And the I-E looks like a compressed HE and reads like "Fronther" to me. Personally, I would rather see poorly translated actual Russian than this stuff.

That said, it's not my project. I love everything else about it.

--Alex

 

[Ptrope]

Thanks! I changed "The Final Frontier" - I wasn't happy with that ligature, either. Maybe I'll try an actual translated poster, to see if it still conveys the intent. I also need to create a network slug for it .