And now for some actual artwork! This is my entry for the “Hydrospace” art contest in the Trek Art forum on TrekBBS. The challenge this month was to depict how humans in the Star Trek universe might explore the oceans of an alien world.
"Hydrospace" Challenge Entry - April '09
Obviously, the inspiration for this scene came from the K-7 space station from The Trouble with Tribbles. I took the basic design and adapted it into a geothermal research station at the bottom of a cold, shallow sea on some distant planet. I tried to include some subtle but realistic details like a structure that allows it to support itself in a gravity environment without the need for structural integrity fields, or the moon pool on the underside of the central hub where the docking module would have been on the space-born version. Sharp-eyed Trek fans may also recognize the Aqua Shuttle from The Animated Series.
I drew this entirely on my Cintiq tablet in Corel Painter X. Although I had fun with it, the process was frustrating due to my lack of experience at creating fully rendered images. I’ve been a pencil sketch artist most of my life and I find it extremely difficult to break away from drawing everything like a diagram, and color is a somewhat alien concept for me as well. Ithink I managed to stretch myself a bit with this image but there is certainly plenty of room for improvement.
Here is the original concept sketch i did soon after the topic for this month’s contest was announced:
"Hydrospace" Challenge - Concept Sketch
And here is the detailed sketch that developed from it:
"Hydrospace" Challenge - Detail Sketch
For those of you not familiar with the contest, the “prize” for the winner is the right to select the following month’s contest topic. Voting on this month’s entries should begin in the Trek Art forum on or about May 1st.