A human piloted aircraft is chased through the atmosphere of a large interstellar space vessel by a menacing black drone. The red aircraft's 2 familiar drones attempt to shoot down the black drone. All much to the alarm of the humans shopping & jumping around in zero gravity. But is the red aircraft pilot the victim or the perpetrator? Who is the human jumper looking up at the black drone? So many rhetorical questions. I seem to like the front-fins-down-back-fins-up look. The jumping humans are silhouettes because of time constraints. The darker red hexy areas are flexible control surfaces. Father's Day illustration.
A shaded side view of the aircraft & ideation of the turrets function.
Early ideation of the aircraft. Some versions had more curvy points but that ultimately wasn't the look I wanted.
A completely different look that I didn't end up using because it wasn't the direction I wanted either. I might reuse it for something else, though.
Tweaking the final aircraft concept. The primary use of the wings is in parts of the large space vessel that have artificial gravity. They also contain control surfaces. The propulsion pods are thrust vectoring as well.
The familiar drone of the main aircraft. Aircraft in zero gravity don't need lift in the same way they do in gravity so wings aren't a requirement. As this drone is small & light, it can fly in both gravity & zero gravity by using thrust vectoring. See how the scaly parts reposition in the main illustration to direct thrust.
Intrafleet shuttle that flies between large vessels. It is only sparingly used because there are few places to get more fuel in interstellar space. An experiment in extreme perspective. Birthday illustration for my mother.
Initial concept of the intrafleet shuttle. Propulsion is provided by reorientable exhaust nozzles. The goal was a sharp but still retro look, when smoothly integrated bubble canopies were just beginning to be used. There are forward facing nozzles for braking. With the short distances between destinations, there isn't room to turn around to use the rear thrusters to slow down.
Overlay of a more detailed iteration. The telescoping pointed forward swept shapes on the side are landing gear for "taking off" out of & "landing" into larger vessels. They have magnets to hopefully avoid any physical contact during the process & rollers to reduce wear if there is any.
Rough sketches to figure out the composition. Also ideation for a design concept change from reorientable nozzles to more static nozzles pointing in different directions. The reason being reduced maintenance & greater reliability. In interstellar space, a missed pass could be deadly, as the fleet can't change course fast enough to retrieve a shuttle. At shuttle size, it wouldn't add very much extra mass & it wouldn't have the pull of gravity on that mass to contend with.
Shading with final linework over the underlays. The more-nozzles design change was admittedly also because I thought it looked cooler. Similar to World War 2 piston engine fighter exhaust pipes, but facing forward, kind of like guns.
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Je Gelsin Sci-Fi Illustration Series
Illustrations from a sci-fi story.
