Aerial Dreadnought

Sketch for new image. Here's my little descriptive blurb:

"What a ripping scene! Hull holed, dorsal vanes shredded, the RAS Recalcitrant emerges from the cloud wrack over the village of Much Nadderby to bravely reengage the invading Brungarian aerial dreadnoughts!"






OK, here's an image in progress... Still need to do foreground bad guy and village and landscape below.












Final image: (update, added aerial  shell bursts)

I added a second, larger airship in the background, the RAS Steerpike:

Savoia Marchetti Regatta Fish

Update -- never liked the little people I added for scale. So I stole Emilio Ponticelli and his wife (with some extras). He was a character in 'Those Magnificent Men And Their Flying Machines.' He kept buying really dangerous experimental 'aeroplanes.'

Robber Baron Dragonfly

Flying Botanical Gardens, 1900 Paris Exposition

I had this idea of an alternate universe where the tropical plants were housed in beautiful flying vivariums that were only reachable by aerial taxis (roleurs au ciel).

I found this great panorama of the 1900 Paris Exposition, so I added a lot more sky, expanded the parchment border, and started rendering the flying gardens. I used Strata 3D to model the gardens, the taxis and most of the people. I discovered it was easier to just illustrate the people, and splice them in via Photoshop later.

A happy accident: when looking at maps of the 1900 Paris Exposition, I discovered that the horticulture section is directly below in this view. How appropriate!

By the way, it's worth your time to Google the Exposition. Amazing level of technology for 1900. They had electric moving sidewalks in parts of it. There some are images here.

Source for city view

Final

Details

Pencil sketch

Italian Lounge Boat

The concept on this one is an absolutely MASSIVE flying boat with twin pontoons, and a wing so thick you can put a huge passenger lounge in it.





Here's a couple of views in the lounge, with Eileen Gray furniture, which would have been über-trendy for the time. Given the nationalism of the Twenties, they likley would have furnished it with Carlo Bugatti's stuff, but that was hideous, so we'll pretend they broke the mold.

Conning Tower

Luxury Italian Flying Boat

Some in-progress images of a fantasy Italian flying boat... I was still (and still am) learning this software, so be nice)

Russian Ramming Interceptor

Something I came up with as an alternate history for Russia in WWII - a rocket interceptor with tungsten steel spikes on all leading edges so they could ram their way through formations of German bombers. They were to be rail launched, and would deploy a parachute to land, after the rocket motors were spent.


Here's the emblem for a squadron of the interceptors. I think he looks a lot like William F. Buckley










Here's a cockpit view of some of the interceptors racing toward the bombers. What's not pictured here is the high-tech (for its time) vodka delivery system for the pilots.

Kinderfisch

My idea for a species of freshwater anglerfish that lures children.