What is this?

An E-sting is a short TV channel ident animation for the Television channel E4, it is used as a filler just before or after another advert or program and is basically advertising that reminds you that “you are watching E4”

Basis

The E-sting -or an E-sting- must always clearly contain the E4 logo in some fashion during the course of its duration.

Normally very short, E-stings only normally last around 5 to 15 seconds total,

They can be simple or complicated in construction; so long as -written above- the E4 Logo is clearly displayed and not obscured or questionable

Examples

“Bus Stop”

This is an example E-sting, as stated it is a very short animation, in this instance a digital 2D animation, 11 seconds in length, clearly demonstrating the E4 logo throughout.

The animation its self can be quirky or unclear of motive so long as the E4 logo again is fully displayed relatively anything can be done amidst this, besides the obvious violent or sexual themes, although cartoon violence is acceptable.

The main colours within E-Stings are of course purple and white, these are the 2 colours that make up the E4 logo itself, and so normally the worlds remain in these 2 colours.

“Dog”

this example shows a 3D digital E-sting of a dog made of matchs and a match box, again obscured you are left right until the end thinking “hmm? What is this” and then it suddenly becomes clear when the E4 logo is reviled after the “dog” sets itself alight, its ashes making the logo on the floor.

Only 15 seconds in length total and very simplistic, plain white background with just the “dog” creation on screen, the dogs match box body has a purple exterior, again capitalising on the White/purple mixture.

What I have to do…

The task at hand is to create my own E-sting, this is narrowed down greatly by a set of audio bites prepared to give us a theme or direction to follow in our work.

There are 10 sound files in all.

File 1 – This sound bed sounds very futuristic, with lots of sci-fi whizzing noises, it has a medium – fast pace to its overall rhythm 

File 2 - File 2 has a more urban feel to it, it is slower and feels much darker than number 1, it represents what music could possibly be heard in some clubs nowadays

File 3 – File three sounds to me like something from maybe a 70’s black gangster movie, or something that could be heard in sombodys car driving down a road next to the beach in the sun.

File 4 – File 4 is very up beat, and sounds like somthing much more tribal, it also sounds like there are ambient jungle birds singing in the background, this song could also reflect the type of music heard at Mardi Gra

File 5 – Five is a very dark and ominous sounding bed, it seems to imagine things lurking in the darkness, I personally imagine a lone TV set in a black room, with a flickering/noisy scrambled display occasionally showing the E4 logo.

Thinking about what in god I am doing, thinking how much I don’t want to burden people.

my time here has been………. well I can’t even put it into words, but slowly I lose confidence in myself to actually do the things asked of me, this happens in just about everything, not solely university studies, one day I feel great like I can do anything, and the next I’m doubting whether I can even do things anymore.. I don’t know what’s up with me, and to be honest I’m not sure anything is wrong with me, I decided to speak to mum about how i feel, and that was a bad move, first she shouted at me and then she phoned back the next day like “ooh I couldn’t sleep I was so worried about you” man that is so fucking annoying. she made me promise not to speak to dad about it because he’d over worry himself and smoke like 400 cigarettes in a row. this is why I just keep things to myself, whenever i talk to somebody i never seem to be able to get the right feeling back and just end up feeling like crap again the next day or a few hours later. Besides, the way I see it people have enough to worry about without me dropping my load onto them as well. Something about that just doesn’t seem fair at all, so I’ll just put it here, because I have to write this down at least or I’m going to just implode.

The crazy thing is, things in general are actually going quite well… I have a beautiful girl friend now, my house is a great place to live, money is still an issue but that’s just 1 small issue. Back home, Mum finally started dating again after the horrid break up with dad last year, and she’s seeing some guy.. which concerns me a bit, but I think that’s natural, mums not stupid anyway, and she sure as hell won’t take any bullshit from him, still I’m a little worried about that, the last times didn’t go well at all. Dad started dating another woman and is getting on very well indeed with her, his job also seems to be treating him quite well for once, so he seems alot happier than ive heard him for a long time. Ben, my oldest younger brother asked me about dating girls and what to say to them and thing of that nature, he said he hadn’t spoken to my older brother or mum/dad about it, which in all fairness I was pretty touched by that, that he came to me first out of everyone, so I gave him some sound advice from my experience, anyway.. not important what was important and something that helped me a little in my final conclusion is that, despite the playfully mean things I say and do to my younger brothers, they STILL look up to me the most instead of Anton the oldest, and the distance between us is the furthest apart, sad thing is it’s that far because I wanted/chose to be that far away on purpose, so I didn’t have to be in that house and could try and spread my own wings. I just don’t seem to be able to manage it and its driving me up the wall, I gave up gaming because I thought that was the problem and now my story writing has taken over even worse than gaming was, I can’t figure out why I just can’t seem to be able to DO things that I need to do. I have noticed that I feel much better doing the tasks after the time has passed for them to be done. Its making me crazy.

I sat and thought about what I’m doing. “Digital designer” I looked over my uni work, and it’s pretty not good when you see other peoples, another reason I can’t stand looking at other peoples blogs, makes me massively depressed. I don’t know if it’s because I’m angry at not being able to do it, or if I’m angry at always doubting whether I can do it if I tried, I think its arrogance, but I don’t feel like I’m being arrogant which in itself may be the problem, I hate asking people things, especially for help, I don’t mind asking “hey what you think of this that I’ve done” but it makes my skin crawl asking for help, I think that’s from many years spent at school in the wrong crowd, because it couldn’t be much else, maybe mum snapping 80% of the time at me when I asked her things in the past, so I just stopped asking. I don’t want to blame mum though, because I’m old enough to be able to change that I think, but I don’t know how.

With the way I’ve been feeling about everything i feel like some sort of pitiful Emo child.

Putting things into perspective, the amount of money, time, effort, sweat, and tears (I am capable of this too) there had been too much of each to suddenly quit university. And I finally realised how much my brothers really do look up to me, it was… revolutional in my heart, I have never once thought about myself in a way like that. My Girl Friend too, because she wasn’t an easy catch and which is beside the point, I love her dearly. If I quit id let SO many people down. So many people would be annoyed/disappointed (which is worse), id set a truly bad example as the big brother, if I quit now.

So… If not for myself I will finish this course for everyone that is looking out for me to become something, and to make something of this time I’m having now in my life, I will try and set the right example.   By shutting the fuck up and just doing it, as mum would say.

Game Idea & Vehicle Design

The game idea is based on the idea of an alternate historic span, where fictional combat Airships are the main force of combat heavy combat, instead of surface vessels such as the Japanese Yamato, the Nazi German Bismarck, and the British Vanguard or King George V there would be airships designed with the intent of destroying other ships.

Battleship Yamato – Largest battleship ever created

Battleship Bismarck – Second Largest Battleship

Battleship HMS Vanguard - Britains Largest battleship.

Airships

There are many inspirational concepts of airships and some books and games/mods based on their beauty, we are entranced with their odd appeal and there close ties to steam punk or pre iron age technology, its a world that went up in flames on Thursday 6 May 1937 with the sudden and complete destruction of the giant German Hindenburg airship.

After doing some research around the lift capacity of airships, or more exactly Hydrogen and Helium, to lift a standard 80 Kilogram male off the ground using helium you would need a total of 5000 cubic feet of Helium, they tested this in the show Mythbusters where they wanted to replicate what made the Hindenburg burst into flames.

Hydrogen has a higher lift capacity than Helium does, however hydrogen is dangerously flammable.

To lift Hindenburg off the ground it needed 7 million cubic feet of Hydrogen, and if you look at the Hindenburg, it is without weapons, or armour, is extremely large, ungainly and vulnerable.

Adding weapons and armour to the airship would make the vessel have to become so large that it would no longer be worth flying in the sky since it would become the largest target in the world, unless the airship in questions didn’t rely solely on being a “lighter-than-air” ship or dirigible and had engines vertical like helicopter rotors to make the size of the airship decrease and also give it the ability to mount armour and weaponry, of course this is all very technical and I don’t need to think about the actual physics of the airships when im designing them, since artistically pleasing designs are rarely practical or make sense in real world terms, which is why it’s a fiction to begin with.

So as cool as they are, I don’t honestly believe that even if the Hindenburg didn’t crash that our future would be bound by Zeppelin travel, however, the death of the Hindenburg completely destroyed people’s faiths in airship travel and so attention was poured into creating other means of air travel. So if Hindenburg didn’t crash the creation of aircraft would possibly have been delayed a few years.

contrary to popular belief it was the Americans that had used and planned further use of “lighter than air ship” technology to a more military use and were the only nation to use Airships during World War 2, while German and British Airships remained soley for commercial and passenger transportation, Britain did use Airships as anti submarine patrols.

here is a really good FAQ on Airships, here the term Zeppelin is not used as it should be, and people (myself included) mistakably refer to all airships produced by Germany as “Zeppelins” when infact Zeppelin is a brand name.. like Nike, Gap, GoodYear etc. so in actual fact only Airships produced by the firm Luftshiffbau Zeppelin G.m.b.H. or any other firm that are liscenced to use the P

Zeppelin

acording to information sourced from here I have realised that people (myself included) use the term Zeppelin to refer to all Airships created by Germany when infact this is not the case. “Zeppelin” is infact a propriatary name, much like Gap, Hyundai, Motorola, Goodyear etc. meaning that only airships created by Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH (Zeppelin Airship Construction Ltd) can only be given the title of “Zeppelin”

http://www.wolfsshipyard.mystarship.com/Misc/Airships/Airships.htm

this website displays many varients of airships planned and produced by America, Germany and Britain, this will give me a good direction to base the design of my own combat type airships from.

Types of Airships

all airships may look similar but there are a few different kinds of airship that can be identified

Balloons -> pressure-ridged -> semi-ridged -> ridged -> hybrid

Generally known as “lighter than Air” ships, meaning the total weight of the airship is lighter than the air surrounding it, therfore it becomes airborne. a smaller way to see this effect is trying to submerge a football in a pool of water, the football is much lighter than the water being displaced by it and therfore the football rises to the surface.

An unpowered airship is called a Balloon, unpowered meaning it doesnt rely on engines to propel it through the air and instead relys on air currents. So contrary to reality it is inacurate to give a balloonist the designation as a “pilot” since a balloon can not be piloted.

A balloon that contains means of being proppelled and steered is when it becomes an Airship, a Presure ridged airship is an airship that maintains its shape using the pressure of the gas inside it, the control cabin, engines and steering rudders/elevators are connected directly to the envelope of the aircraft, this class of airship is generally called a “Blimp”. They gained this name when on the 5-Dec-1915 a Royal Naval Air Service Lieutenant A. D. Cunningham playfully flicked a finger against the envelope of Airship SS. 12 at the Capel air station, mimiking the sound it maked as *blimp*, this wasnt made official until July-1943 when the U.S. Navy, inexplicably changed the designation “airship patrol squadron:” to “blimp squadron.”

Blimps are the most widley used type of airship seen today, used mainly as advertisement platforms.

Airships with a minor internal structure to support the envelope are called semi-ridged airships, these airships are also found to have a solid keel and gondola to keep a decent stability, this class of airship was very rare.

Riged airships are the most famous forms of airship, the most memorable Airship in history, the Graf Zeppelin “Hindenburg” was a ridged airship. Ridged aiships contain a structure throughout the entire interior of the envelop

The Setting

the war between the allies and the axis rages on in a slightly altered time span, where Flying Zeppelin/Airships are one of the main forms of combatant, technology, radar and sensory technology has been greatly enhanced and the pollution created from the flying machines leaves vast clouds of thick black smoke also known as Thunder clouds due to there ominous apperance.

Play as a young pilot rising through the ranks of either the German Luftwaffe, or the British Royal Air Forces – Cloud Navy and rise through the ranks while being pilot or captain of any vessel big or small that you see fit in order to bring turn the war in your favour.

Base to Base! Station to Station! Shipyard to Shipyard!

This is a screenshot taken from the Game Homeworld 2, it shows the shipyard vessel, used to produce any type of unit the player needs so long as enough time is allowed for it to be built. given that I want to make the game more fast paced having to rely on slow build times would decrease the overall pace of the game, waiting for things to be built in an RTS game isnt a problem since you have a whole base to manage, however when you are in a FPS environment the same 3 minutes it might take to build a tank would seem like an eternity. In Command and Conquer Renegade -which is essentially an FPS version of the original Command and Conquer 95- build times for vehicles and infantry are near instantanious, this will be the same in Storm Cloud 9.

This screenshot is relevant because this is more or less how the home bases for each side of my game idea will function, a large drifting platform with different sections of the ship designed to perform different tasks, however instead of just being a tiny section of the ship i want the subsystems to be whole parts of the ships design.

I have labelled the important parts of the shipyard that will most likely be included in my Station idea.

A = Fighter Production Subsystem

This subsystem enables the production of fighter and fighter bomber class strikecraft

B = Corvette Production Subsystem

In the Homeworld universe “corvette” is not used to refer to a type of car like we are commonly aware, a “Corvette” is a class of large strikecraft that are slower but more heavily armed and armoured, so in Storm Cloud 9 “Corvette” class will be converted to “Bomber” class, as this is the most appropriate real world equivalent in flying aircraft classes.

C = Frigate Production subsystem

A Frigate is the smallest form of capital ship in both Homeworld and in the real world. Used mostly by coast guard forces to catch illegal immigration and other smuggling operations that can happen via sea, Frigates are used where destroyers are either too expensive to run, or just are not needed.
In Homeworld they are only strong in groups.

This productive subsystem would translate into Strom Cloud 9 as Light airship production, enabling the production of the smaller forms of Airship, such as the Flak/Barrage Balloon, Torpedo Runner/Rocket Storm Balloon, ARLS/Cloud Breaker Canon, SkyEye Zeppelin/Jamming Frigate.

D = Capital ship Production

The subsystem responsible for the production of Destroyer classes and above, (Light Cruisers, Cruisers, Battle cruisers, Battleships and Carriers)
In Storm Cloud 9 this subsystem will retain the same function it serves in Homeworld, however like the others it will not soley be visable as a tiny section of the ship, but more like Command And Conquer: Renegades GDI Weapons Factory, will be a large and vulnerable section of the station that if destroyed could be the nail in the coffin for that team.

E = Resource Drop-off Point

This section of the shipyard is where the team gathers its resource income to fuel their war effort, Storm Cloud 9 stations will also have a section of the station for this purpose, should this subsection be destroyed all income for the selected team will be halted, as it is done in CnC:R when a team’s Tiberium Refinery is destroyed.

F = Fire Control Tower

The station will have automated defences that will open fire on enemies if they approach the station, the FCT is like a command link to all the weapons on the station, destroying this will render the station defenceless and the team will have to rely on human player defences.
In Homeworld the Fire Control Tower simply creates a control radius around the ship and makes all allied units in the radius fire with increased accuracy.

G = Sensor Array

Sensors are very important to the war effort to stop enemies creeping up on your station they will be equipped with powerful sensors that display enemies with class icons in the players field of view so the player knows what kind of ship it is perhaps before they can even see them visually.

The games focus will be on base launched offensives to attack an enemy base somwhere in the region and bring it down before they clear you from the skies themselves, the bases will be floating Factory platforms, the player will have a range of aircraft to choose from each altered to this new age of aircombat. Aircraft spanning from ww1 biplanes to early jet fighters and giant capital class airships, famous aircraft from the war, such as the P-51 mustang, and BF-109′s He-111, Ju-88 and 87, Hawker Hurricanes, De Havilland Mosquito’s and many more!

The Stations them selves
Since I will be using inspiration from RTS sytle gameplay and translating this into relative FPS style, I will need to locate inspiration from structures that exist for the several types of subsystem that will make up the stations general appearance.

Strikecraft

Strikecraft are the most nimble of the playable units, their manoeuvrability ranges greatly but overall would offer much higher levels of movement freedom, slower and less manoeuvrable types would be better armoured and armed to compensate.

“Strikecraft” is a term ive taken from the Homeworld universe and refers to small single to quad engine fighters and bomber craft. Because of the scale from Zeppelin to fighter aircraft it is necessary to make it easier to group types together in large bands, Strikecraft or Capital ship. Spitfires, JU-87s, B-17′s and Avro Lancaster’s would all be known as strikecraft despite there large variation in size and use.

Strikecraft = Fighter and Bomber aeroplanes

both sides have their own speciallities in strikecraft combat, but they also share alot of similarities because these roles must be filled to have a fully functioning air force.

Capital Airships

Unlike strikecraft production, no capital ship is free for purchase, and if the Airship Factory subsystem aboard the station is lost no capital class ships can be built at all meaning it’s critical that this factory stays functioning.

Capital ships have vastly superior firepower and weaponry compared to strikecraft and losing the ability to produce Airships during the course of the battle would drastically decrease your factions chances of coming out of the battle victorious.

Storm Cloud 9 will be true to real life in terms of the gases that would have been used by axis and allied forces to create airships of the , meaning that German airships use Hydrogen and can there for afford to be bigger and more heavily armoured/armed, but with the drawback of extreme vulnerability to fire and ignition sources. and the Allied airships use Helium to lift there capitals and as Helium doesn’t have as great a lift capacity forces the Allies to rely on smaller ship types with the advantage that helium is not a flammable substance.

Luftwaffe 

-a little history-

The Luftwaffe was the name of the German Air Force, before - during- and a little after world war 2 and was under the command of a man named

Hermann Wilhelm Göring.

When the Nazis took power, Göring was Minister of Civil Air Transport, which was a screen for the build-up of German military aviation, prohibited by the Treaty of Versailles. When Hitler repudiated Versailles, in 1935, the Luftwaffe was unveiled, with Göring as Minister and Oberbefehlshaber (Supreme Commander). In 1938, he became the first Generalfeldmarschall (Field Marshal) of the Luftwaffe; this promotion also made him the highest ranking officer in Germany. Göring directed the rapid creation of this new branch of service. Within a few years, Germany produced large numbers of the world’s most advanced military aircraft.

In 1936, Göring at Hitler’s direction sent several hundred aircraft along with several thousand air and ground crew, to assist the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War. This became known as the Condor Legion.

By 1939 the Luftwaffe was one of the most advanced and powerful air forces in the world.

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Playable Strikecraft

Free aircraft

the basic levels of Fighter Aircraft are free to produce for both sides of the war effort and the player would respawn as a standard Light Fighter upon death, there will be no infantry based combat in this game, you cannot disembark from your aircraft or airship, this keeps the focus strictly on piloting your aircraft and fighting in the war at hand, free Aircraft are weak put can provide the 4 basic fighter requirements, Fighter Anti-Fighter, Fighter Anti-bomber, Fighter Anti-Capital ship, Fighter- Maintainence. there are a multitude of other fighters that can all perform these rolls better than the free craft, but they cost the player credit to purchase them. 

Light Fighter

Standard fighter aircraft, players spawn as this after death, very manoeuvrable and equipped with a semi powerful machine gun. Not to be underestimated with a skilled pilot. this fighter performs the very basic of the Fighter Anti-Fighter Aircraft.
Armament:
1x standard machine gun (Front)

Cost: 0
Hull: 200
Speed: 250 mph
Handling: Light
Sensor range: Standard Sensor

the standard light fighter will be a WW1, Fokker D VI aircraft,

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Fighter Bomber

Standard Anti-capital/ Anti-station fighter, equipped with very basic Air Torpedoes and a weak machine gun, alone are an anoyance as are most of the standard issue aircraft given to rookie pilots, however in groups it can quickly spell doom to even the most protectect capital ship.
Armament:
1x Weak Machine Gun (Front)
1x Air Torpedo mount

Cost: 0
Hull: 200
Speed: 200 mph
Handling: Medium
Sensor: Standard Sensor
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Boxer Fighter

Boxer class are extremely fast aircraft with a shrapnel projection weapon, designed to approach bomber formations at speeds where bombers cant return fire and reduce the bomber to shredded hulks of falling metal, boxers can do a lot of damage but needs to be very close range to do so. Very effective in cloud cover. Only fighter capable of going faster than the Rocket Torpedo Plane, however like its bomber enemy because of the speed the aircraft can not manuever very well and relys on Jousting tactics.
Armament:
1x Boxer Cannon (Front)

Cost: 0
Hull: 200
Speed: 530 mph
Handling: Medium
Sensor: Standard Sensor
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Skygineer

An aerial Engineer and maintainance aircraft that is armed with only a weak machine gun and an low grade electro tool for repairing allied aircraft in the skies, more specifically Capital ships and station subsystems, it is not only one of only 2 helicopters flown currently by the luftwaffe but also one of the only aircraft to feature a more sophisticated radar technology to detect enemies and keep the aircraft out of harms way as much as possible.
Armament:
1x Weak Machine Gun (Front)
1x Elektrowelder Turret (weak)

Cost: 0
Hull: 200
Speed: 360 mph
Handling: medium
Sensor: Broad Spec. Radar
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Advanced Strikecraft

The following fighter classes are much more adept at there specific roles than the free versions and many can fulfill more than the 1 designed roll, these advanced aircraft range in size, from heavy anti-fighter/bomber aircraft to large anti-captital class bombers. Advanced aircraft require much greater care in their construction and as such are only available if the Stations Fighter production subsystem is still functioning. Losing this will mean that all the heavier classes of aircraft will be unavailable for the rest of the skirmish, meaning your team will have to rely on other means to protect its base and to destroy the enemy’s base.
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Erosion Light fighter

Erosion fighters are nimble strike craft and relatively low in cost, they are equipped with a single machinegun that fires bullets containing highly corrosive metal acids, the impact of the shells do damage but on impact a potent mixture of chemicals is expelled from the shell causing a rapid corrosion/erosion effect on the target for short duration after the hit. Works best in warmer conditions.
Armament:
1x Acid Machine Gun (Front)

Cost: £75
Hull: 250
Speed: 380 mph
Handling: Light – Medium
Sensor: Standard Sensor
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Cannon Light Fighter

An upgrade on the standard Light Fighter, the Cannon Light Fighter has armour improvements on its more critical areas such as the wing supports and around the cockpit. It is fitted with a larger calibre Armour Piercing machine gun. This does not hamper its manoeuvrability, one of the most effective fighters in production, used by both sides of the war. Very deadly adversary with a skilled pilot.
Armament:
1x Cannon Machine Gun (Front)

Cost: £88
Hull: 275
Speed: 385 mph
Handling: medium
Sensor: Standard Sensor
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Missile Light Fighter

Light missile fighters are the scourge of the heavier fighter classes, armed with weak prototype tracking missiles they can attack other aircraft with near on perfect accuarcy almost everytime; their missiles are slow but can normally get the jump on any fighter larger than itself in fight. the only downside to these fighters is their relatively limited ammunition capacity.  
Armament:
1x Weak Machine Gun (Front)
1x Homing rocket Mount

Cost: £110
Hull: 275
Speed: 385 mph
Handling: Light – Medium
Sensor: Standard Sensor
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SkyFuse Maintainence

SkyFuse are the class that keep the frontline from moving back towards home, they are equipped with a weak machinegun and an upgraded Electrowelder to repair allied ships much more effectively than Skygineer’s, even in hot combat situations. The Aircraft maintains fair manueverability but greatly lacks any sufficient offensive capability,
Armament:
1x Standard Machine gun (Front)
1x Elektrowelder turret (strong)

Cost: £175
Hull: 350
Speed: 385 mph
Handling: medium
Sensor: Standard Sensor
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Bombardier Medium Fighter

These fighters are equipped with fast burning missile technology; their missiles travel extremely fast but have no tracking capability, used in numbers they can quickly take down slow Zeppelin Capital class vessels or undefended station targets.
Armament:
1x Light Sky Cannon
1x weak machine gun (Front)

Cost: £200
Hull: 350
Speed: 370 mph
Handling: medium
Sensor: Standard Sensor
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Erosion Medium Fighter

Improvements on the cannon used to fire the acid rounds of this specialist aircrafts weapons come at a moderate price, unit has an increased rate of fire. Weapon does slow damage over time for a short period.
Armament:
1x Improved Acid Cannon (front)

Cost: £225
Hull: 350
Speed: 370 mph
Handling: medium
Sensor range: Standard Sensor
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Sky Cannon Medium Fighter

Sky cannon fighters are built around an experimental aircraft weapon with a barrel as long as its range. Devastating anti-fighter damage potential this fighter is able to shoot at enemies from extreme ranges before they can return fire, drawback is the aircraft can’t hold much of the weapons ammunition, pilots are known as “Angel Snipers”
Armament:
1x Light Sky Cannon
1x weak machine gun (Front)

Cost: £250
Hull: 350
Speed: 340 mph
Handling: medium
Sensor: Standard Sensor
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Sky Cannon kopter

Slow and ungainly but with a weapon as big as it’s ego to make up for it, To the Sky Cannon kopter  “Range is everything”, in groups they are even capable of threatening a Capital Airship, absolutely devastating to fighter craft, the mere fact that it is a helivopter means that they do not have to move to fire upon the enemy and can move freely in any direction, making them very dificult to bring down, no strike craft fighter has been known to take more than 3 hits from this cannon.
Armament:
1x Grand Sky Cannon
1x weak machine gun (rear)

Cost: £500
Hull: 450
Speed: 220 mph
Handling: heavy
Sensor: Standard Sensor
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Dominance Superfighter

The most manoeuvrable heavily armed and armoured strike craft in the skies, it is an prototype rocket powered gunship class has both cannons and machineguns and fires them in tandem, capable of literally tearing down any fighters that gets in its sights. Can even be a threat to lightly armoured Zeppelin Capital ships.
Armament:
2x machine gun (Front)
2x cannon machine gun (Front)
1x cannon machine gun Turret

Cost: £500
Hull: 450
Speed: 390 mph
Handling: medium-heavy
Sensor: Standard Sensor

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Rocket Torpedo Bomber

Armed to the teeth with Torpedoes this bomber has a surprise waiting any fighter thinking of shooting it down, “it’s a lot faster than it looks”. The rocket bomber has impeccable forward movement speed for its size although turning and other manoeuvres are an altogether different matter, these craft are the most dangerous threat to slow moving or station targets.
Armament:
1x weak machine gun (Rear)
1x weak machine gun (Front)
3x Air Torpedo mounts

Cost: £500
Hull: 450
Speed: 470 mph
Handling: very heavy
Sensor: Standard Sensor
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Playable Zeppelin Class

Luftwaffe Zeppelins are designed for sheer brute force above all else, they are slow, large and heavily armed and armoured. Their combat focus is on powerful long ranged weaponry able to clear the skies of most other large ships within a few minutes, they are mainly vulnerable to smaller faster moving strikecraft since there overall size makes it hard to avoid torpedo and rocket fire, that being said these ships have enough armour to weather even the most concentrated Station firepower for a substantial period before being knocked down. An unavoidable factor in the production of these Zeppelins is the use of Hydrogen as a lift gas, should the outer layer be pierced and a balloonet ruptured, the ships chances of survival will be greatly compromised.

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Barrage Balloon

The Barrage Balloon is the Nazi’s answer to RAF-CN Strikecraft, able to lay down sheets of flak to break up large formations of RAF fighter and bomber wings. Similar to the RAF Flak Balloon in purpose however the Nazi variant sacrifices speed and manoeuvrability for armour and additional weaponry.
Armament:
2x Machine gun turret
2x Cannon turret
x4 Heavy Flak Cannon

Cost: 350
Armour: 10000
Speed: 170
Handling: Heavy
Sensor:
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Rocket Storm Balloon

A Refit of the standard Barrage Balloon to make it a more suitable anti-capital weapons platform.

Storm balloons sacrifice their main anti-fighter weaponry in return of four lightning rocket mounts, Like all Luftwaffe technology, Storm balloons have more armour than speed utilising longer range weaponry capable of engaging the allied airships at range, using its armour for any strike craft that may try to take it out of the sky.
Armament:
x2 Machine gun turret
x4 Lightning Air Torpedo

Cost: 500
Armour: 10000
Handling: Heavy
Sensor:
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Aerial Rocket Launch Ship

One of the most feared attack zeppelins in the sky. The ARLS can fire a shower of Long Range Air Torpedo’s in a salvo of devastating proportions.

From a screaming 10 kilometres away it can accurately pound allied stationary and slow moving targets, with a additional range of 4 kilometres when using unguided torpedo warheads, dropping allied armour from the sky before they even realise they are being hit.

These ships focus on Stationary or slow moving targets since the guidance of the rocket warheads has an accuracy of around 40% on a good day with clear weather conditions, like all artillery positions these airships are found far behind the front offensive line being covered from enemy return fire.

ARLS are helpless against close quarter’s attacks within 1000 meters and cannot easily engage Strikecraft unless they are at a great range and are moving in a steady direction.
Armament:
X6 Long Range Air Torpedo

Cost: 450
Armour: 9500
Speed: 130
Handling: Heavy
Sensor:
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SkyEye Zeppelin

The Luftwaffe centralise themselves on large slow moving heavily armed and armoured Zeppelins to take control of the skies and thus are prone to ambushes by the much smaller faster and more nimble RAF-CN capital ships, more specifically the Jamming Frigate that work in tandem with cloud cover to completely mask their presence from radar and visual identification.

SkyEye’s are purpose built for radar, radio communications and combat awareness, they are equipped with the most advanced array of sensory equipment on any Zeppelin used by any faction in the war able to send data to all nearby strikecraft and capital class ships pointing out enemy locations via the players radar, making the allied ability to hide greatly compromised.

The is ship is a utility vehicle and has only the bare minimum of weaponry installed, it helpless against all but the weakest forms of strikecraft, should always be just behind the front line.
Armament:
x2 machinegun turret

Cost: 800
Armour: 19000
Speed: 180
Handling: Medium – Heavy
Sensor: 1x SkyEye sensors array

Luftwaffe Cruiser

The Luftwaffe use only raw force in their designs for airborne capital ships and use this as there means to obtain victory, and this vessel is no exception.

The Cruiser like all other Luftwaffe vessels is not fast but will almost certainly destroy any allied ship in range that does not use its manoeuvrability to their advantage. Cruisers excel at medium to long range combat situations against Allied capital class ships, it is very weak against attacks from below and has only very basic close-quarter defences for repelling potential Strike craft hazards.
Armament:
x4 Cruiser turret
x1 Short Range Air Torpedo
x2 machine gun turret

Cost: 800
Armour: 32000
Speed: 100
Handling: Very Heavy
Sensor:
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Luftwaffe Battlecruiser

This ship was built to bridge the gap between the cruiser and battleship and provide a capital ship that contains firepower capable of threatening fighter swarms but still retains the hull strength and relative speed of the standard Cruiser. This variant is a serious threat to any organised strikecraft formations, merciless amounts of strikecraft weaponry can clear even large swarms of offending fighter planes in a short period of time. This capital ship has only minimal anti-capital capabilities and should mostly be used when strikecraft become a major issue, or when escorting battleship fleets.

Unlike most Luftwaffe airships the Battlecruiser has no significant vulnerable underside blind spots and can return fire in relatively every direction with frightening force.
Armament:
2x Light Cruiser Turret
6x Heavy Flak cannon
6x Cannon turret
8x Machine Gun Turret

Cost: 700
Armour: 32000
Speed: 120
Handling: Heavy
Sensor:
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Luftwaffe Battleship

The Luftwaffe Battleship is the epitome of the Nazi war machine in the skies, raw firepower atop the most armoured chassis ever to fly.

In Clear skies the battleship is uncontested in a straight fight, however the vessel is very hard to control and manoeuvre, so the battleship captains are normally given strict orders to head straight to the enemy stations position and to only use cloud cover when absolutely necessary or if it cannot be avoided.

Formations of Battleships are normally spread over a large range of altitudes and distances to avoid being ambushed all at once, and are normally never spotted without a sufficient number of strikecraft or anti-strikecraft fighters or Zeppelins.

Armament:
x2 large Battleship cannon
x4 medium battleship cannon
3x small battleship cannon
8x machine gun turret

Cost: 1500
Armour: 60000
Speed: 50
Handling: Super heavy
Sensor:
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Royal Air Force – Cloud Navy

the Royal Air force is common name of the British Air Force and was one of the most advanced during the war being one of the only nations to successfully test stable rocket powered flight in aircraft before the end of the war. The cloud Navy are the additional and fictional wing of the Air force that deals with the deployment of Capital ships and the fighters that support them.

Thanks to the american supplies of Helium -a powerful non flammable “lighter than air” lift agent- the allies have the ability to combat the German luftwaffe’s flying capital ships, although the lift capacity of Helium is much less than Hydrogen so RAF-CN vessels are generally much smaller in size compared to the Luftwaffe.
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RAF Playable Strikecraft

the RAF aircraft are more specifically designed to combat capital class airships rather than other strikecraft, of course the RAF has its fairshare of anti-fighter strikecraft but because of the ever increasing strength of the Nazi combat airship the Royal Air force are having to outfit their fighter and bomber wings to focus more on this increasing threat.

RAF strikecraft weaponry is more focused on rapid firing or incendiary based weaponry

Free Aircraft

Advanced Aircraft

Vulcan “Cyclone” Medium Fighter

As its name suggests, the cyclone is armed with a prototype super rapid firing machine cannon called a “Vulcan”. The title “Cyclone” comes from the speed and spin of both the Vulcan barrel and the aircraft propellers. this aircrafts weapon is designed to combat larger strikecraft and Airship classes, 2 of these aircraft have the potential to give a large capital ship a very bad day.  
Armament:
x1 Vulcan Cannon

Cost: 450
Armour: 300
Speed: 350
Handling: light-medium
Sensor:

Incendiary “Fireshower” Medium Fighter

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Flak Balloon

This is the smallest class of airship flown by the Royal Air Force. The Flak Balloon is an anti-fighter defence Airship; it is relatively fast for an Airship and an ideal armoured scout. These ships are very adept at engaging Fighter and Bomber class vessels but its weak armour means that a skilled Bomber crew can still take this airship down if its crew isn’t careful. This ship has no anti-capital ship equipment onboard and is helpless if engaged by a vessel larger than itself.
Armament:
x4 Heavy Flak Cannon

Cost: 250
Armour: 8000
Speed: 200
Handling: Medium
Sensor: Standard Sensor

The Flak Balloon is the airship I’ve decided to pick for my transfer into 3D, it is the right size, shape and type to be adequately converted into something built for combat that would be seen in the real world had Airships gone further in development in favour of airplanes.

The Flak Balloon is based on the real world U.S ZMC-2 class airships

http://www.nasgi.org/zmc2.htm

I have turned this airship into an airborne anti aircraft warship. The ZMC-2 was the only airship type ever produced with an entirely metal exterior instead of a cloth or other soft, because of this I feel it is the ideal type to be brought to the next level of artificial development with the addition of weapons and armour.

Below are the varying designs I have produced for the Flak Balloon, each based from the Right Orthographic view, seen here I tried to use 3 different ways that this airship might have been improved for combat duties

Design sheet (All types and varients)

Type 1 – version 1 

The first image is taken directly from the ZMC-2 design, ive tried to keep as many of the original parts intact, like the large number of elevator and rudder fins at the stern (back) end of the ship, I have added several features to the exterior of the ship, the main thing being an armoured belt around the centre of the ship which is also where the vessels heavy weaponry is connected, the four heavy flak cannons as described in the Airship’s description, the nose cone of the Airship has been beefed up to give the front of the vessel a more armoured appearance, this cone is connected to two arms that reach back and connect to the main armour band, the Gondola is connected to the envelope via cables extending down from the armour chassis. 4 engines at the stern the centre bands and a machine gun turret to the top band.

Type 2 – version 1

This second design was retains the centre armour belt from the first design as I liked this part, though the guns have been repositioned, the flak cannons are now at all extreme dimensions of the ship, built into the nose cone and the rear cone behind the rudders, and one on top and below the main envelope, i thought that repositioning them could make for a more interesting design. Because there is a turret on the bottom of the vessel now the Gondola was moved to a move forward position so as to keep the majority of the crew safe, this also gives the vessel a much more streamlined look, which is good for an aircraft. The 8 Rudder/Elevators have been reduced enlarged and decreased in number to the traditional 4 seen on most airships.

Type 3 – version 1

The third design is my least favourite, I was going for a more Barrage balloon look, with the much larger Rudders and Elevators, however when the weapons were added it became apparent that this wasn’t a good idea, none the less I decided to split the armour belt and spread it amongst the main hull of the ship, with the 2 largest sections being the anchor points for both the main Flak cannons and the secondary machine gun nests.
What I do like about this design is the way I merged the gondola into the ship so that there wasn’t an obvious weak point sticking out of the ship. this needed to be done because I had placed the turrets on the lower end of the ship in alignment to where the gondola would have hung.

Second thumbnail Set

With the second set I tried to improve on the previous 3 designs, keeping the bits i thought were good and removing the parts I didn’t feel worked so will visually. I am still working on the “3 types” the main different between them all being the location of the airship Gondola is either in its original position, fixed to the fore of the airship envelope, or it has been integrated into the envelope completely.

Type 1 – version 2

I decided to split the centre armour band into two half’s giving it a greater retro feel by adding connecting cables between them, after looking at the original ZMC airship I actually liked how it had 8 tail fins instead of the traditional 4 setup, so I gave it the original 8 back, I removed the engines from underneath of the envelop and connected them to the stern instead, meaning that if anything were to happen during a landing the engines would be safer, it also makes the airship look more aerodynamic.

Type 2 – version 2

This version was pretty much totally re-designed, I didn’t like only having a pair of engines on either side of airship, so removed them completely, after playing through Empire of Steel for a few minutes I found a good image reference for my design, the top of the airship has a cabin which also has propellers protruding from it, also in an anime I watched recently “Shakugan no Shana” an airship was used which also had this feature, I liked it so I implemented it into this version of my design (shown in examples below). i also added a smaller cabin just under the middle of the main armour belt. instead of having all 4 flak cannons on the main belt i tried to move them around a bit, so I kept 3 on the main belt and put one on the top side of the envelope above the main gondola, this is held in place by a series of cables to make it seem more retro.

I found after drawing a few of these and looking at airships in general that I dislike the way engines outside the airship are simply attached to the envelope via cables, I thought that for war purposes this flimsy design just wouldn’t be able to cope, so I added a third armour ring on the very back of the airship to connect the engines to.

Envelope cabin – examples,

Type 3 - Version 2.

My Type 3 plans had pretty much ran out as i developed the other 2 types which I prefer about 10 fold to this version, however still trying to keep its barrage balloon appearance i shortened the tail fins to keep them closer to the main envelope, the engines were split up and placed around the ship, I was going for the dual armour band again, only this time I removed all the smaller bands in-between which didn’t seem to make sense to me and replaced them with cables, on each band I tried 2 cannons and 2 engines, placing the engines on opposite sides of the envelope to the cannons on the same band, to prevent damage to itself. in the end I decided to cancel this version.

Third thumbnail set

the third set of thumbnails i am finalising my ideas and trying to decide what design is best by taking parts from the Type 2 and Type 1 and combining them to make my final choice.

Type 1 – version 3

Design wise I am approaching something I really like and want to make in 3D, so I haven’t changed the design much from version 2, I added a second belt of armour behind the Flak guns which connects to a tertiary belt at the stern which the engines connect to, something that I really liked about

Type 2 – version 3

This is the best design I have been able to come up with, it posses all of the strengths from my previous design, this design could also be called Type 1 – version 4, but because of the location of the gondola I made it type 2. I removed the top cabin as I didn’t believe this to be within the time frame I was working for, that being 1939, I could see something like this top cabin being implemented onto later versions of airships along that time scale should they prove worth building (which we know in our time scale it wasn’t) I spread the cables connecting the turrets out a bit so that they weren’t so close to each other and removed the lower half of the armour belt behind the gun line as I felt this was a little too much. Finally I moved the Gondola to its forward mount just under the nose of the envelope and connected cables to it from the centre belt.

Into 3Dii

using the basic orthograph of the ZMC-2 i jumped into Maya, using the original image to get the shape of the ZMC airship correct, after drawing and re drawing had skewed the shape. the tail fins were a bit of a hastle but I got them sorted in the end…

next i began to work onto the envelope, making an outline for the armour belt and any other attachments on that are connected to the airship from the outside.

due to only recently being able to get the design images onto my computer I had to keep looking down at the drawn pictures which were on my desk.

Saviour, surprise engine design!

I was watching anime to relax recently and during episode specific episode of “shakagan no shana” a Hikousen was used (japanese for “Airship”) which surprised me since the anime was nothing to do with airships or even aircraft or flight, yet this stylised airship was flying on my screen, so i carried on watching, i was stressing over how to build the engines that connect to the side of my airship, since i had seen Laputa Castle i nthe sky and didnt feel like designing it like Miyazaki did. In “Shakagan no Shana” it suddenly did a close up of the engines on the side of the airship, I couldnt believe my luck. below is the screen shot I took

Final Renders

Torpedo Runner

The Torpedo Runner is the smallest capital ship in the Royal Air Force Cloud Navy. The torpedo runner is designed to engage capital class vessels in hit and runs using its relative speed and manoeuvrability to evade the powerful guns of Luftwaffe capital ships whilst still getting some shots in their self.
Armament:
x2 Capital Air Torpedo

Cost: 500
Armour: 6000
Speed: 220
Handling: Medium – Light
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Cloud Breaker Cannon

CBC’s are the RAF-CN’s capital ship response to the ever thickening armour of the Imperial Air Force’s capital and stationary vessels.

It is the single largest cannon ever deployed on a mobile vessel and the second largest ever brought into the sky, the Airship itself is built around the weapon instead of the other way around. CBC’s are self loading aerial artillery units capable of pounding Imperial armour at a staggering 10000 meter range.

Because of how large the cannon actually is means that the entire Airship needs to face almost in the precise direction of the target and is very difficult for even skilled pilots to get a true aim and hit moving targets. The weight of the cannon meant that only minimal armour plating could be installed to still grant freedom of moving the ship. CBC’s are devastating against stationary or slow moving targets.
Armament:
x1 Cloud Breaker Cannon

Cost: 450
Armour: 8000
Speed: 100
Handling: Medium – Heavy

this Airship ideas main inspiration stems from the game Final Fantasy 7, in which is a cannon of simply monstorous proportions, this cannon it used to keep the planet destroying monsters know as “WEAPON” at bay, to which it does successfully. for most of the game this cannon is fixed to Junion Harbour, until it is moved to Midgar to fight the Diamond Weapon.

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Flak Destroyer

The Flak Destroyer is a heavily armoured anti-fighter defence platform; this airship normally accompanies RAF carrier and cargo convoys to deter imperial fighter and bomber wings from attacking.

They remain one of the most heavily armoured capital airships in production by the Royal Air Force and because of its light weaponry and smaller general size the ship is still able to turn and manoeuvre than the Imperial equivalent.

This ship has practically no hard offensive capabilities and is relatively helpless against Luftwaffe Zeppelins.
Armament:
x6 Heavy Flak Turret
x6 machine gun turret
x2 cannon turrets

Cost: 500
Armour: 18000
Speed: 160
Handling: Medium – Heavy
Sensor: x1

I would have designed this airship on the old British R-100 series of Airships for their basic shape.

here is a great video of the original R-100 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdPrUBkMgdE&feature=related

unfortunatly it too crashed and exploded killing everyone aboard.

here is an example of a design Ive done  just in case I decide to take this airship to 3D 
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Light Cruiser

Unlike the Imperial war machines, the RAF prefer the use of smaller and faster airships rather than the overbearing armour and firepower of the Imperial Zeppelins.

Light Cruisers combine the best mixture of affordability/speed/armour and firepower, making a capital ship that is hard to kill, harder to hit and has the capability to take down foes much larger than itself.
Armament:
x4 Light Cruiser Cannon

Cost: 600
Armour: 24000
Speed: 160
Handling: Medium
Sensor: x1
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Incendiary Light Assault Cruiser

For the RAF-CN the ‘fire ship’ takes on a whole new meaning. As the most heavily armoured capital airship flown by the allies this vessel remains one of the most deadly in the skies to date.

absolutely devastating in cloud cover ambushes this ship has a few fatal weakness one being that the range of its weaponry is extremely limited which is why although ungainly it is designed to get in close to enemy capital ships utilising its Thermite and napalm sprayers to literally melt enemy ships in midair, second is that it is tremendously vulnerable to attacks from below and third its lack of any decent anti fighter weaponry means it’s a sitting duck against strikecraft.

Its major plus is a that all Nazi Capital airships use extremely flammable hydrogen as the main lift agent, giving it the ability to take down any capital class vessel very effectively provided it gets close enough, once in range the enemy can normally no longer return fire.
Armament:
4x Thermite Napalm cannon

Cost: 700
Armour: 36000  
Speed: 140
Handling: heavy
Sensor:
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Jamming Frigate

An experimental airship utilizing advanced sensor technology capable of greatly reducing the sensor range of any enemy ship caught in the area of effect, causing confusion and destroying the Imperials ability to coordinate attacks effectively. 

Together with its 3 Capital Anti-capital Air Torpedo mounts and fast move speed the Jamming frigate is capable of striking hard at Imperial targets before they know what hit them and can return fire, deadly in clouds and thick smog.
Armament:
x3 Capital Air Torpedo

Cost: 900
Armour: 16000
Speed: 160
Handling: Medium
Sensor: x1 “Fork eye” Radar Jammer
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Equipment Sensors/Radar

Sensor equipment will be a key factor in the flow and overall turn of events inside the game environment, being able to spot an enemy attack on radar before it reaches your base will be critically important to the success of the battle.

England was the first country to successfully implement the Radar in active duty during World War 2 to detect incoming Luftwaffe bomber wave’s incoming from France, enabling the RAF to scramble and move to intercept the bombers and their escorts.
Radar was a key asset to the success of the defence of Britain and eventual allied victory of the Battle of Britain.

In Storm Cloud 9 sensors are just as important and range in strength and capabilities depending on the size of the craft being flown or its specific role.

how it could work.

information on the battlefield is extremely important and can be the death nail for a faction in a conflict, in games this can be depicted in a number of fashions,

1. Standard Player Radar

more common in RTS style games but is found in first person shooters also, in a designated corner of the screen there will be a square or eliptical scope showing coloured dots representing the players and objects in the game environment, some of which will be out of the players current FOV, but this scope will keep the player aware of his surounding area. found in both Timesplitters and Command and Conquer: Renegade, Ground Control 2 and many others, it is also found in racing games in the form of a track view so you can see where the other cars are on the track in relation to your current position.

2. HUD awareness

Rather than give you a specific place on your screen to look at to locate eneimes or allies that may be around you in games like Homeworld2 and Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter the sensory information is passed striaght onto your FOV, so if there is an enemy behind a rock infront of you you dont need a little radar to tell you as it will bring up a marker showing you that the enemy is behind the rock. as shown below.

the problem with the above image is that yes we can see that there is eneimes ahead of us, but we do not know what kind of enemy it is, so therfore could have a hard time dealing with them. Homeworld 2 uses a different method of this, it not only displays where enemies in sensor range are, but it also has appropriate icons for all ship classes meaning you always know what your up against long before you would have to fight it.

I – Shipyard (mothership class vessels arent given an icon since they are easily identified)
H – Battlecruiser/ Dreadnought/ Battleship
G – Carrier
F – Platform
E – Destroyer/ Light Cruiser/ Cruiser/ Heavy Cruiser
D – Frigate
C – Corvette
B – Fighter
A – Resource collector 

I would prefer somthing more on the lines of the Homeworld 2 ingame awareness as shown above, that way players can always assess the situation and attempt to adapt to how the battle changes without the need to take up any addition space on screen with player radar displays

There are a number of effects that can change the efficiency of the sensors aboard a strikecraft or Zeppelin, things such as Cloud cover, stormy weather, and jamming signals created by some RAF-CN vessels.

Storm: -40% Cloud: -40% Jammed: -50%

Luftwaffe Sensor/Radar

Nazi’s German radar and other sensory technology isnt as advanced as its RAF-CN equivalent ship per ship, it is deemed of secondary importance with the majority of funding going to strengthening the ship hull and firepower overall.

Luftwaffe Standard Strikecraft Sensor

Fighters are fitted with very basic radio devices them to pick up the unique signature emitted by all Allied aircraft from up to 5 kilometres away. Due to its inexpensive construction this sensor is fitted on all low tier and free aircraft.

This sensor is prone to blackout occasionally and cannot detect signals from enemy aircraft meaning only Allied aircraft will show up on the radar screen.

The range for detecting allied and axis aircraft is different and allied units can be detected from much further away. The detection ranges are displayed separately for enemy units and for allied units.

Enemy Detection Range: 0m
Enemy Storm Detection Range: 0m
Enemy Storm + Cloud Detection Range: 0m
Enemy Cloud Detection Range: 0m
Enemy Cloud + Jammed Detection Range: 0m
Enemy Jammed Detection Range: 0m
Enemy Jammed + Cloud + Storm Detection Range: 0m

Allied Detection Range: 5000m
Allied Storm Detection Range: 3000m
Allied Storm + Cloud Detection Range: 1000m
Allied Cloud Detection Range: 3000m
Allied Cloud + Jammed Detection Range: 500m
Allied Jammed Detection Range: 2500m
Allied Jammed + Cloud + Storm Detection Range: 0m

Luftwaffe Advanced Strikecraft Sensor

This sensor is a much improved version of the standard strikecraft array. Manufactured for aircraft who’s survivability rates are much greater due to the increased cost in production.

Advanced sensors can detect allied signatures at twice the range of the standard array, and is also capable of picking up and tracking enemy signatures at very short ranges.

Enemy Detection Range: 1000m
Enemy Storm Detection Range: 600m
Enemy Storm + Cloud Detection Range: 200m
Enemy Cloud Detection Range: 600m
Enemy Cloud + Jammed Detection Range: 100m
Enemy Jammed Detection Range: 500m
Enemy Jammed + Cloud + Storm Detection Range: 0m

Allied Detection Range: 10000m
Allied Storm Detection Range: 6000m
Allied Storm + Cloud Detection Range: 2000m
Allied Cloud Detection Range: 6000m
Allied Cloud + Jammed Detection Range: 1000m
Allied Jammed Detection Range: 5000m
Allied Jammed + Cloud + Storm Detection Range: 0m

Luftwaffe Basic Zeppelin Radar

Zeppelins are much larger than any form of strikecraft and as such can afford to have much larger more advanced sensory equipment, Nazi airpower neglects the importance of battlefield intelligence in favour of unit strength and firepower,

Enemy Detection Range: 3000m
Enemy Storm Detection Range: 1800m
Enemy Storm + Cloud Detection Range: 400m
Enemy Cloud Detection Range: 1800m
Enemy Cloud + Jammed Detection Range: 300m
Enemy Jammed Detection Range: 1500m
Enemy Jammed + Cloud + Storm Detection Range: 0m

Allied Detection Range: 15000m
Allied Storm Detection Range: 9000m
Allied Storm + Cloud Detection Range: 3000m
Allied Cloud Detection Range: 9000m
Allied Cloud + Jammed Detection Range: 1500m
Allied Jammed Detection Range: 7500m
Allied Jammed + Cloud + Storm Detection Range: 0m

Luftwaffe “SkyEye” Radar and Sensor Array

Realising the fatal flaws in the majority of their Zeppelin designs the Luftwaffe created a Zeppelin specifically designed to make up for the lack of early warning sensory equipment aboard the current combat Zeppelin designs, thus creating the SkyEye. SkyEye is a high powered “any situation” battlefield awareness tool, most negative effects on common other sensory equipment have a much reduced effect on this sensor.

Storm: -20% Cloud: -20% Jamming: -35%

Enemy Detection Range: 10000m
Enemy Storm Detection Range: 8000m
Enemy Storm + Cloud Detection Range: 6000m
Enemy Cloud Detection Range: 8000m
Enemy Cloud + Jammed Detection Range: 5500m
Enemy Jammed Detection Range: 3500m
Enemy Jammed + Cloud + Storm Detection Range: 2500m

Allied Detection Range: 25000m
Allied Storm Detection Range: 20000m
Allied Storm + Cloud Detection Range: 15000m
Allied Cloud Detection Range: 20000m
Allied Cloud + Jammed Detection Range: 11250m
Allied Jammed Detection Range: 12500m
Allied Jammed + Cloud + Storm Detection Range: 6250m

Here I will post models I am working on to practise using the Maya 3D software.

most of the stuff that i make with either go towards the course studies themselves or to the which I am leading

After the first year, I deliberatley did not use 3DSmax (my previous loveslave) at all for the whole summer, nor did I use Maya either, but, I wanted to completely clean my slate and I have done, in this respect.

my mind has completely forgoten 3DSmax and I can now freely use maya without thinking “fuck, this is so much easier in max” and other such vugarities.

I have missed a fair few Thursday maya classes running around sorting out my stupid loan, because of this I felt sort of bad for Alan for not being there. When ever I did attend I watched carefully to the things he was doing and after trying it out on… “the cursed minicooper” i have begun to get a hang of the very thing that always escaped me, cruved edges!

Practice 1 – Striker 

My first attempt at doing somthing a little curved, this is the “Striker” combat areoplane that is featured in the game “Empire of Steel” for Sega Megadrive, one of my most favourite games of all time next to Gunstar Heroes.

It can be seen on the boxart for the game in the center left of the main image.

Front Left

Rear

Top

Back right

Its still unfinished. The engine and propeller are still missing, as well as the rig for the tail wheel and the tail wheel itself and also the guns on either side, but I am happy with the result so far, I did it all from memory of things learned in Alans class on thursdays.

The model itself is made up of lots of separate pieces.

Wheels 2, Leg struts 2, Main wings 2, Wing center support 1, Fuselage wing supports 4 sets of 3, Striker fuselage 1, Cockpit verticle stabliser 1, Fuselage stabiliser fins 2, Main verticle stabliser 1, Verticle stabiliser supports 3, Horizontal stabilisers 2, Wire supports 6.

So as far as a physical model goes, its not that stable i dont think, if i added gravity into this scene, it would fall to pieces, (which would look really cool so I may try it out anyway and post a video link) 

this model has taken me about 7 hours so far, im sure thats quite slow, im not sure if it would be easier if i had more than one image to work from, because then I get conflicts as the 2 may not match up perfectly (or at least decently) or somthing other reason.

things I really want to do is UV Mapping, but that is unknown to me right now, im not sure how difficult rigging this plane would be, or if would even be necessary in the final result anyway. However when i think about it, it would be quite important. The Ailerons and elevators would need to move in opposite directions at the same time to display a “roll” manuever, they would need to go up and down together for pitch manuevers, and the rudder would need to turn to display Yaw maneuvers.

this can be seen in much more detail here.

http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/design/q0101.shtml

basically, Yaw is left and right turning like a car, roll is round sideways turning, and pitch is raising lowering the nose.

Practice 2 – HB MKIII “Heavy Gear” Armoured Aerial Security Drone

Concept by Rukifellth

after speaking with alan i learned that game modelling is different to animation modelling, and in game modelling they do not smooth the models before they put them into the game, or at least not the normal Maya “smooth” option that is available.

so i decided to try and model a enemy combatant for my game mod Gunstar Heroes Resurrection.

Basic Unit Info

This is a Hoverbot MKIII “Heavy Gear” Armoured Security Drone, it was drawn by my concept artist Rukifellth a few months ago, it is roughly 16 feet tall and as its name suggests it hovers above the ground for ease of movement. Its arms are held in place by small magnetic arrays on either side of the chassis.

It has 2 chest mounted rocket packs for crowd control, the top side of its arms can be flipped round to reveal energy/mass driver cannons, if enemies are too close it will use the large rounded edge of its arms to fight in melee combat.

Maya 3D

the 3D work for this unit was quite relaxing to do, and has been greatly enjoyable so far. the lower end of the unit is missing as well as the rockets in the launchers on its chest.

During this process a few things puzzled me, I believe its all to do with the way I modelled it but without smoothing im not sure how to rectify it.

1. I get the hideous line down the middle of the chassis, I worked on 1 half first then mirrored it but id like to know how to get rid of this line.

2. Some areas have a plated polygon look, (noticable on the lower areas of the arms and chassis skirt) 

3. Some have a smooth surface in 1 axis but then in another its a hard edge (noticable ontop of the head)

Front

Top

holding down control to reveal the “convert to” selection is a really useful tool and im glad I clarified its use during the last Maya session. I have seen it before in the menus at the top but always thought it was going to blow up my model or something equally as horrid if I pressed it, its actually pretty handy and speeds everything up a great deal.

Perspectve

found a small fix!

im not sure if its the correct way to do this, but it seems to work with at least some manner of success.

at the top of the maya interface is a option called “Normals” near the lower end of this is a selection for “soften edge”

this gave some results that were relativley decent compared to the alternative.

this is a small example of the smooth result from this option, this enabled me to fix all the issues I had yesterday (07/11/09) when I began modelling the HeavyGear unit.

here is a version of this unit as it it now, with only minor details on the rear that need finishing, such as the “this way up” sign and also the cylinder geometry on the underside of the backpack.

this (from the front) is as it will appear ingame, of course it is without texture right now, i am without UVmapping knowledge, i will most likely look into this soon. im also wondering what the Rig for this model will be like, id imagine it to be very simple since there are no visible limbs, and its a machine which means that the geometry wont deform or stretch with the bones.

Practise 3 – HB MKII LAAD - Medigear

the next thing i will try to model in my spare time will be the Hoverbot MKII LAAD “Lady” Light Aerial Attack Drone, otherwise known as a Medigear. gradually im trying to get better at achieving  good smoothing and modelling techniques while also decreasing the time it takes me to do it, also learning to better control geometry so that the smooth option or “soften edge” isnt doing so much of the work for me.

Medigear

concept by Rukifellth

this mark 2 varient of Hoverbot is much smaller than the mark 3 by roughly 10 times, the Mk 2 is about 5 feet across 2.5 feet tall and 1.5 feet deep, armed with a small rocket pack and a sigle pivoting autocannon, it is much more of a threat that its predecessor.

Game Concepts to Game Models

For my transcription project I will model a large series of aircraft based on designs from a dead gaming modification for homeworld 2.

A Wing and a Prayer

A Wing and a Prayer was a modification to space Real Time Strategy game Homeworld 2, it was intended to change the game environment from space void to atmospheric combat, using designs inspired from games such as Crimson skies. In this universe the sky is dominated by Armoured and powerful Zeppelin based Airships comparable to the Hindenburg and WW1 and 2 war era surface warships.

this setting was so inspiring and imaginative that I could not believe that the mod died, I found this Mod 2 years after its death when searhing through the Homeworld 2mod listings on Mod Database dot com, it was an idea nobody else had ever put into action, and even now there are very few people that realise the fantasy and originality of making somthing that is done again and again into somthing new, i.e space rts after space rts, suddenly its put into a completely new setting that is fresh and dream like.

A Wing and a Prayer (AWAAP) was going to be set in the 1920 and 30′s and asumed the Hindenburg disaster never occured, making use of flying warships much more feasable as this disaster marked the end of the Airship age.

the official page for AWAAP can be found here

http://www.moddb.com/mods/a-wing-and-a-prayer

It details a war between England and Germany for power over Europe, using the skies as its gameplay theatre, instead of the ground like the “Brothers in Arms” or “Command & Conquer” series.

However the mod never took off (pun not intended), since there was only one person alone doing the entire mod, and I know from personal experiance how impossible that actually is unless you are a very patient and talented individual, the last recorded activity on the mod was seen on May 20th 2007, deemed unfortunatly “dead” by the myself and the majority of the community it states on the top of the page that the Mod is actually “paused” it is uncertain if the mod will ever continue as the owner distances himself with his concept and the game it was designed for also becomes obsolite.

Finding it extremely unfortunate such an idea should befall a terribel fate I had been thinking of a way I could bring back his idea and the only way I can help is to realise his 2D conceptual paintings into Digital 3D form.

At the end of the project I will give the owner of the Mod free access to all that I have created which will probably give him the will to return and continue where he left off, so everybody wins.

This project I have chosen for myself ticks all my boxes for what I was looking for in terms of what I am personally interested in, and want to specialise in and achieve by the time I leave.

Game Modeling

Vehicle Modeling  

Airships / Aircraft

Military / War

Fiction

Alternate history

—–

DrZais as he is known on Mod Database, was the only member involved in the construction of AWAAP, and before the mod “died” he produced a large series of decent conceptual aircraft and airships for both the Royal Air Force (England) and the German Imperial Air Force (GIAF, Germany) many featuring all three key perspectives, Front, Side, and Top. larger ships featuring either only Side and Front, or just only Side orthgraphic paintings. all of which can be seen here at the link below.

Concept Images Archive

The design of both the Airships and Aircraft is centered around aesthetic and not practical or realistic ideas, which seemed to alienate people as they commented things like “that shouldn’t/wouldn’t be like that” as if the flying capital warship wasnt enough to make them think about the impossibilites of the whole idea.

————–

Modelling.

Construction began during Reading week of my first peice of work for this project, that being the 3D model of DrZais’s RAF Flying Aircraft Carrier design seen at the bottom of the image below below.

cutting this image into its 2 orthographs I placed them into Maya on viewport planes and began moddeling it.

since I didnt record the construction as I will for the others to come, here is the current render.

As a first step on this project i already feel confident enough that I am going to be able to produce some great work  and am looking forward to the next 10 weeks.

RAF Carrier analysis

the texture on the carrier is o course nothing to scream about and the mesh has a few minor errors, like polygons with too many faces, however overall the model looks good compared to its 2D print, and the lack of texture also makes them look more like its concept, which the DrZais may or may not have done should he have moddelled it himself intented upon. some small textures could be added just to give the model a little more finish, such as runway lanes and hazard strips on the lower drop hangar, such as seen on the concept. 

Texturing is a secondary objective in terms of what I want from this unit and course in general, none the less it is important and I do wish to learn how to do it. 

Other details will be added like gun points on the side-tips of the runway, also at the rear of the bridge and at the sides of the drop hangar, for anti-aircraft defence, no large weapons will be mounted on this ship.

Polys: 3916

Tri’s: 7700 

Roll of the Carrier in Homeworld2 Logic

since we are familiar to the idea that carriers are the landing and lauching point of fighter aircraft, I should explain their role in the game homeworld 2 so as to clear up questions as to why the ships are designed the way they are.

In Homeword 2 the Carrier  is a place of production, repair, rearmament and storage for other ships in the fleet, unlike earth aircraft carriers which are only capable of storing fighters and fighter-bombers to launch attacks with, either on deck of inside the ship, Homeworld2 Carriers are capable of not only storing these ships, but also larger ships such as bombers and Frigate class vessels as well, however Frigates do not remain inside the ship once constructed.

so the larger entrances/exits on the Carrier’s design are intended t be the release point of only the Frigate class vessels.

(a Frigate is a small warship normally used for coastal guard)

Next

Since there are so many different knds of designs to choose from, I will pick the German Carrier to be the next unit on the construction line. Since I have maya 09 at home and maya 2010 is at university I will do 2 models at a time, I will choose the carrier for my home project and for university I will choose the GIAF Komet interceptor.

Komet Interceptor Design Concept by DrZais

This is the Information on the Komet as writen by DrZais on Feb 8th, 2007

“The Interceptor is the fastest aircraft in the skies, equipped with a single use rocket engine designed to give it a massive burst of speed and thus allowing it to intercept enemy bomber formations long before they are within range of friendly airships. Once the rocket has been activated and exhausted it is jettisoned and the Interceptor returns to normal speeds using its small nose mounted propeller to power it in battle. The Interceptor must return to a friendly carrier to have its rocket booster replaced before it can be used again.”

what is interesting about this fighter craft is that it contains both a Jet engine and a propeller nose mounted engine, the jet engine can be removed, which is somthing I will have to look out for when modelling, also there are several descrepancies when comparing the front view and the side view, the lower fusalge is deeper on the side view than it is shown in the front view, again somthing i will have to consider when modelling, however considering that these concepts are digitally painted by hand with a graphics tablet it is always likely that this was a unintended mistake.  

After a good hour of fiddling around with the orthgraphic images in photoshop and on the view planes in maya my Komet Interceptor scene was finally ready to be started, using a polygon guide I made sure all the pictures matched up and fitted together perfectly.

GIAF Carrier Airship

The GIAF carrier features a much less common design idea, the top of the carrier is left open instead of the bottom as seen on the RAF design, fighters land through the front and drop out to take off through the aft keel hatch. The bridge of the ship is also located at the front of ship just above the landing ramp.

Don’t really know how I feel about this brief, I didn’t get butterflies in my stomach or become hot/sweaty when Phil mentioned (the obvious) epic amounts of drawing will be needed. so thats a good sign!

Envelopes were passed around between us at the table. Each envelope contained a word for the type, setting or world which your characters are to take their form.

My word is Avian

First Impression

This brief is interesting, I’m still wondering how –if at all- I can use what is made here in Gunstar Heroes Resurrection, although, I doubt its possible.

The whole Avian thing sounds like Aviation, as in flight. So im wondering if the characters I design will be birdmen of some description, this is all speculation at this point.

Google roulette!

Spinning the google roulette wheel! The word on the ball is “Avian”. First stop Wikipedia, give me some basic premise for searching further.

“Avian” according to the amorphous blob that is Wikipedia is… oh, its has 4 things that I could mean

Avian may refer to:

1. Bird – (could be)
2. Avian (Band) <- American metal band (definitely not)
3. Avians <- a fantasy race in several fantasy settings (couldn’t be this one huh?
4. Aviano <- a city in Italy also known as Avian

I’m guessing that it is the fantasy race option of those, so im going to head out now and try to interview one of these myself! Of course I’m kidding, let’s take a closer look!

After spinning “Avian Race” in the Google roulette, I took the option which looked the most promising; it linked me to what I assume is a online RPG website (no you can’t buy rocket propelled grenades LOL) called Aabahran.

There are lots of other links here, but most of them are to do with Avian flu, how to look out for it, how to treat it, etc.

It gives a short description of the Avian Race http://www.aabahran.com/?p=155

“Avians are bird like creatures that resemble humans.  They have wings that allow them to be in constant flight.  Avians have been known to travel great distances without needing a rest.  When they are not in flight, Avians are able to fold their wings and rest them on their backs.  Because of their dependence on the wind for propulsion, they have become sensitive to disturbances in wind speed and pressure.

Avians can be the following classes:
Warrior, Thief, Ninja, Battlemage, Invoker, Necromancer, Dark-Knight, Bard and Blademaster.”

 Also I took a look at the Dungeons and Dragons wiki, and looked for Avian in their races list, and I found a suitable page on this race. Following paragraph was taken from that page, i highlighted the important bits.

“Avians combine the features of human and raptor, having the build of a lanky humanoid but with talon-like feet and a wingspan equal to their height. They come in a variety of colors along the white, brown, and black spectrum, though some younger avians are known to dye their wings in exotic colors. Their heads remain very birdlike, with a sharp beak, piercing eyes, and tufts of feathers that are groomed into different styles. Their feathers cover most of their bodies. Though their feet resemble the tough claws of most birds of prey, their hands retain a more humanoid shape.

Avians are known to dress in light clothing such as cloth and silk. Their colors tend to match their surrounding environment so as to have constant camouflage when necessary. A common tradition among avians is a necklace that carries token feathers, normally no more than three, of significant family members, usually the mother, father, and spouse.

After hatching, avians remain helpless without a parent. They learn to walk around the nesting area around a year of age and are attempting flight by year two. They reach adulthood at about 16 and have lifespans similar to humans”

D&D passage on Avians, http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Avian_(4e_Race)

There were several illustrations of Avian people on the wiki showing the different D&D roles they can play.

this is how the avian race is currently depicted on a broad scale.

I did an image hunt for relavent images that could possibly help me generate ideas for the appearance of my 3 characters hero villain

top right: a common Avian design featuring a medievel war setting, characters head is totally birdlike, wings can be seen on his back

top left: a slight variation featuring a avian that looks to be set in a sort of egyptian era, waring golden coloured clothing, holding a stringbow and arrow

middle right: this is a depiction of a hindu god, unlike the other designs of avians that i had seen while searching this one had wings for arms instead of both, i thought this was interesting and worth noting as a possible alternative.

middle left: an avian magician of somkind, thought this was cool because i started to notice all the avians ive founs so far are depictions of real birds, this one looks more like an owl, which fits with the wizard archetype , of being wise.

bottom left: this looks very cool, an i had forgotten about this character in the X-men series, “arch angel” he retains all of his human atributes apart from his glorious white wings.

these 2 were my favouite pictures that i found while looking for inspiration for my hero character.

Right: a face off between an 2 avians. One the hero, the other the villain, the villain looks more emminent than the hero, having sharp black claws, a black horned head and bat-like wireframe wings. 

Found this picture on Deviant Ar, is my favourite depiction of Avian humanoids i have seen, features a finished battle between two avian characters, the hero triumphing over the villain and the hero is about to deliver the finishing blow, both men in th image are still verymuch humanoid, like Arch Angel they still have human shaped faces hands and feet, which are the things commonly addapted in Avian humanoid art.

I have never been a great fan of medievel style art or games, things set in the past are used too often and dont require enough imaginationto keep me sufficiently interested.

I want my Avians to be considerabley different, still maintaining a basic human shape AND facial features rather than them having a complete bird head, they will ware futuristic armour/clothing this will be to gain a fresh look on what Avians in the future could resemble.

wings and arms

i have been trying to understand the difference between the birds wing in relation to the human arm, since ive been having a bit of bother trying to figure out how exactly birds relax their wings onto their bodies, the reasons that this is casueing an issue is because ive been looking at the Avian race of humanoid birdman for a while, and they already have arms and so its threw my mind into the sky just trying to contemplate this odd imaginary being, also because my characters -save for Tairian- walk upright, and unlike birds that mostly walk with a mild hunch so again, the positioning of the wings on my characters has been a bit tricky . Ive found some good resources. this website in particular I found to be very cool indeed.

http://www.aviary.org/curric/wings.htm

coupled with the following screenshot I am understanding a lot more of a birds actual physique but still having a little trouble understanding just HOW they do it, in what way do their wings fold? :s the following video really helped me in this respect, still looking for inspiration for my villain character I searching for big birds, or the biggest bird, and i found the perfect one, the Andean Condor is a giant black bird, largest in the world!

Still, it is cool to see the clear signs of evolution from these images, how every animal has the same bones we just evolved to need certain things from their structure.

Somthing I learned from the above link, is that the orginasation of a birds feathers is very important to their individual flight characteristics, which is somthing that we never really think about, we sort of just say “oh look a bird” because we expect it to have wings that are capable of flight, unless we see an ostrich or chicken, which have wings but are flightless.

another factor in the confusion is that in art of winged humans the wings very rarely are drawn practiaclly, and are always almost done soley for artistic value and thus the only thing needed to be understood about the image is that the person has wings, and we know in basic terms what wings look like so we dont think past the mere look of the art, where as id like my creations to actually have an artistic look and also be able to function as if they really existed. 

To get a closer look at the wing type for Yura I foolishly typed “Chicken wings” into google, HAHA, quite amusing because after realising what I had typed it was too late.

surprise level 0….. comedy level 10.

so I made sure to be specific and added “xray” to the end of my search, my hero characters pyhsique is based off the relative dimentions of a hen, very broad lower body and stumpy arms, however Yura can still fly unlike the Hen/Chicken. chickens flap there wings very fast when they are running around like a headless.. chicken, (ooh cruel joke there) so i thought of perhaps giving Yura the wings of a humming bird, that way she doesnt have to have absolutely giant wings on her back and can keep her relatively small frame,

Angels

Angels are an important part of the focus for my characters, since angels are winged humanoids also, at least in catholic teachings.

based on knowledge gained from this website: http://kimbasangels.com/hierarchy.html

Seraphim

Seraphim are the closest form of being to god out of all the types of angel that exist.

“According to Enoch II, the Seraphim have 4 faces and 6 wings. It has been written that these six wings represent the six days of creation. Depicted in Middle Age writings, the Seraphim are described as being red in color and brandishing flaming swords ”

I dont want my villain to have 4 faces, but i do want him to have 6 glorious wings, somthing about having more than 1 set of feathered wings is just so cool. the four faces thin i didnt see in any depiction seraphim i found whilst searching for references

http://www.angelfocus.com/dionysius%20hierarchy.htm#Seraphims

like the other link, this one also contained information stating that seraphims are red and gold in colour and wield a flaming sword, i personally think there is just somthing much more sinister and menacing about an enemy who is capable and willing to pull you apart using his bare hands rather than a weapon.

ohh lucky! www.seraphim.com (who would have thought that they had their own website?)

“The only reference to the Seraphim in the Old Testament, can be found in Isaiah Chapter 6, verses 1 through 3, which details a specific vision the prophet had of these angels. The scripture reads, “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were Seraphs, each with six wings, with two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another, holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty, the whole earth is full of his glory”.“

so he had a vision of god, and around god were the seraphim.

SCANNER HACKED! I WIN!

I managed to hack my scanner and get it to save my pictures! the end is closing in and i cant afford a new one. I will write about the images tomorow, there are still some more not up yet. also alot need to be edited in photoshop because of my light fingered “lets-rub-it-out-and-start-again” tactics its hard to see.

initial villain proportions

first sketches of the outline proportions for the potential villain character, relativley normal human build or long and gaunt looking human build with long arms possibly for longer clawing reach. inspiration was from the robots in Miyazaki’s Laputa: Castle in the sky, their arms almost touch the floor, they have slender legs and when there arms become wings they have a very broad span.

 initial Sidekick proportions

testing out proportions for the Sidekick character, short and scrappy, short round and fat, of huge and overbearing with tiny legs for comedic effect. also testing the hix of human and bird for the first time.

Villain Face 1

Further toying with the bird / human mixing, trying to figure out what way im going to take it, or how to make the face not look so evil, Birds have a very cutting and piercing stare to there eyes thats hard to remove and still make it look like a humanoid bird the way I want it to be.

Initial Hero line proportions test

this was a quick line drawing for what could possibly be the Heros basic dimentions and wingspan 

basic premise

to help in further drawing I made a small rule up. to make the Avian/human blend more original I decided to make a type of optical illusion with the head, where if you remove the lower half of the head it will resemble a bird, whereas including it will resemble a humaniod character. so i always start drawing the “beak” first as the shape of this normally defines the character that fits around it.

Villain

Posing and Villain’s first design

Seraphim villain 1

this is the first (very lightly drawn) image i did of my villain with 6 wings after researching Seraphim Angels in the catholic angelic charts. had a sort of idea to use a captain falcon type helmet and get the anular eyes in too, like captain falcon himself and the cartoon depictions of Batman.

test for Combat Egg – wingless villains mechanical suit idea

this idea sort of came out of nowhere after i had been playing a game whos main focus was on the use of airships / steel / iron and propellers. LOTS of propellers, so i thought since the design brief is Avian, and it can still technically flyid give it a go.

I like it, ive never drawn anything so odd before, however it doesnt really fit with the rest of my characters. it is a more steampunk idea which is retro technology.

designs for the villains helmet/face mask

I really like the idea that the villain wares a mask, not to cover up anything but just to make himself seem more special and fearsome so i tried some different designs for what his helmet could look like.

Birth of “Ceraphor” – Current Villain design

Pronounced Sera-for

Villain Synopsis

Ceraphor is a complete DNA recreation of Eiraien blood, born from the result of an experiment at a secret laboratory on the unknown Tier 9. Mixing the DNA of several Eiraien and Psyffiron specimens the scientists at the lab cared only about results in the search for the creation of the perfect being, any casualties were merely statistics. The scientists changed Ceraphor’s very core to one of seething hatred,  only moments after his birth from the incubation tank the scientists pitted him against a Psyffiron, a winged psychic quadruped, the result was deemed a success after Ceraphor tore the creatures left wing and leg from its body with its bare hands. Then with his own psychic ability Ceraphor ravaged the minds of all the scientists in the facility leaving them as simple hollow shells.

 Moments later an Eiraien female fell into the room through the roof, she stood up and grinned at Ceraphor, daring him to attack her instead of finishing off the Psyffiron, which he was only too happy to oblige, this Eiraiens wings were dwarfed in comparison to Ceraphors, however she was a hummer, and her wings fluttered back and forwards many hundred times a second, enabling her to get a height advantage on Ceraphor who was too large to take flight with the wings he had in such a small space. It didn’t matter much however, this Eiraien was almost unable to inflict any damage to Ceraphor and he repeatedly swatted her from in front of him, never staying down she stumbled back to her feet and pointed, laughing at the protective headgear Ceraphor had been born with.

 With one beat of his wings he was upon the Eiraien, In a black smear of movement Ceraphor raised his hand to deliver a final strike to the wounded Eiraien who dared to mock him, when suddenly a spiking pain filled his head, like somebody was angrily rolling a cactus onto his brain, the beast let out a ear piercing cry, and backed away from the Eiraien the pain was to much and Ceraphor swiped at the wall crumbling it to rubble, the green black pollution of the Drowning Mist moved began to flood into the room masking Ceraphor as he jumped out into the darkness.      

 Ceraphor stands at 9 feet tall with a wing span of 22 feet, he is normally in a poised position when at rest.  Ceraphor’s charcoal feathers aren’t as they appear, they are made of an unknown organic substance similar to bone only much denser enabling him to withstand enormous amounts of damage while still being light enough to fly.

man I love this drawing it is only small in my sketch book about 10 15 centimeters across, this is the position Ceraphor was in after he mauled Tairian and cried out to the sky and destroyed his creators minds. 

Using the line tool i traced over my sketch of Ceraphor, also giving him talons, this was done so that colouring Ceraphor could be done more efficiently

the colour pallete was kept as shady as possible, using dark shades of yellow for his hands and feet aslo his white neck is not pure 255 white, it is a light shade of grey, since he has been artifically created his skin is extremely pale, the skin around his neck would otherwise be pink. the only part that needed really stand out is his eyes which looked best in Yellow and Green

Between Green and Yellow I chose green since its my favourite colour (bit childish but oh well) either would be as good, plus the green stands out more on his figure.

Using the Letf orthographic view I was able to make a Top view too, and then referencing them together I was able to also make a Front Orthographic view.

Attempting Poses

picture of me posing for Ceraphor, this is a pose simulating Ceraphor attacking from above, his claws ready to do some serious damage. for this one I had to sketch from a photograph since unfortunatley I cant take a picture pose and sketch all at once  

First I drew him without his wings to get the overall shape, then I added his wings afterwards, his wings are flattened to help him decend without hurting himself but while also keeping the speed up enough so he can destroy his target.

Again using Adobe Flash, i traced the sketched iage and made a good digital remaster in vector.

there are many types of angel, the one closest to God in the chart is the Seraphim variety, the seraphim is often depicted as a 6 winged angel, i have taken this and given it a twist creating somthing a little unexpected and cool at the same time.

Sidekick

current Design for the sidekick character, he is a cybernetically enhanced Griffon type creature called a Psyffiron.

Tairian

Pronounced Tai-ri-an

The sidekick of the plotline, Tairian is a Psyffiron, a fictional race I invented that is similar in most respects to Griffons or Hippogriffs, with a major difference in that they are powerful telepathic creatures and thus cannot speak using normal mouth speech. Communication is done solely through the use of telepathy, a unique racial attribute of his species. Tairian is a very rigid and serious-about-himself character however after spending so long with Yura his hard outer shell has softened and he will crack jokes with her on occasion however his facial expression will change very little, sometimes making him even funnier than he intended, or not funny at all. This also sometimes confuses Yura as it makes it hard for her to understand whether he is serious or not.

Tairian was rescued by Yura 5 years ago when the Psyffiron race was being hunted and experimented on by a small section of Eiraien scientists trying to extract and find out how Psyffirons are able to communicate with people’s minds directly in order to create the perfect being. he lost a wing and a leg in a fight with the scientists final creation as a test of its strength.  And then yura fell into the room from up above, and began to fight with the six winged demon. Tairian was surprised by Yuras ability to keep smiling even in the face of such evil, as he lay bleeding she smiled and told him “it’s going to be fine, you just relax there for a bit”. Perhaps a cruel joke on her part considering his condition.

Since the incident on Tier 9, Tairian became the first Psyffiron to enter the EAPA, he travels around the floating islands with Yura wherever she goes, and as her partner he does his best to calm her down should she become too excited, or back her up should any trouble arise. They are assigned to the Tiers 5 through 8, meaning they get to see the most impoverished  Eiraien citizens, and of course, some of the worst crime on Taerion. Yura doesn’t mind this however since she is able to visit her home often on Tier 5.

Tairian’s mind had been scarred by Ceraphor’s Psychic attack before Yura crashed in and despite being sent to find Ceraphor with Yura by the Eiraien Air Patrol Authority Tairian doesn’t ever wish to see Ceraphor’s huge evil figure ever again.

Sidekick’s cybernetic wing type 1 – Retractable Metal “Feathers”

with this i was looking at mecha anime type approach, like gundam, huge metal wings, however i decided to keep it simple, the ‘feathers’ can be tretracted when he doesnt use them. examples can be seen on this page http://www.stolaf.edu/people/vangtk/

Sidekick’s cybernetic wing type 2 – VTOL wing

Sidekicks cybernetic wing type 3 – Turbo proppeller based on the ‘Ospray’ transport.

Sidekicks cybernetic wing type 4 – VTOL wing 2 (based on the GDI Orca engine from Command and Conquer)

Orthographic sketches

Acurate Orthographic views taken from the above sketches.

here is an accurate version of Tairians Left wing replacement,

since this alone is not enough to provide enough lift there are trace elements of current day Grawway technology

Hero

female hero, current version (millitary police uniform)

Yura

Pronouced “You-ra”

Yura is a happy-go-lucky addition to the Eiraien Air Patrol Authority; she always gets things done despite her wishy-washy attitude towards her superiors and the strict upbringing of Eiraien’s in general. very rarely seen not smiling  often poking fun at her fellow Eiraien friends for being “so uptight”

Yura was an abandoned egg that was found by another Eiraien family, which was unable to have offspring of their own due to side effects of a malfunctioning Gravway Reactor, she was raised in a modest house hold on the 5th Tier, always taught to look forward to the future and never to fear it, she has taken this to the extreme possibly as a result of living with the poisoned lower levels it is uncertain whether she is completely sane or not, since no matter what happens she is always smiling and happy.

Yura is a rare white winged Eiraien, white feathers are found almost exclusively in the top 2 Tiers’s of the population. Yura’s parents managed to get her up a few Tiers and into the military police through connections her father had with certain influential people in the top 3 Tiers, since only members of the population in the Tiers 1 to 3 are allowed to join the police, together with her appearance she was allowed to join the Eiraien Air Patrol Authority.

Yura stands about 5 feet tall and has a 9 foot wing span, being a female means her lower body is much broader than that of a male and her arms are also shorter, despite this she is still able to hold her own with any other EAPA member because of her uncanny accuracy with a Talon blaster. After fighting with Ceraphor she brought Tairian to a biomechanist, who augmented Tairian’s body, fitting him with mechanical replacements for both his leg and wing. This was the only time Yura was seen not smiling.

For Yura, I had been looking at futuristic white armour and I thought of the clone and storm trooper from starwars. as well as the Combine Elite soldiers from the Half-life 2 game.

the colour white is important for the stereotype of being the good guy, however in starwars 4 -6 it was used to contrast with the dark lord darth vader, so that when you saw him for the first time you would instantly know “this guy is THE one”.

I wanted to keep the amount of armour light as the Eiraien’s have to fly with this stuff on, so I tried to base the EAPA armour from this, since being an airborne race they would still need to be quite agile. 

(ew, thats a little grainy….. ill change it later)

This is my housemate, whom I enlisted to help me with some poses for Yura.

Here she is full size!

First I sketched her body outline in blue pencil, then I adden the clothes ontop with a normal pencil, I put that into photoshop and corrected all the mistakes with the eraser then selected all the pixels that werent white and made them jetblack, with this i put it into flash and used the “trace image” tool to convert it into a vector outline so I could try out the colour.

after feedback from the first drawing of Yura, i decided to indeed make her nose/beak a little less pronounced since she is still humanoid and a female, so I decided to look at owl beaks, I think it fits a lot better for her overall.

I didnt want her to have giant wings like Ceraphor since Yura is a female i wanted her to have less pronounced wings, much like how her beak was previously too large. so instead of chicken wings like i had previously thought, i decieded on Humming bird wings. this means she can hover gently in the air andstead of vigourous flapping or circling in the sky. in reality this would mean she can not travel long distances without becoming tired very quickly, unlike Ceraphor who has giant wings capable of keeping him airborne with ease.

using these sketches I made clear Orthographic views in Flash using the line tool

Location

The planet Taerion in which my characters reside is now covered completely in water, due to extreme effects of global warming brought about by dangerous plantlife on the planets once lush green surface and the rapid expansion of the Eiraien people. Many millions years prior to the current day, Pre-empting the fall of their race the Ancient Eiraien’s built special devices under their settlements to literally lift them off the ground to escape the great flooding effects of the melting super glacier known as “kios”, these devices were the absolute pinnacle of Eiraien technology at the time and is known as ”Gravway” technology, and the isles they support are known as Gravway Islands.

Many of these islands were once connected as one huge drifting land mass, however the malfunction of certain the Gravway reactors caused the Islands to break apart and is now a series of many hundred thousands of smaller islands and platforms, erosion and general ware and tare have left only the land masses closest to the Gravway reactors themselves still intact.

the Gravway reactors can be seen as cylindrical aluminium or copper structures with a large dome on its lowerside, the domed section of the reactors are extremely dangerous and will literally insta-crush anything that flys underneath it within its area of effect, which can be up to 25meters. The force under a Gravway reactor can be guess measured by looking at the size of the isle it is supporting, the resulting pressure of holding such a mass in the air stably has cut hollows in even the toughest rock face, revealing an perfectly smooth surface and in some cases, has created diamond out of the rock. flying underneath one of these would be like the island itself instantly landing on you full force meaning complete annahilation.

Eiraiens architecture ontop of the reactors to house themselves from the outside world, they are are aluminium and steel plated pyramids, built to increase their sturdiness and resistance to attacks from enemies and to show off the wealth of the owner, the isles are marketed by the age and number of the Gravway reactor which supports it, because this normally depicts the age of the isle and how likley it is to fail or not, failing Gravways are always replaced, but at great cost, since landmasses on the surfaces have become extict now the gravway’s are often checked, however the richest get the top priority and the poor have a tendancy to be forgotten, which some believe to be a good thing.

The isles have slowly drifted apart and now hang at varied altitudes, these are known as Tiers. there are 8 Tiers, the 1st being where the government and richest among the Eiraien populations tend reside and it gets poorer the lower down in the Tiers you decend. Until you get to the “Drowning Mist” a thick layer of greenish black polution that hangs just underneath the 8th Tier. The clouds in the 1st Tier are white and fluffy and like the economy, the lower in the Tiers you go the darker and more frequent the clouds become, the 8th Tier is always drowned in constant acid rain thunderstorms, from the polution of the uppermost Tiers.

Insignia for the Eiraien Air Patrol Authority.

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I was told my idea is kind of like the movie Waterworld, because in this film the planet earth is flooded completely in water, then I remembered that I have actually seen this film once I was shown the trailer for it.