Creating a Starship or Power Armor

This in an ongoing list of resources to help you create an awesome starship, power armor, or similar technology.

• Starship Template

• Designing Your "Home Base" Starship
• How to Build an Interstellar Warship, Part One: The Basics
• 14 Elements Of Starship Design For Newbie Sci-Fi Gamers (Off-site link)

• Starships (for examples)
• List of Starship Armors
• List of Starship Systems
• Vehicle Roles
• Firearm Terminology
• Star Army Starship Interiors (for Star Army of Yamatai ships)
• Standard Product Nomenclature System
• Starship Speed Standard
  • Sublight Speed Conversion
• International Starship and Cargo Standards
• Damage Ratings
• Visual Elements by Faction

• Online Conversion Tools for meters/feet, etc (Off-site link)

Artwork is required for starship submissions.

• DOGA (Free and very easy to use 3D package, similar to lego in feel; the preferred package of our community - beginner)
• Google Sketchup (Free, Surprisingly powerful and easy to use free-form modelling package - intermediate)
• Sculptris (Free 3D sculpting program for organic forms - similar to handling clay - intermediate)
• Modo (Very powerful payware 3D program… Very easy to learn. Poor animation support. - advanced)
• Cinema 4D (Rich 3D package with excellent animation tools but poor modeling and rendering tools - advanced)

• The GIMP (Free open source image editing program - beginner)
• Paint.net (An impressive and free mspaint alternative, bundled with Windows 7. Download for 2000/XP/Vista - beginner)
• Sai Painter (A cheap high end photoshop alternative, extremely popular with Japanese artists - beginner)
• Pencil (Free open source 2D animation package, great for producing short cartoons - intermediate)
• ArtWeaver (A cheap freeware alternative to Corel's Painter X, producing highly stylized work - intermediate)
• Photoshop (An expensive professional suite of tools - extremely powerful - advanced)

• Designing NMX Starships

• Beginner's guide to drawing (dotted over Expertvilliage's channel … lots of excellent tutorials for people who claim they can't draw)
• CG Art Success (Great video tutorials for digital painting, color and design ideas … great resource)

• Malcom Gladwell on Spaghetti sauce (A beginner's guide to cognitive psychology and variability: There is no perfect thing, there are only perfect things.)

• The Paradox of choice (More choice isn't always better… Choice can leave people unsatisfied. Here's why.)

• Basic visual design elements and principles (the 'scientific theory' of design… Really fascinating stuff)

• Interview with Syd Mead (Get into the mind of one of the great designers of the 20th century… Tron, Short Circuit, Flight of the Navigator, Aliens, Gundam, 2010, Startrek, Wing Commander, Yamato 2050… You name it, he's done it.)

• conceptships.blogspot.com (Great blog full of starship concept art… an excellent source of inspiration)

• conceptrobots.blogspot.com (Similar to Conceptships, but for mecha primarily of western styles)

• Gears Online (A breakdown of work by many popular Japanese mecha designers through the ages - Excellent if you're looking to study Japanese styling)

• Collection DX (A good source of both Japanese and western mecha toy reviews, lots of transforming robots… Excellent way to rapidly broaden your frame of design reference for things like proportion, aesthetic and transformation mechanics)

• List of Desired Starships
• Tech Challenges
• Future KFY Power Armors

1. Ships should use the Starship Template as a basis for their pages' format.
2. Ships' “About the [Shipname]” sections should be at least two paragraphs long, with at least three sentences in each paragraph, all of which contribute to the description of what the ship is. The history section should be at least one paragraph. DO NOT post ship designs with just a one-sentence description!
3. Ships must follow all the Submission Rules.
4. Ships speeds should try to fit well with the Starship Speed Standard.
5. Articles not yet approved MUST be tagged as not approved and should be listed in the WIP.
6. Artwork is REQUIRED for starships and spacecraft, and strongly encouraged for all other submissions.

• To discuss or get approval: Post a message in the New Technologies and Setting Elements