Proteus Art - The Lost Titans

I have often wanted to do this shot showing Koshi and Valla's final moment and perhaps soon you will work out why.
These are the two lost Titans that failed to escape the end of the world.

Nuff said...

Proteus Art - The Great Unknown

Earlier today I decided to revisit something I started over a year ago. I wanted to redo the mesh work on the Matrix Stardrive jump window.

Originally I did this with Lunar however that was older mesh and my modelling skills have continued to improve.

On the original, the vortex was the old piece done in mesh with the electrical effects done in photoshop post work.

For this version I have radically improved the modelling with the eletrical effects now built in mesh so they can be rendered individually and composited with addition effects.

As you can see, what started out as a thought experiment changed in to something else entirely.

I am really proud of this one and I think much as with Chronos Station, my work continues to improve.

The scene is from Proteus The Last Survivor as Koli and her crew leave Beletrix, staring their seach of the galaxy for new hosts which will eventually lead them to Earth.

I hope you like it.

Proteus Art - Orius Class Technical

Long before the Proteus class ever saw the light of day, the Alphians did have space ships. I deliberately didn't say starships because technically this isn't one. Orius was designed as a very advanced cargo ship designed to travel to the Alphius 5 and 8 space and mining stations where it would load raw materials such as precious metals.

When Proteus was rushed in to service, the 10 Orius class ships used by the Alphians were rapidly decomissioned, the parts transferred to Proteus.

While considered to be semi organic living ships, they had no brain or nervous system as such, and as a result were not considered to be alive.

The Orius class of ship while never really featuring in Symbiotica and Proteus is constantly referenced and I thought it would only be fair for you to see what I was thinking with it.
You can definately see almost the family resemblence to Proteus, but at the same time these ships are far more primitive. 

I guess people like my books

I think as any author or creative will tell you, we are a self doubting bunch who constantly put ourselves down.  In  a way this is good for readers because that self doubt always pushes us to improve our works much as with my recent efforts to expand and extend all my books.

Having a little devil on your shoulder all the time whispering negative ideas is not a good thing and the idea of self promotion is abhorrent! I don't want to sit here and tell you how cool my books are because as the creator of the works, I am really bias.

I must however occasionally accept praise and put this to one side, especially when for some reason I am getting a lot of positive feedback.

On Goodreads, I have had two books rated. The overall rating average is 4.5 out of 5. This is surprising for me in a way although I am grateful to those who have taken the time.

Yesterday I got a fan of my work post up a comment on my facebook page and to say I am shocked and humbled is something of an understatement. This reader offered me very high praise indeed.

As a result I decided to take a quick shifty around the various outlets my books are being sold through. To my amazement I found that 13 of my books have been rated on Kobo as 5 out of 5 (technically it's 11 titles but includes the Proteus Neo Alphius Saga Box set which is 3 books).

That means overall at this moment based on my sample of ratings, my books are officially rated at 4.93 out of 5.

I personally don't know if I deserve this, but I will have to humbly accept that people like my books.

Thank you to everyone who has taken a chance on my work and then taken time to let me know what they think. As always this spurs me on to do more.

Now, back to doubting myself...

Alex

Proteus Art - Chronos Station

I'm teasing again...
Chronos Station is an Apeyron starbase in orbit of Venus having been there for over 8 million years.

It was briefly mentioned in Proteus New Horizons and will be making its full debut in Symbiotica Fallen Gods (Book 8)

I have not done any post work on this and I may well come back to this and do the heavy detailing work in Photoshop. By far this is one of the most complex models I have built yet taking me two days to build.
Yes, the little thing in front of it is a 700 feet long Apeyron Heavy Cruiser.... give you an idea of scale.

Pentalore The Forgotten Library and Darkseed Extended Editions

This almost seems a little unreal in a way but I have just completed the last two extended editions of my books. Both Pentalore The Forgotten Library and Darkseed have now been heavily written and extended.

The Forgotten Library has nearly 30,000 words of new material with four new short stories added, an extended and far more complete ending and a brand new Epilogue. This new edition introduces the world of Pentalore far more completely as well as rounding off the characters rough edges giving you a glimpse in to this strange world.

Darkseed really pushes the boat out with over 36,500 words of new material effectively doubling the book compared to its original edition as the first part of the Prophecies Saga kicks off.

I am pleased to say with these last two books I have now uploaded the entire Pentalore Series on to Amazon which now completes my collection on there too.
If you want to see the details and direct links, click on the relevant links on the right.

Now, I have to take a moment here.

Last September I sat down and started looking at my books. My stories were considered to be novellas and I wanted to move them to full blown novels which meant taking the books to 70,000 words or more.

Starting with 22 books I began what ended up being a mammoth task of extending, rewriting and cleaning up everything I had done before.

It has taken ten months, I have added 584,000 words of new content (in old book format that is 14 entire new books of material) and I ended up with 20 books in the end.

All of this is available to anyone who bought my books before through the various retailers for free.

Overall I am very proud of what I have achieved and I hope you as my readers and fans have a whole new perspective on the ideas, thoughts and stories transpiring.

This is however the end of this huge effort and I can finally sit down and be happy with what I have done.

At this moment I can finally return to creating new books and I have a lot of stories left to tell.

Expect the following books to arrive over the rest of the year

Symbiotica - Spectres of our Past

Pentalore - Legends

Dystopian Detective - The Kakoi Riddle

Proteus - Serendipity

Some of these books are already well underway writing wise but I will not say when to expect them.

Thank you to everyone who has been waiting patiently for me to finish this task. I hope you can appreciate the epic hard work that has gone in to creating these Extended and Ultimate Editions.

All of my new books from this point forward will be 70,000 words or more so they will take a longer to write and I will be sure to give them thorough cooling off time.

Thanks for all your support!

Alex

Proteus Art - The Delasian Star System

There was silence as they arrived, simply staring out of the window at the view. In all her life, she had never seen anything like it. She knew where she was in technical terms, the data Koli was imprinting on her mind clearly showing they were in human terms in roughly the same position as Jupiter was from Earth. She looked at her friends as she stood up, Koli releasing her as she dropped down to the floor, even her animated friend deathly silent as she reconfigured herself.

"I don't get what we are looking at," Jo commented in almost a whisper glancing to Joulik who shrugged her shoulders.

"It's an artificial structure," Lyphius commented finally breaking her gaze looking to the readings Koli was gathering. "It's two hundred and fifty million miles across, larger than the orbit of Earth around the sun. Although it's broken with sections exposed, it has an internal surface area over five hundred million times the size of the surface of Earth. There are cities, oceans and more clinging to its inner surface."

"It's a Dyson shell although different," Kat whispered in shock, "I remember a scifi show where there was an episode that featured one. It is a theoretical structure that can capture massive amounts of energy from the star it orbits, but the engineering alone is mind boggling. Samantha, my sister is a researcher in theoretical astrophysics. She was obsessed with the idea. It was put forward by a physicist called Freeman Dyson, although technically this is an incomplete structure."

"You're saying that thing is a world?" Jo stammered in disbelief.

"Not quite an accurate description, but in practice yes. There could have been hundreds of billions of these Avorans living there, but Koli's scans are showing no sign of life, not even primitive," Lyphius said in a dark tone, "Whatever future Koli warned us of killed their whole race."

"The promise of unlimited energy," she whispered as finally Koli broke her gaze, almost jumping.

"I am detecting life signs," she said nervously, "The system is reasonably clean so I can navigate us to them."

"Confirmed," Lyphius said as their mission started to sink back in, "I have five faint life signs in scanning range. They appear to be the Avoran ships."

She watched as a single tear left Koli's eye as she looked at her questioningly, Koli visibly upset.

"You are not seeing what I am seeing," Koli sighed mournfully, "There were tens of thousands of ships here. Their bodies are lifeless floating in space."

"Focus on the living ones," she replied comfortingly, "See if you can talk to them. Tell them that Aurora has sent us and we are about to set up some equipment to rescue them."

"What I said was true Phillipa," Koli whispered, "The Avoran system is a place of wonders and death. So much death."

Read the full story in Proteus Evolution

Proteus Art - Revised Designs for Aurora and Eclipse

Aurora (including her three sistr ships Pulsar, Lumious and Nova, all explorer class Avoran ships) and little Eclipse play a big role in the Proteus Natural Selection Saga.
Considering I have been teasing Rogue and Soverus, I thought I would go back and take a fresh look at the design work I did. I have cleaned up both ships, adding the new side pod design on to each of them and adding more detail in bringing them in to the Avoran style of ship.
I hope you like!

Proteus Art - New Technical Specs

First up, a ship you already know from Proteus New Horizons - The Harbinger.

These are something of a spoiler, but I will try to keep these to a minimum and not give too much away about the stories that are coming.
You have already seen the teasers about the ghost ships... now, let me introduce you to them.

Finally, I teased these two some months back with the Children of the Empire Cross over due in 2019... now you can take a better look at them

Proteus Art - Ghost Ships

What more can I say... This story will develop later this year, but not quite in Proteus...
A teaser in a way for Soverus...

(This is an excuse for me to do some 3D work for an upcoming saga... the eagle eyed amongst you may vague recognise the design of this ghost ship...)

Bonus!

It could be said when it comes to ghost ships, they seem to come and go in the night.

Especially helpful when they have a cloaking device....

This is little Rogue... playful and curious...