One thing I do like to do is flesh out what my characters look like and considering my characters are living starships, then obviously I breathe life in to them. When you are writing, imagination is everything, but if you can really visualise what these characters look like in your minds eye, it really does give them true shape and form... which is why I create 3D models of all the main characters.
My daughter and I were talking the other day about how this is hard to visualise even with the spec sheets I create for the ships. There is a big difference between a flat image and something that allows you to see them. So I suggested I do a video animation of them... one thing then led to another and... well, I now have a Youtube channel.
At the moment I am simply doing 3D rotation animations, roughly 16 seconds in length. These let you see each of the ships in a real time environment. Most people would think this is a straight forward job, but doing high quality HD animations in 3D is quite an involved process. Each animation is 480 frames and takes approximately 4 hours to render.
On my channel you can find all of my current ship designs from Symbiotica, to Proteus, to the Olympus Initiative, to Proteus Unbound, then to Proteus Odyssey and finally to Apotheca. There are 63 ships in total and finally you can see each of the ships in a far more real way.
I will as always be adding more to the list including more from the Odyssey Series including Mercy and the little Knights of Avalon (they are baby Proteus ships) as well as new members of the Proteus families that will be making an appearance. I will also be introducing Strava, a new Asteria ship that is one of the stars of the Infinite Empire Series.
Check out my animation work here if you are interested.
Enjoy!
