IDW #47: Exploration Vehicle

[yoitisi]

Topic: Exploration Vehicle

Background: In the far future, when mankind has flooded the universe, intergalactic colonisation will reach a point where people can have their very own moon, astroid or even planet, simply because there are millions of worlds and just too few people to occupy them all. Alien life has not yet been discovered (at least, not with any intelligence beyond plants and primitive animals).

Although owning a planet might be easy, actually living on it in often harsh or at least unfamiliar circumstances isn't cheap. Getting there and setting up a basecamp will allready drain most settlers of their savings, so there is not much money left to put any satelites in orbit or set up any other sophisticated way to observe and explore ones property. Most settlers will therefore have to do with a pretty simple (meaning: not a luxury yacht that get them wherever they want in an instant) exploration vehicle. Also, while watching your planet from a distance could be interesting, most settlers prefer to go for the adventure and explore the old fashioned way by going there themselves.

There are a few basic functions that this vehicle needs have: Not only does it need to be able to cross any terrain, withstand any weather condition or atmoshpere, but it also acts as a forward base, mobile home and laboratorium.

Brief:
1. Design an exploration vehicle.
2. The most important constraint is that it should move over land and/or water. I don't want to see any fancy spaceships or aircrafts. Hovercrafts are ok though.
3. It has to incorporate the functions as mentioned in the background story.
4. Optional: Show the main hazards of the the environment your vehicle is going to operate in or show the environment with the vehicle in it.

Deadline: Sunday October 14 2007

[Cervel]

The deadline is before the posting date? :P

[yoitisi]

Cervel: Aw crap :D It was kind of late when I put it up...I edited a couple of other details as well.

[Legato]

oh yoitisi, finding your eastereggs is half the battle :D

[Cervel]

Hm.. here's my wip
Tower Explorer
http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/3750/explorerconceptcopyig7.jpg
I'll post full description when I finish it, but right now, what I can say is that it's a mobile tower. It will mostly travel upright, either over water, or ground. It can, though, reclinate and go horizontal to pass through smaller areas. Tank wheels can be brought outside, by bothe sides of each segment, except for the rear one, which can be up to four, being 2 of them bigger than the rest of them all, the ones used for regular locomotion, and also, they are paired (as you can see in the sand marks). Claws and drills can pop out of his sideways as well for climbing purposes, or just collecting.

The vehicle has high pressure resistence so that it could travel even to the center of a planet, or in the most deep waters.

Each segment has one particularity, the top one is the control area, which assigns every control for the vehicle. The second one is the lab, where it maintains some cages and receptacles for obtained items.
The third one is a compact house, which can handle up to 10 people insid eit with no problems.

Te bottom one is macine only, since it has most gears, motors and wheels there.

[Cervel]

ok, I really had to do it all in this weekend, because I'd only be able to work on it again in the voting days (week off), so here it is:
Explorer Tower
http://img160.imageshack.us/img160/6236/explorerconceptcopywt7.jpg

[yoitisi]

Cervel: I like the style :) However, to give it a little more of a feeling of depth you could try playing around with the colors in the fore- and background. Right now you use a lot of saturated colors all over and the tones do not vary very much as well. Try the more saturated and darker colors in the foreground, and less saturated and lighter colors in the background. It might help if you converted your image to B&W and check the tones. Also, could you please keep it one post as much as possible so people don't have to scroll their arms off :P

Had a little time myself to play with the topic. This is still a fairly quick sketch, if I find the time I'll try to make something more finalized this time.

http://i163.photobucket.com/albums/t291/yoitisi/IDW47Sketch8small.jpg

[deviousg]

nice yotisi - I love your freehand ovals.

Nice design and some cool details.

Cervel - I like the unique approach to the old mining vehicle. I agree with Cervel's comments.

[Legato]

maybe a bit of inspiration

http://www.atomfilms.com/film/rockfish.jsp

[yoitisi]

Legato: That is indeed some inspiration. I've seen it before (I think the website of Blur Studions hosts one with higher resolution and better sound, I'll try to find it :)) but it gives some new ideas. Thanks for putting that up.

Deviousg: Thanks. They're officially called ellipses by the way, nitpicking #@%^ that I am :P.

Edit: hmm couldn't find it any more on their website, but they've got some nice animations going on: Blur Studios (www.blur.com)

[Legato]

Legato: That is indeed some inspiration. I've seen it before (I think the website of Blur Studions hosts one with higher resolution and better sound, I'll try to find it :)) but it gives some new ideas. Thanks for putting that up.

Deviousg: Thanks. They're officially called ellipses by the way, nitpicking #@%^ that I am :P.

Edit: hmm couldn't find it any more on their website, but they've got some nice animations going on: Blur Studios (www.blur.com)

couldn't find it on blur's site, but picked up an imdb link on google saying its going to become a movie or something... found the blur link on one of the message board comments and it appears to be broken :(

but yeah, this doesn't live up the the full mov file that i originally watched it on

[RadioactivePJ]

http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/dd273/radioactivepencil/Footprint.jpg

Here's my rough, I had something in mind almost as soon as I read the concept, but it' been like pulling teeth to get it on paper. I like your design Yoitisi.

[Legato]

Here's my rough, I had something in mind almost as soon as I read the concept, but it' been like pulling teeth to get it on paper. I like your design Yoitisi.

i love how its going! i too had an idea from the get go, but i had to take a step back, file away the key design decisions and go at it from a different angle. also, for a class project, i've incorporated into this, i've been screen capturing the rendering of it into a movie - hopefully it won't slow down the release of it too much, but it may be worth sharing with you when its all said and done :P

[Mark Bot]

here's what i got right now. pretty sketchy but it gets the idea across.

I'll add some more rendering if my tablet shows up on time... right

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc5/gusgusrobot/idw47.jpg

[Legato]

this is probably done, but if i get good crit i might spend some time tomorrow on damage control :/

i wanted to take this towards a mass produced, mass marketed vehicle, much like the honda civic of planet exploration. to do that i wanted to make something that could tackle just about any terrestrial terrain (is that redundant?), so in that pursuit maximum ground clearance was paramount, however to work on the greatest possible array of environments each vehicle would have to be fairly specialized for its intended environment. to tackle that, i went with a modular design. the core vehicle is the forward cab and flat rear, and undercarriage/hydraulics. to adapt to the planet's climate, atmosphere and biology, the back power-plant, intakes, heating, cooling and communication are all modular, allowing the engine to take advantage of various atmospheres if present, or to allow better heat retention in Arctic climates and better cooling in harsh deserts.

this modular based design also extends itself to a limited degree to the wheels which each contain their own individual motor and can be tailored to any conditions present including heat dissipation, retention etc.

crew accessible areas include a small lab (forward of the airlock/door), sleeping/living quarters opposite side, cabin (which is the only part of the vehicle kept level during movement) and connection tube which leads to a utility access into the back.

really the only part i wish i had fleshed out more is the airlock. i wanted it to be kept horizontal with the planet below, but completely failed at presenting a believable way for the crew to get in and out in any position other than a complete stop. normally, on a flat plain the wheel base extends all the way forward and back, and the struts bend upwards to lower the body as far down as possible and some stairs extend... however this wouldn't work on the terrain pictured ;_;

voting friendly write up and summery follows:

"designed to be mass marketed to fledgling explorers hot off of blowing their savings on some usually god forsaken rock, this [insert fancy sounding product name here] provides a mass producible core with fully modular power-plant allowing a huge level of adaptation to a vast array of environments"

http://incolor.inetnebr.com/legato/IDotW/IDotW047-FinalREDUCED.jpg

[yoitisi]

Seems to be a little silent here lately :P

RadioactivePJ: That looks nice. The only thing bothering me is the wheel up front, it seems to be too much at an angle with the ground, specially if you compare it to the same wheel on the other side. Hope you find the time to throw in some colors too :)

GusTheRobot: Nice to see some genuine marker/pen sketches in here. I like the general idea but I'm wondering about the actual explorers. Where would they be seated? Also, the meaning of the hot/cool sketch is a bit lost on me. I have no idea what it is about.

Legato: You're getting there :) I like the addition of the people and the little creature, it really adds to the idea of exploring new worlds. However, you still have the same problem with colour and contrast: on vehicles it often works best to have the most detail up front as well as the warmest colours. The same applies to contrast. The cast shadow on it's chassis/understructure could be more tight and dark I think.

[Legato]

Legato: You're getting there :) I like the addition of the people and the little creature, it really adds to the idea of exploring new worlds. However, you still have the same problem with colour and contrast: on vehicles it often works best to have the most detail up front as well as the warmest colours. The same applies to contrast. The cast shadow on it's chassis/understructure could be more tight and dark I think.

ahhhhhhggghhh!!!

here are my thoughts

the vehicle isn't too long, heck, its almost a square, so i consciously decided against your past advice for a loss in saturation towards the distance of the vehicle just due to its size. i did however attempt to do a background using that technique.

i also tried keeping the detail up front, but i guess i could add some more, i just didn't want to fabricate detail :P

i'll try contrasting it up, but i wanted to avoid the use of black as much as i could and couldn't really think of an alternate light source that i could implement - i wanted to work on a few things at a time, not all at once... and i think me taking on safeT orange was fairly traumatic :D

not sure when this is ending - i'll try throwing together some stuff based on your suggestions, and i'll just update this linky as i go :/

[Mark Bot]

GusTheRobot: Nice to see some genuine marker/pen sketches in here. I like the general idea but I'm wondering about the actual explorers. Where would they be seated? Also, the meaning of the hot/cool sketch is a bit lost on me. I have no idea what it is about.


Workers.... right.. we were working with amoebas right? Or gelatinous goo people? Seriously though i'll have to put together an orthographic of the interior to really give everyone a good idea of how the structure is built/connected. As far as the hot/cold bit goes i initially had this great idea of giving it thermal insulation skin that generated power from the heat, but that didn't really go anywhere. And now because it's a pen sketch i can't exactly erase that bit. BLAST!

I'll draw some more stuff up later if i get the time, possibly refine it a bit to be more realistic.

Thanks for the advice.

[Legato]

updated it slightly... not sure what i feel

heres the old version for contrast

http://incolor.inetnebr.com/legato/IDotW/IDotW047-FinalOLD.jpg

[RadioactivePJ]

http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/dd273/radioactivepencil/footprintWIP.jpg

Any possibility of an extension, another hour and a half and I'll have something worth looking at.

www.radioactivepencil.com

[D-Holme]

http://www.milecastle.com/HOLME_SITE/2D/IDW47_Dholme.jpg
Final version

[RadioactivePJ]

http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/dd273/radioactivepencil/footprintcopy.jpg

Here's my final, no time for a background, sorry to be such a slacker.

www.radioactivepencil.com

[Legato]

t+ 2 days D:

[yoitisi]

Legato: I'm sorry :( I had an exam this evenig so didn't have the time today. I'll do it tomorrow morning first thing, I promise. I might also try to make a tutorial thread then :P

In the meantime, I suggest you all check the Topic Suggestion threat.

Edit: Thread is closed now, poll will be up in a moment :)

[yoitisi]

Poll is up: IDW #47: Exploration Vehicle - Voting (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=108454)