Nick's Ecard.

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from The Dorad & Sirius Partnership.

Marko's Ecard.

Chuck Yeager Page 1.

The two images shown here are pages from a story about the flight pioneer Chuck Yeager. The comic-strip look produced by Nick, can add to the eclectic ‘classic comic’ visual style of Dorad & Sirius generally, along with CGI models created by Mark Hirst and the large body of digital artwork that Marko Keränen has already provided.

Chuck Yeager Page 2.

You can see more of Nick’s work at his new website Nick Spender Illustrator.

At the same time, Marko Keränen’s website Lighthouse has been recently updated, with a gallery of illustrations generally, along with more recent work which he’s created as a comic artist.

While continuing with updating Lighthouse, Marko has been designing a new floating structure for Dorad & Sirius. Here’s a ‘sneak-peek’ of one version in a test render.

An ideal cetacean human home.

…Well, in a sense.

By conducting an extensive search in the video archive (in other words, sorting through things in the loft), I found my last remaining copy of the TV pilot, McMurdo – A Telecomic. Unfortunately, as the video above is from a VHS tape, much of the visual quality provided by Quantel Paintbox is lost in the low-bandwidth recording, but at least it shows the ‘Telecomic’ idea as it was at the time.

McMurdo - A Storyboard.

As well as the McMurdo pilot, there will be other videos as extra features in a similar way as this blog, with Dorad & Sirius now having a channel on YouTube.

On the tube!

Along with CGI products including Vue and Cinema 4D, Mark makes extensive use of the character modelling software, Poser, bringing a new visual aspect to Dorad & Sirius generally. Below is the first image of the new-look Dorad, modelled in Poser and rendered in Cinema 4D.

A striking pose!

Mark has his own page on the CGI / illustration website Renderosity, where you can see the above image, along with an example of Dorad in her nano-fibre suit.

To see more of Mark’s work, follow the link below to Cambrian Moons. In addition to the photo-realism style, there are several pieces including characters created with Poser, which have a distinctive ‘comic artwork’ look, produced by combining a Sketch & Toon plug-in with Cinema 4D.

Keep in touch for further developments. In the meantime, many thanks to Marko Keränen for all of the work he produced for Dorad & Sirius.

A new Vue for a new year.

Watch this space for further developments in 2011, but in the meantime, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

It's all in the mind!

Here’s Marko’s latest comic artwork test, this time dealing with the concept of teleporting across space. While in the context of the fiction, the telepathically linked humans and dolphins are able to teleport almost instantaneously over vast distances, it would be uninteresting visually if a spaceship was seen having arrived at a point in space, without having shown any representation of the teleporting process itself.

The ability of humans and dolphins to teleport over light years of space, offers plenty of scope for trying out imaginative ideas visually within the storyline.

Having been teleported across many light years of space, over several stages, the spaceship Paxford arrives at a newly discovered Earth-like planet.

Panels of Paxford.

Here’s a ‘sneak-peek’ at another comic artwork test by Marko. As in the previous post, the images combine the features of Vue 8 and Manga Studio EX 4. As Marko said: “I used the Paxford 3D model for this one and added some characters too (extras I guess)”.

At this stage, the main point of the tests is to create examples of a distinctive overall look, by combining CGI elements with hand drawing and natural tones. So as the D&S tag line says, ‘evolution and imagination’.

Here’s a ‘sneak-peek’ at an early test, where renders from Vue were converted to a background tone with Manga Studio. People and other details were added with Manga Studio’s painting tools. The speech balloons were also added to round-off the ‘comic artwork’ look.

The Vue from here.

Manga Studio clearly has great potential for giving Dorad & Sirius the look of a classic comic adventure concept combined with up-to-date techniques. So then, onwards and upwards!

An asteroid spaceport module within Lagrangeville.

As mentioned in the details for Pacific Chakra and New Moon, most of the electricity used on Earth is supplied by Space-Based Solar Power (SBSP). It is Lagrangeville, situated at a stable gravitational point, or Lagrange Point, between Earth and the Moon, which is the principal element in the SBSP network.

Today, there are several companies and organisations outlining plans for producing SBSP. One such company, Space Energy, has a comprehensive website setting out the project details, along with useful information about Space-Based Solar Power generally.

The website is evolving.