Could you rank the following possible influential/inspirational materials in order of personal importance when you start a new concept ship: ship role, company style guide, reference pictures, what you think fits the 'Verse, personal appeal, favourite sci-fi or other fictional sources?asked by Far-seeker

You wanna take that first?

Sure. Yeah. So, we do actually spend quite a bit of time, I mean, again, it all comes back to the manufacturers right? They kinda define the way everything looks now. But one thing, lately we've been looking at the shapes of the ships and making sure that the form fits with each manufacturer, having similar styles as far as maybe the bridge is always rounder on this type of ship, but it's much more blocky or square on on this manufacturer, you know?So, maybe this is more of a fighter pilot, this is more kind of industrial. So we do definitely keep a very big log of exactly kind of our style guides of how we approach each and every ship, and it kind of already falls into a type and a visual feel right off the bat when we start doing the concept.

Yeah, and sometimes certain ships, we haven't done a lot of them, they haven't been developed as fully as ones we've done a lot, but we're always consistently growing, and we try to keep the same essence and form language, more now than ever before. Cause you know, obviously the beginning of the ships, it was kind of like...

We were still figuring it out.

Still figuring it out. But now I think what's going to happen is the bar's going to be risen. But, for personal influences and how you start, I guess... how I start a concept, sometimes you just look at a couple of pictures, and go, 'oh, I kind of like this and this shape,' but it's different every time. If I'm really in the dark, I'll just block out shapes until I see something, just black and white, just nothing...

Just the silhouette.

Yeah, sometimes not even. There's this program called Alchemy that just draws weird stuff, sometimes it's just, 'ah, I see something in there'. Other times, you'll get direction from somebody being, 'oh, it's this kind of feel,' and then you start from there and do a little research, and then other times there's no direction at all, and you've got to kinda piece it together yourself. I find just looking at three images... like if I have to do a helmet I'll look at three things that aren't helmets, then a couple of things that are helmets, and kind of mush them together.

Yeah, that's great advice too. I mean, I love doing that, you kind of get the overall look that I want to go for, and I find a couple of examples, then I find some kind of more radical looking things that aren't necessarily on those things and I figure out this kind of style, this kind of look, that kind of fits the way it should be, but it's not part of it, and I'll just start of combining things, and start building shapes, and try to get something original and new so it's not completely just reiterating on something that already exists. Evolve the art and the process and keep trying new things, and you'll kind of see it and think that works, or you'll know no, it doesn't.

Yeah, and it's always kind of different every time you start. I don't know if someone has a specific method of how they begin something each and every time. Cause lots of time you have to start just from a blank piece of paper, which is pretty tough you know?

Yeah it is.

Or a blank idea. You come up to me and are like 'I need a jetpack' and I'm like 'I don't knooooow', and it's like okay.

I did that for Gamescom. Asked him to do a jetpack in one day.