A Magnificant Obsesssion

Lately, I've been so swamped with work and family activities that I have had little time to sit down and work on anything. The nice thing about my earlier post on making the bamboo forests is that they were very quick and easy to do. How to soothe those primal hobby urges? Answer: Shipbucket! If you haven't been there, check it out! These folks digitally draw warships of all nations and time periods, but focus on WWII to Modern. They are sticklers for details and accuracy, but the results show up in superbly-rendered ship illustrations.

Well, I took the plunge. I wanted to do some illustrations for my Gambusia campaign. I have not done much yet, but here is the results so far. These are before and after pictures:

Imperial Class Corvette

Above is my original drawing of a modern corvette built by Northern Chalupistan. It was done in Adobe Illustrator. Nothing too exciting. One big problem is that I just slapped radar antennae all over the thing. I had no clue about the types of radar that are needed. I really had to research my radars for my first rendering of my corvette in Shipbucket style:



The folks on the Shipbucket forum pointed out various things that could be done to make it better. First,they mentioned that ships of this size are not big enough for anti-sub warfare, so I got rid of the torpedo tubes, and added an extra gun. The SSMs were oriented in such a way that the sailors would be unable to walk around them! They also suggested a SAM instead of the rear 20mm AA gun. So, then the ship evolved into this:



Making shipbucket illustrations is a little like building a highly detailed model. The nice thing is that I can work on them anywhere and anytime I have a chance. Will this replace minis? No way, but it is fun and challenging to do.