If you’re a sci-fi nerd, we are now at the best part: the ship design!
All this to-do about dubious young men with boats, we forgot to talk about the boat. This is the Alpha Centauri, the whaling yacht owned by resident bad boy, Asa. It’s a yacht with a giant laser cannon on it. Now, why would a yacht need a laser cannon? I have to keep that one under my hat, but you’ll all figure it out pretty quickly in the pilot.
Let me just say I am so gay about ship design. I’ve been a sci-fi nerd since I was in my mid-teens. Believe it or not, the first sci-fi story I got into was Final Fantasy 7. There was technology and sexy anime people. How could I not? Then there was Xenogears, which was a gateway drug to Neon Genesis Evangelion. Then there was the Star Wars Re-Release in theaters in 1997. Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex also slipped in there. Then Dune became a load-bearing pillar of my personality after that one night watching it at 2AM hopped up on cold medicine. And then I got into Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica (the early 2000’s one). That inspired me to try making my first sci-fi webcomic. Designing for my sci-fi webcomic really inspired me to get into the works of Syd Mead, and designing sci-fi props, vehicles and settings in general. I literally had a whole sci-fi portfolio on my website for a while. I was THAT into sci-fi designs. I wanted to work for LucasFilms. I signed a sci-fi book deal, wherein I did so many designs, I compiled an entire Making-of Book for it literally nobody knows about.
Hey, remember that time I made a sci-fi art book? Yeah, me neither.
I…might be a little obsessed.
Designing the Alpha Centauri is a dream: Because what’s a more fun brief than “so it’s a yacht with a laser cannon on it.” I messed around with a few designs to figure out the right balance of luxury yacht and ridiculous sci-fi laser cannon.
Storyboard Panel from Scene 9. Based on an older draft of the boat design
The ship itself is named the Alpha Centauri, after the closest galaxy to our solar system. The Whalers in this story are obsessed with the stars and stellar imagery. They feel connection to the stars as part of their destiny as whalers. They believe they are heavenly creatures sent by God to save man from the whale menace. So yeah, they’re gonna put stars on everything they touch and overdecorate in Carved Marble.
This is the fun of world building and design: spinning the characters’ history into laser rail gun yachts.
So let’s talk about designing the ship!
I first started with a couple basic drawings of what a yacht looks like and what it would look like with a big gun on the main deck. And they came out…mid. I wasn’t very happy with these designs. They look too basic. I want something iconic. Something WEIRD, so I went back to the literal drawing board.
Which one is your favorite?
I started by layering a few brush strokes to explore what kind of silhouettes looked good. Literally a few strokes of paint, guys. It’s not rocket science. After that, I inked over the shapes that stood out to me. I found some shapes that I liked and got some solid designs out of them. I had almost settled on a final design when I happened upon the mother load.
Behold. The Cybertruck of the Sea.
This is the ugliest yacht I’ve ever seen
In doing some research on yacht design, I came across the website of a luxury yacht design firm. According to Google, there are a lot of yacht design firms around me. Like…how do these yacht designers stay in business? Is the demand for custom yachts so high that several upscale businesses can safely float atop Google’s search results? (I would love to change that with this story.)
Anyway, this boat is so ugly I screamed loudly when I first saw it. It’s so bad. So many flat surfaces and corners just waiting to be knocked off by the ocean. Like…the one thing the ocean loves to do is knock corners off of things. So this design is made for rich dudes who play too many video games and clearly are cool with motion sickness. And lots of maintenance I guess? I absolutely had to incorporate this monstrosity into the final design.
And that’s how we get to the final design of the Alpha Centauri. A big, stupid yacht with a laser rail gun on top. But it looks cool. And that’s what counts.
I am so ready to have fun with this insane ship. My inner anime kid is beyond excited.