In speaking with a friend who follows this blog, a question was raised as to whether or not my plan had been to paint the Stargate. As mentioned before, I always need to take a few days to review a piece before I finish it. My plan had been to make a Warp Gate, basically a fixed point in space that anchors and maintains at least one side of a wormhole.
Warp Gates occur often in modern science fiction. The Stargate is one example. The numerous Warp Gates scattered around the EVE Online Universe another, the Mass Relay that knits the Mass Effect universe together. Even in the Savaged Universe I created, FTL(faster than light) travel mainly circles around the use of Gibson Gates, giant rings in geosynchronous orbit around specific planets in each system controlled by the Humanity and her allies.
Since my original gate seems to be a little too close, artistically, to the Stargate, I decided I needed to add something to it. An inner ring, that might somehow move, or shift when the gate is turned on was my first thought.
I picked a gold color for several reason, but mostly cause it looked cool, and compliments the outer ring well.
I again turned to rusted and beaten metal textures, which I then layered over the painting and very specifically erased the parts I didn’t want. I also had to decide on where to place the crystals on the inner ring.
Again in this image you can see more added texture, along with the addition of the two crystals. Texturing is really easy to over due, and it can be hard to remember that rule and erase. I have found that it is better to be kinda brutal, especially if you are going to layer a lot of textures, or if you have some larger design.
In this case I wanted to add a texture that made the object feel manufactured, and a bit more high tech. I choose a beehive styled texture, and then set about erasing that parts I didn’t want. I then used a rock texture to erase and ware down a larger area which I then painted and blended to look even more worn and beaten.
These gates might be pinnacle of late 21st Century Human achievement, but they are old, and they orbit through space. This means that they are thrust into a very dangerous environment, where pebbles are capable of destroying entire spacecraft.
-TheGrav
Related articles
- Making Stargates: The Physics of Traversable Absurdly Benign Wormholes (nextbigfuture.com)
- Retro Review: Stargate (filmophilia.com)
- The Coolest Stargate Cake and Cupcake (betweenthepagesblog.typepad.com)
The Dark Side of Digital Art. 