Pirate Airship "Turnabout"

[the_gneech]

Pirate Airship Turnabout by ~the-gneech on deviantART

You can't have air pirates without a pirate airship! DUH. This is the Turnabout, commandeered (well, stolen) from Her Majesty's Airship Corps, now the scourge of the airways.

Concept art for my new comic project. Curious for opinions, besides the obvious "that thing is gonna be a PAIN to draw all the time!"

-The Gneech

Comments

[harper-knight.livejournal.com]

Sails, particularly mainsails, on a clearly post-industrial airship radically breaches my suspension of disbelief.. especially with turbine-style 'backup' engines on the same airship. I don't buy it.

Other than that, I like it. The submarine-that-flies look is nice. It'd look even better with a propulsion system that fits the rest of the design.

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

One of the ideas behind the wings (besides, y'know, "wings pretty") was to clearly establish that this is a fantasy craft. My original idea for a propulsion unit was a kind of elemental energy drive that pulse blue rings of plasma-like magic power... but I couldn't find a look I liked with it.

Eberron airships have a very cool elemental ring that keeps them afloat-- but, y'know, someone did that already. ;)



I'm open to suggestions!

-TG

[wyatt1048.livejournal.com]

It could be that the sails are more for steering than propulsion, so they only project when turning tightly. Of course, then you'd have to make it clear that the drive system isn't doing the manoeuvring - perhaps if it's fixed with regards to the rest of the ship, running the legth of the balloon?

[radbaron.livejournal.com]

My small suggestion... make the wings horizontal, looking like "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" in appearance. That still leaves them foldable, and if you run wires from the mainmast down to the ends, makes them bendable as well.

[kylet.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty good with techy stuff, but steampunk has generally been a style that I can't grok well. I couldn't tell you how well this works or not.

My only suggestion is the nosecone. It looks like an oceanliner...I'd kinda expect something more aerodynamic (inasmuch as steampunk is ever about realistic physics...)
Unless of course you WANT it to look like a ship!

I like the color scheme and as noted, the way the wings make it clearly an outrageous machine, great contrast with an otherwise fairly smooth, clean design.