“Last Opportunity”

I thought this challenge would be a fun creative outlet for when I am burned out on my other work. I wanted to use this opportunity to practice composition, scale, concept, and storytelling. I wanted to do something Sci-fi, because I thought this would let me run away with scale without having to worry about strict realism. I also wanted something relatable to tie the scene to my own experience, something from our time. The first big thing that popped into my mind was an aircraft carrier. I come from generations of naval aviators, and I thought bringing my own experience on carriers would help me ground the project in reality. I thought that a fun way to fit a modern day aircraft carrier into a sci-fi scene would be to have a massive space craft salvaging an ‘old’ carrier from the 21st century for parts. This seemed like a desperate act to me, both to salvage an old rusty boat for a modern spaceship, and to destroy a piece of history like that just for a little steel. So I decided that this unfinished spaceship is racing to become space-worthy before the sun goes supernova, consuming every bit of intact machinery for parts, serving as humanity’s “Last Opportunity”.

TL;DR: Humanity races to build a spaceship from spare aircraft carrier parts before the Sun goes supernova.

Concept sketch. I am awful at drawing, but I thought it would be important to get the general idea down in this form as a fallback and a reference. I wanted to get all the general ideas down, the carrier showing signs of salvage, the ship showing signs of construction, and an atmosphere of rush and chaos with the helicopters coming and going, and the construction robots working around the clock.

First 3d pass. This is obviously exceptionally rough. I just wanted to get all the major players in place, and I found right away that the perspective under the ship doesn’t read well for me, but I quite liked this front on approach. Compositionally, I thought silhouetting my reference man for scale with the sun would look striking. The magic of 3d is how easy that sort of change is to make. If this were a 2d project, it would be back to the drawing board.

Still getting a feel. Even though it’s literally 3 extruded cubes, the carrier was not looking very good in the first shot. It looks small and unimpressive, and I was making a lot of compositional sacrifices to boot. I thought pulling in much closer would help, but I lose the chance to have the helicopter landing off the ship like in the concept art. This was fortuitous though, because something I have learned from my writer friends is that stories are better when they are focused. Why not have the helicopter front and center, picking up the person on the flight deck. Initially, I put him there only for reference, but now he has become the main character in my visual story that is forming around him. I also added more to my ship to match the reference more closely, but I’m not too worried about the exact geometry since I will create a more complete blockout piece in 3ds max later once I have the concept ironed out.

Where it currently stands. The fog was crushing my values and therefore my composition. I fixed that, and changed the FOV of my camera as well. The ship was distracting me and clashing with the aircraft carrier, so I simplified for now. I keep moving closer to my main character, and his story continues to evolve. I liked how he used to look, striking and solitary against the Sun. But I found that by adding the child beside him, it is much more evocative for me personally. I begin to wonder about their relationship and their circumstances. I am concerned for the child, and worried about the absent mother. Is this man even the child’s father? I hope I get to find out as I keep working.

Thanks so much for looking and thank you to Emiel at FTT for making this happen. There’s a lot of generosity and talent in this community.

-Jack