[Art/Writing] Basilisk's random works

[Lisky]

The image is a work in progress sketch of my RP character Darkshine's armor, who is based on a character from a series of short stories i wrote while in a creative writing class last year...  i've also adapted him for the Brotherhood of the Machine RP

The armor is built around 2 basic styles of protection, the plates, which also house a plethora of featues, including an on-board AI, a cache of nanites for hacking, hidden blades in the forearms, concealed holsters in the boots, a small, an exceedingly well protected micro- fusion bottle  and additional ammo in the hip and thigh plates.  The other section of the armor is refered to as reactive armor, without outside pressure, the material has the feeling of a heavy wet suit, when struck, the material is actually a laminate of a conductive layer, a material that flash hardens when an electrical current is run through it, and a semi-insulating layer between the other 2 layers... when struck, the semi-insulator decreases the distance between the current and the material as it compresses, at a certain point, a current is completed as the insulator becomes compressed, hardening the area, which then spreads as the hardened area spreads the force out across more of the material... Kinetic impacts are therefore spread out over a massive area, making them far more survivable as the projectile looses it's penetrating ability.

The character himself is still a work in progress, and will probably be posted within a could of days, once i've gotten a chance to actually finalize the face, and ink the whole thing...  when i head back home in a few weeks, i'll grab my detachable hard drive from the rents, and post some of the short stories as well...

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Are you going to fix your topic title, or should I?

[Lisky]

happy now boxy?

Anyways, i guess i'll also add a little bit of writing, that i based my own RP off of, specifically, a few weapons, vehicles, and other 'outlandish' technologies

i have yet to name the universe, but it seems to at least have people interested... so most of this is taken from my RP thread...

Major Factions Involved

The Imperium: had control of the largest empire, exerting control over some 450 worlds, colonies and space stations... they rules their stars with fairly relaxed, though somewhat biblical laws.  If proven guilty of a crime, an equal punishment was given to the convicted.
They relied heavily on plasma technology, and had the most advanced long range energy based weapons

The Freedom Guard: neither guarded freedom, stood for freedom, nor even gave it to the citizens of their empire, basically the embodiment of fascism, people lived in fear, government issued killings were extremely common place, and dissidence was put down with extreme prejudice.  Cold and calculating, they were often the source of war throughout the rest of the galaxy.  They relied on tried and true railguns, chemical explosives and nuclear tipped missiles.

The Asguard Syndicate: A collection of corporations who ran everything in the space they controlled, the syndicate is one of the few relics that remained after the intergalactic diaspora.  Neither good nor evil, they seemed to worship money, and profits were more important than expansion, or even national pride.  Seen as somewhat pacifistic they were often picked apart by the other factions, that is, until they stumbled across huge advances in graser technology... after that point, they became overly aggressive, using lightweight ships to constantly raid the other factions.  Laser and Graser technology was the staple of their armory

The Hybrid Council: Shunned by the rest of earth society, the master's of genetic engineering took their craft on the largest, fastest and furthest traveling colony ship they could find.  When contact returned with the rest of society, Hybrids found themselves prejudiced again, and after a few failed attempts at re-integration, decided that the rest of humanity must be "forced" to accept the hybrids into their folds.  The corruption of the council continued to grow, as the leadership became less and less interested in what was best for the people they ruled.  Genetically modified to be faster, more agile and stronger, the hybrid used plasma and gauss weapons for their ground based forces, and extremely advanced missile and laser technology on their space craft.

Weapons

Railguns:  either long poles, or coils of electro magnets, which propel a projectile downrange, the projectile is usually iron, or copper, because of their conductive, and magnetic properties.  The longer the rail, the faster the projectile is fired.

Gauss weapon: combines a railgun, and standard firearm technology to get a massive muzzle velocity out of relatively small weapons.  They tend to be a little bulkier and heavier when compared to other solid projectile weapons.

Plasma weapons: firing a charged bolt of superheated gas, plasma bolts will melt most known materials on contact, the bolt explodes or diffuses when impacting a solid surface.  Standard versions are cartridge fed, a cartridge contains a small copper cap, a plastic case, a pre-charged capacitor, and a small shot of pressurized liquid nitrogen to cool the barrel.  The copper cap is flash vaporised by an ARC torch, powered by the capacitor.  Immediately after the copper is melted, the capacitor releases the rest of it's energy down the electro-magnet barrel, this collects and fires the gaseous copper particles in a rough bolt.  Before leaving the barrel, the nitrogen goes to a gaseous state from residual heat from the forming of the bolt.  The nitrogen has a tendency to cling to the edges of the barrel, providing an insulator against overheating and prevents the barrel from melting as the bolt leaves (if kept under 200 BPM [Bolts Per Minute] the weapon will have no fear of overheating, any higher, and a molten barrel or destroyed gun is common on any plasma weapon) the telltale signs of most plasma weapons are the goldish tint of the inner barrel, and often an over sized barrels as well.
Imperium plasma weapons have the ability to use a power cell, rather than cartridges, and are known for their reliability and elegant design

Laser Weapons: pretty straight forward, a coherent beam of light, concentrated enough to cause massive heating in a small area.  Syndicate Graser use a similar process, though the beam is in the gamma range, rather than visible light

Flechette guns: These weapons are the bastard lovechild of a gauss rifle and a shotgun, which then grew horns, fangs and wings.  Firing a cluster of finned tungsten-carbide needles at extreme velocities, they tear apart anyone caught in their path apart.  The only disadvantage of using a flechette gun is that they only have an effective lethal range of about 300 yards against an armored target... though anyone unarmored that gets caught in the path of a flechette blast has a chance of getting killed at extreme ranges (beyond 2 miles)  Flechette guns are extremely common in mercenary units, and pirates, as they tend to not puncture hull plates, but will shred people apart in close quarters.

the IPDNWS (Infantry Portable Directed Nuclear Weapons System)  Basic idea on how it works... Feed a cartridge for the weapon into the rear breach, the cartridge is a sphere roughly 4.5 inches in diameter... In reality, it's just a cased plutonium sphere... Once in the breach the weapon detonates a small nuclear explosion, then, using a series of magnetic containment fields, directs the nuclear blast down the barrel as a coherent beam, roughly 3 meters in diameter and has a killing range in the hundreds of Kilometers (if setup properly, it can hit a ship in low orbit from the ground) though it is a line of sight weapon... The largest downside of this weapon of absolute destruction is that roughly 1 in 100 times the containment field fails, and the user is at the epicenter of a "clean" tactical nuclear blast... by clean, i mean the radiation has an extremely short half-life, and as such, it's safe to enter the area 24 hours after the explosion.

Another specific was the hybrid designed Purgatory Missle: an antimatter warhead/antimatter drive, the drive would actually feed off of the warhead, so the longer the shot, the weaker the missile... The estimated drive time in simulators was a maximum of 36 hours, giving a powered flight envelope well beyond anything anyone else had... A minute decimal error in the simulator gave them a very conservative estimate, as the actual powered flight time was over 10 years.  The flight time is where the missile got it's name, it'll chase a target for what seems like forever, until it's target jumps out of the system, or it looses track, and finds a more tempting target durring it's attempts to reacquire it's original target ...
Vehicles

Imperium: Rhino Fortress Tank: weighing in at 320 tonnes this ground effect monster is a mobile fortress, powered by a fusion bottle, it's weapons consist of a 200mm main plasma cannon, mounted on the main turret, 2x 75mm plasma cannons mounted in a secondary turret, 4x 10mm repeating plasma guns, and 2x 15mm plasma-gattlings  mounted above the secondary turret...  Run by a crew of 4, these were the largest, and heaviest of ground combatants used by the imperium, when in combat, the on board shielding was rather impressive as it was capable of shrugging off all but the most powerful of strikes, while being able to destroy almost any other ground vehicle in it's path... carrying plasma weapons means that even low flying aircraft are vulerable since the weapons are line of sight... the IPDNWS was developed to combat these monstrosities

[Kipiru]

  Nice suit! I've had several attempts at drawing something similar, but always kept overdoing it- yours is neat and tidy, really looks functional. I'd love to see it on a body with a face  , think you could make a female version?
  You seem to be capable of drawing sci-fi stuff, so maybe you could place some of those weapons you describe into drawings- I'd really like to see the design you come up with.
  Sorry if it seem that I'm asking for too much 

[Lisky]

haha, don't worry about it, i'm actually working on sketching quite a bit of stuff at the moment... it just so happened that style of the suit came out really well while i was 'listening' to a lecture in econ yesterday, i've got my character in the suit, but trying to the the proportions right, along with showing off some of the features, such as the hidden blades in the forearm plates... the rifle that goes along with it is almost done, just trying to get it tidied up a bit before i actually post it

[GabrielsThoughts]

I always thought metals like zinc copper and aluminum were non magnetic...

[Lisky]

all materials are magnetic to a degree, it's just an issue of the amount of magnetics needed to effect them... copper for example, is a great conductor, and therefore makes it easy to use in electro magnets... it also means that it works great for a railgun, as you can charge the projectile and get the effect of push/pull effect (like on a maglev) by changing polarities to sections of the barrel, while the projectile is traveling down the barrel... this double action in turn gets a greater velocity out of shorter barrels, which is why coil style rail weapons are actually usable in infantry form

Well, i guess i'll keep going with some of the pieces of the short stories... this one is kind of the back story to the RP, so if you read this, you'll actually know a little more about the Executioners Blade

Imperium Scimitar Class Dreadnought
Weight: 850 Million Tonnes
Length: 9750 Meters
Maximum Width: 5500 Meters
Maximum Height: 4800 Meters
Armament:
32x 450cm bore plasma cannons mounted in 16 snub barrel turrets
120x 200cm bore plasma cannons mounted in 40 turrets
800x 20mm Anti-fighter/Anti-Missile plasma gatling, mounted in single turrets
1200x 75mm long range point defense plasma cannons
300x Anti-Capitol torpedo tubes
800x Mulit-Purpose missile tubes

100x Black Star Long Range Bombers
400x Valkyrie Class Interceptors

The very pinnacle of Imperium technology, only 4 hulls of this type were finished in the Grendalsbane shipyards INS Executioner's Blade, INS Black Edge, INS Shining Spear, and INS Shadow Dagger, by sheer size, one ship could destroy an entire planet by simply crashing into it.  It had the longest range energy mounts of any other warship, excluding the Hybrid built Hydra Class Battlecruiser (which still has double the range with it's UV spectrum lasers) It's sheer volume of fire could be sustained with on board magazines for several hours, and if need be, it's impressive acceleration of over 250Gs could allow it to maneuver out of the line of fire.  Driven on an experimental Anti-gravity wave drive, the ship 'surfed' across a anti-grav wave it generated.  The system was an energy hog, and because of that, the sheilding on the Scimitar Class was far weaker than many warships of similar size and mass...

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

I'm not sure you've thought those numbers through.

I make it an average weight of about 330 grams per cubic meter. Steel, by comparison, weighs in at about 7850 kg per cubic meter. Sure, there's a lot of empty space in a ship, but that much? And unless the 85 million tonnes is moving at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light, it's not going to have much effect on the Earth.

After all, according to wikipedia, earth weighs roughly 5.9736*10^24 kg. And your little ship there is 8.5*10^10 kg. So it'd take, oh, about 100,000,000,000,000 of them to equal the mass of the earth, give or take a few rounding errors. Sure, you might make a mess of some of the surface, but you'd have to be going hella fast, or hit the wrong spot, to actually have any serious effect.

The near-earth asteroidal bodies that they're worried about are in the 50-300km across range. Your ship, whilst large on the "compared to people" scale, really is tiny on the scale of the solar system, let alone the universe. The universe is a very very very big place.


Welcome to Earth. You are here. <--

[Lisky]

oh, i know, but with an impact of an asteroid 800-1000m across, all life on said planet would be altered if not erased because of
A: the heat of the impact
and
B: the dust that blocks out the light from the nearby star, causing massive cooling across the entire ecosystem

I guess i should add that that would be 'dry weight' as it's got empty magazines, empty fighter bays, 0 people, 0 atmosphere, 0 supplies such as water and food it's basically an empty hull at 850 million tonnes...  (which adds an appreciable wight when you consider that the crew compliment on said warship is 85,000)

Edit: oh... sorry, forgot the 0... my bad boxy

[Arcalane]

And unless the 85 million tonnes is moving at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light, it's not going to have much effect on the Earth.

Whoever's on the recieving end will have a rather bad day though.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

And unless the 85 million tonnes is moving at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light, it's not going to have much effect on the Earth.

Whoever's on the recieving end will have a rather bad day though.

Oh, sure. It'd ruin their whole day.

It wouldn't "destroy an entire planet", though. Just scrape the outside of the orange peel about a bit.

[Lisky]

it'd mess up the surface considerably... probably make it unlivable for those shafted in and around a considerable area within the impact zone... and it was supposed to be 850 million, not 85, the zero key decided to not read the first time i typed it up

anyways, another warship that is actually my favorite by design (i'll be posting the sketches once i find them)

Hybrid Hydra Class Battlecruiser
Weight:14 million tonnes
Length: 950M
Maximum Width: 800m
Maximum Height 800m
Crew Compliment: 2200 (includes the detachment of 1200 Hybrid Marines)
Armament:
9x 1.8 Giga-watt UV spectrum Laser, Maximum effective range = 16 light seconds
60x Purgatory Missile tubes
20x Anti-Capital Torpedo tubes
120x variable power anti-fighter/anti-missile point defense lasers

An exceedingly elegant as well as vicious warship, the Hydra is designed for long range combat, built around 9 long spires, set at a 30 degree angle from the central hull, each spire is actually the housing for an immensely powerful UV range laser... These ships are the snipers of fleet combat, with lighter armor and shielding, it is the first design to incorporate the anti-grav wave drive, the drive became extremely common later in the war as Hydras were destroyed, and put back together by other factions R&D departments.
The hydra was capable of a rather astonishing 520Gs of maximum acceleration, and if it weren't for it's inertial compensator, the crew would become a slimy red paste, plastered across a wall

[Turnsky]

mmm... big target.

[Lisky]

just a rough sketch for now, but it'll probably be done by the end of the week, This would be my RP char. Darkshine in his armor, which a near full version can be viewed in my first post... i'll be adding some more as i get them done or find them...

(edit: updated the image after finding an eraser to fix some blazingly obvious problems, but lacked the proper tools to fix them)

[Tapewolf]

To me the face looks rather long.  Also, the eyes are a little off-balance with respect to each other.  Other than that, I think you've done a better feline face than I've managed myself so far.

[Lisky]

and i found something that'll actually work, i'll update in a few minutes

this is just kinda me getting used to get the character, it'll take me a few more sketches to get him exactly how i want him, but so far, i'm kinda like him  in this style

[WhiteFox]

Are you looking for constructive comments? By which I mean suggestions for improvement.

As for the conversation above I submit the following: http://qntm.org/?destroy

[Lisky]

i am looking for criticism, as the drawing is just a first draft of a work in progress

as for the conversation, while destroying the planet is unreasonably, say, glassing every installation and sign of humanity isn't, or, covering the sky for several months with a cloud of dust from the impact of a warship traveling at .1 C (speed of light)

[WhiteFox]

The short version: Lower the position of the eyes on the face and I think he'll look better. The nose looks long, and the forehead short.

The long version:

A face can be divided, vertically, into thirds: the forehead, the top of the eyes to the tip of the nose, and from the tip of the nose to the chin. This is the case for cats and humans, as far as I can tell.
Here's a shot of a cheetah for example. Thanks, National Geographic.

I'm pretty sure about 90% of the face-on pictures of cheetahs are with their heads tilted down. From that angle, the nose ends up looking much longer. The chin shortens considerably. More of the top of the head becomes visible, which makes the forehead look huge.
Here's a shot of a cheetah with his head tilted down. Thanks again, Nat-Geo.

In a sense, the proportions in the drawing are right... it's just that the parts of the face look as though they're drawn from two different angles. The nose looks right if his head were tilted forward, and his forehead and chin would be right if he were facing straight on. Lowering the eyes shortens the length of the muzzle and makes the forehead taller.

Sorry if this is throwing a lot of technical stuff around, but that's as simple as I can explain it. I do have a habit of ranting.

[Lisky]

haha, don't worry about seeming too technical, as i said, it's a rough draft to get a good idea of the character down... then make improvements in subsequent sketches

[GabrielsThoughts]

I wonder, if it is an alien, maybe we want to encourage the shape of the head being a little bizarre... on the other hand it is weird looking

[Lisky]

alien no, massively genetically modified human/ leopard yes... he's a hybrid in the little blurbs on factions...

[Lisky]

Well, i felt like adding this since it seems my RP is dead... just a bit of writing that was going to be the start of the first real combat...

(this is where the pirates are actually attacking and so a few weeks after the initial start of the game in in-game time... i need a drive i left at home to post the whole thing in story form and not have to re-write everything)

Darkshine was leaning against the wall, just enjoying the club atmosphere and sipping on a beer.  He was wearing a form fitting long sleeved black shirt with a green T shirt on top, he was wearing baggy cargo pants, and a pair of sandals.  He was getting ready to go take a hybrid vixen onto the floor, when a siren began to wail, and at first, the club-goers thought it was part of another song. 

That was until the music stopped, the lights flickered on and an announcement was played over the sound system, an official, voice declared in a low tone "This is President Amaren, and as of this moment, i am issuing a state of emergency, and putting the entire planet under marshal law.  As of 20 minutes ago, our long range orbital scanners detected a total of 10 large warships, appearing to be 8 Akuma class light assault cruisers, and 2 Shrike class light carriers.  Their intent seems hostile... The Ares and Neptune have been sent to counter the threat, but at current best acceleration, we'll be under siege for roughly 4 hours before they can do anything... i request all local civilians to go home and prepare for the worse, all off duty military and law enforcement personnel to report to your main base of operation, and all off worlders to attempt to return to their ships... current ETA to assault is 2 hours... We will keep you updated"

As static blared over the sound system, Darkshine winced in pain.  After taking a few seconds to adjust to the sudden brightness of the room, he reached into one of his pockets and pulled out a PDA, and sent a message to the ship.  He then went and sent a quick text over to 'knight' that read (did you hear the news... we gotta get moving... where are you?)

the PDA beeped, vibrated then displayed a return message from the panther 'i'm down the street at the hotel, you'd better get here quick, we're not making it to the ship in 2 hours'  It took Darkshine a few seconds to register the statement from Knight, but, as he did, he made his way through the panicked crowds rushing every which way back to the hotel.  Once checked into his room, he took a total of 2 minutes to remove his civilian ware, and don his rather iconic armor.

Once on, he took an additional 10 minutes to run a full system check.  He then reached into the long back he'd brought with him, and assembled his Reaper class 5mm gauss SMG.  He fished a few magazines out from the bag, then folded his clothing and got everything set to move.  He then checked his side arms, hidden in the boots of the armor.  A pair of suppressed .45 caliber pistols.

Against an unarmored target, the victim tends to not get back up after a single shot, and the acoustic signature of firing the weapons is actually quieter than the act of cocking a round into the chamber.

Once fully equipped, Darkshine flipped on his mask and helmet, checked the time and commed 'Knight' in a rather snide tone "hey kitty kitty, it's time to come out and play..." he then said more seriously "we've got a little less than an hour to get going, i'll meet you in the lobby in 2 minutes"

Knight could be spotted in crowd because of his jet black fur on jet black armor, and with his enormous black, feathered wings him blending in would be like wearing orange to a gothic club, and calling it camouflage.  Knight was wearing a fully armored mesh suit, that covered everything, including his wings, he wore a combat harness with several large, boxy magazines.  The massive bore of 20mm plasma carbine he carried scarred off most of the gawkers, and from an outside perspective, a pair of black clad, faceless demons had just appeared out of the woodwork...

Darkshine started moving at a slow jog, when a faint whine could be heard from overhead.  The sound of thunder echoed through the city as the anti-orbital weapons began hurling bolts of superheated gas into orbit.  The eerie greenish glow light up the night, as bolt after bolt was fired.  Missiles started dancing out to meet the un-invited guest as well.

The night was awash with the afterglow of the bolts as they went out to meet the invaders... Faint red glows could be seen as assault shuttles and fighters braved the torrent being thrown up at them.

[Lisky]

so, i'll be adding to this a little more often now that i've gotten my hard drives from the rents... before i start adding some of the short stories, here's what appeared at the top of my 'notes' from class yesterday... soo soo bored...


http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e268/EWork88/scan0002.jpg

[Corgatha Taldorthar]

Where did the guy on the left get the mask?

[Lisky]

i don't actually know... i was bored, and someone behind me mentioned small pox... so the idea kinda hit me as a funny... yet horrible situation...

[Lisky]

i know this is a severe case of necroing, but i've let this slide for far too long... i'll be updating for more often after this weekend (when i can get my scanner from home... one here is dead)

anyways, for now, i'll be adding my gift for Dannysaysnoo from the Covert Courtesy Commutation

[techmaster-glitch]

i know this is a severe case of necroing, but i've let this slide for far too long...

This rule is almost completely relaxed for artists posting in their own art thread, so I dont think you've got any worries.

And that is a slick drawing.

[Lisky]

the only real downside is that i think i spent more time trying to perfect the reflection in the lenses than on any other part of the drawing... it's a great learning tool observing how things appear across a curved reflective surface... but it sucks trying to draw it...

[Beever]

Liked the drawing .There are so many details and the shadings are really sophisticated.Really can't imagine what you could create in the same style when you get you scanner back on line.
The expression of the character:he seems he's either enjoying the view, judging by his right eyebrow or he is  kinda tense about something, this time, judging by his mouth.

Either or neither, this is a good picture, greetings