Annotations

Panel #1 - The starship took me several months to construct in my spare time (which I didn't have much of, as it turns out). I've never tried to scratch-build anything technological before, so maybe it was a bit of a stretch to start with a starship. However, it came out okay, although a bit plain.

The ship is made from toys and household items glued together with Bondo and Goop:

• Forward hull - All detergent bottle
• Canopies - Fanta orange pop liter bottles
• Rear hull - two weedkiller bottles
• Dorsal generators - light bulb container
• Engines - Sierra Mist aluminium pop bottles
• Engine struts - Bionicle legs, arms, and feet
• Engine exhausts - Robotix engine parts
• Dorsal hatch - Random plastic piece I found with Bionicle shield attached
• Weapon/sensor arrow on nose - Bionicle mask
• Hull plating - Foamies sheets
• Hoses - Bionicle tubing

Here are some pics of the construction process:

The forward hull before construction:

Testing cockpit for size. The seat is made from clay. I was originally going to have removable canopies so I could shoot some interior shots. I even cut some hatches into the cockpit from the cargo area. However, it was too difficult to get it all to work, so any cockpit shots that occur will be constructed outside the ship. I was originally going to have air brake panels (the yellow pieces), but they were also too much of a chore to get to work correctly.

Here the crew is testing the fore and aft hulls and engines.

Closeup of the engine testing:

Several episodes of Webcomic Entertainment! include interviews with the production crew on the construction of the starship. Check out episodes #18, #19, #20, #21, and #24.

Panel #2 - It took me a few weeks to figure out how to do the engine glare. I couldn't find a good tutorial. I finally found a tutorial on creating a laser blast, and I modified it to do the glare you see here. I think the glare in this panel looks a little too clean, but it suffices.

Panel #3 - I originally added digital electrical sparks to the battle damage, but they didn't look very good. And, they concealed the battle damage. I thought the clarity of the battle damage was more important than a less than cool spark effect, so I deleted the sparks.

Panel #4 - Now here's where the engine glare came out really good. Doing large, closeup shots of the glare is easer than the distant glares, like in panel #2. You also get a good look at the rear of the ship. It's got five engines (two of which are not burning now).

Panel #6 - That's a digital gas giant and ring system up ahead. Created with Photoshop. I also cheated on the starship and used the same image from panel #5, resized smaller here.