Wednesday 6 April 2016

Skyship Design Thoughts

Bit of a recent windfall of cash has meant money to throw at more artwork and get me a step closer to Frozen Skies getting properly released. Hoping over the next few weeks to show a preview of one of the new pieces of artwork I've had commissioned, but this week I wish to talk a little about another piece of artwork thats in the pipeline.

That of a Skyship.

Getting The Look

Probably the easiest part was the general shape and look of Darmonica's Skyship, heavily inspired by those in the webcomic Alpha Shade which are loosely based upon WW1 & WW2 era warships. Granted the ones active in Darmonica have at least one difference, namely the gasbags for the 'Lift Gas' which I envision being on either side of the vessel and occupying the central third of its length. So at the moment we're looking at a WW1 era warship kept aloft with a pair of zeppelin style gasbags.

With the core basic concept in mind we move onto other things such as control and means of propulsion, factors that will effect the design. For control at least the obvious would be a rudder, though have considered the possibility of biplane (or monoplane) wings mounted on either side of the fore-end of the vessel. These forewings would effectively function similarly to canards, basically acting as elevators and also help the rudder to steer the vessel.

Propulsion is a little trickier to decide upon.

At presently I'm favouring Alpha Shade style turbines, a sort of steam powered jet engine if you will. The advantage of this is that the airflow from these turbines can be used in conjunction with the rudder to turn the skyship, course the related machinery and fuel is going to take up space. The other option is having wing mounted prop engines like WW2 bombers such as the Lancaster and B-17, though we'll see.

In Closing

I'd love to hear people's thoughts on this, the actual look of the Skyships is still very fluid at this stage and feedback can help refine the design.

Also, PATREON!

Previews will go up on the Patreon before eventually being posted on the blog, you can get in on the act for only $1 and help bring Frozen Skies that bit closer to release.

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