Originally Posted Feb 17th, 2014 04:04 PM
The anthro-avian world I referred to recently is space-faring and this depicts one of their larger deep-space ships at faster-than-light (FTL). This picture has been in mind for years and it started out as a ship used by a rebelling faction of humanity-- outcasts that wandered the stars and tried to keep to themselves. There's a lot to the ship design but for now, suffice it to say that I'm applying the design to the avian culture that's still taking shape in my brain. The hull is completely reflective (like a mirror) to confuse sensors and visual analysis. I imagine that at FTL speeds, the star field would not simply Doppler shift but also spatially compress until it forms an ever-tighter band at 90 degrees to your axis of travel. The faster you go, the tighter that band, but it would never completely collapse. Obviously visual and other navigation instruments relying on external electromagnetic particles would be useless. Therefore you'd either have to have very precise onboard reckoning tools or some other form of external position fixing (maybe gravity measurements)-- haven't worked that out. Fun picture to draw and cool to see it finally out of my head. PhotoShop CS5, combination of motion blur and hue smudge to create star band.