ratcreature | fanart, Sheppard & Steampunk!Puddlejumper

Entry tags:

fanart, Sheppard & Steampunk!Puddlejumper

Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis
Characters/Pairings: John Sheppard & Steampunk!Puddlejumper
Media used: pencil, fine liner pen with waterproof indian ink, acrylic paint
Rating/warnings: G
Notes/comments: I did this for the prompt "Victorian steampunk AU" for the SGA fanart fest

paintedspires. Admittedly mechanical pterodactyls aren't the most efficient way for a flying machine, Steampunk or otherwise, and not a very likely or even possible path technology would take from an SF standpoint, but this way was much cooler visually than merely changing the puddlejumpers with pipes or gauges or whatever. I mean, they more or less look like flying lunch boxes. Not really realistic technology, but this is Stargate after all, and I'm pretty sure John would think that mechanical, flying dinosaurs were cool.

The original is 30x40cm, so unfortunately I had to scan it in two parts, and you can see a slight line where I merged, because I fail at digital manipulation and didn't know how to make the two parts fit completely seamless.

Preview: preview of Sheppard flying a Steampunk!Puddlejumper

preview of Sheppard flying a Steampunk!Puddlejumper

And because you can't see Sheppard that well in that size, here's a larger detail view:

detail of Sheppard flying a Steampunk!Puddlejumper

If for some reason you want the whole image in a print resolution in its original size, I uploaded that as well, however at 300dpi and 30x40cm the file is over 4652x3500 pixel / 4mb: look at it in a really huge size in high resolution

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Oh, that's FANTASTIC!! So creative, and I adore Sheppard's expression!

Thank you, I'm glad you like it.

Wow, awesome!

Thank you!

A-MA-ZING !!!

Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Wowwwww, Steampunk Shepherd! This is so awesome!

Thank you.

Wow, I love all the detail & it's just so 'fun', you know?
Thank you!

(I can just imagine Rodney being in the back tending to the engine! *g*)

Thanks! Steampunk provides great opportunity to draw funny and quirky machinery.

I love this fantastic flying machine !! It is made of win ! ^^
Great composition !!

Thanks, I'm happy to hear you like the mechanical pterodactyl.

That is so wonderfully fun, John would totally love something like that. I love the jointed tail - why does it have a tail? Because pterodactyls have tails, of course! even steam-powered ones!

Thanks, I'm glad you like it. And the tail actually has a function, it is to steer the aircraft. Do you see the cables running to the edges and the tip? The pilot can manipulate these with pedals like in an airplane and its tail, and pull on the three cables puts the flexible tail into different position to veer left and right and such, so it functions as rudder.

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gardendoor.livejournal.com - 2008-05-09 14:33 (UTC) - Expand

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ratcreature - 2008-05-09 20:33 (UTC) - Expand

Heee! John looks like he's having tremendous fun in his flying contraption. It's such a zany image!

Thank you! I'm glad Sheppard comes across that way, because I think a Victorian Sheppard who might have grown up without flight (except for balloons at best) and flying machines being an impossible dream rather than reality would be all the more thrilled to have the opportunity.

This is so much fun!

I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Oh, gorgeous! I love Sheppard's goggles, which make him look a bit Harry Potter-esque. And a pterodactyl flying machine!!

Thanks! Obviously I couldn't do a steampunk thing without goggles. *G*

It looks like an illustration from a really kick-ass children's book!

I'm glad you like it. And the children's book comparison is good, I tried to go more for the quirky side of steampunk machines rather than the gothic.

Haha, he's so cute! A wonderful piece of art.

Thank you.

He looks like he;s having a lot of fun. I want my own steampunk pterodactyl! Lovely work!

Heh, yeah, I want a steampunk dinosaur too. Well, maybe a small one, I don't think this one would fit in my apartment or even in front of it...

This is really fabulous!!

Thank you, I'm glad you like it.

This is so awesome. I love it!

Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Wow! Wonderful detail on the flying dino. I'm so glad you went with something a little more fanciful than a steam-powered jumper. This looks amazing!

Thanks, it's great to hear it works for you. And the flying dino was a lot of fun to draw as well, more than a plain jumper. I guess I like to give tech personality.

That's really cool! Awesome detail; and I love the flying machine, and how very pleased Sheppard is to be flying it.

Thank you, I'm glad you like it and that the details work for you.

I love it! John looks so happy!

Thank you!

Awesome.

I love your style and coloring. Excellent :)

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

That looks sooo cool! Very great!

Thank you. I'm glad you liked it.

Awesome, awesome, so awesome. I've been looking forward to this since you mentioned working on it. I love all the little details! Like the little ladder for climbing in, and the landinggear!feet, and the fact that the tail looks totally wiggle-able.

Thanks, I'm glad you like it. I wanted to make it look like something that could work (well in an steampunk universe anyway), though now that you mention the ladder, it occurs to me that I should have probably drawn that as one you could pull downwards to extend a bit, as even with the legs crouched down fully it would be hard to reach as it is...

The Steampunk!Puddlejumper is so very cool, and John's just having a blast. Steampunk FTW! :D

Thank you, I'm glad you like it. The Steampunk!Puddlejumper was such fun to draw, too.

I mean I did have a slump of despair when I tried to design something and realized how utterly clueless I am about the details of mechanical engineering, but eventually research and references helped to fake it.

Brilliant! This is a wonderful take on the prompt and the steam-pterosaur is just inspired!There is a kind of breezy cheerfulness about this that reminds me of some of the early Harry Potter illustrations, too. :D

Thank you. I'm glad you liked my steam-pterodactyl.

oh wow, i wish i thought i would ever be this good with acrylics.

this is amazing. i love the gears and propellers and the hinged tail-rudder and John's very cool coat. (also, you are completely correct that mechanical dinosaur trumps 'flying lunchbox' every time. also, it must be ever more fun to talk to your aircraft when it actually has a face. i imagine that John probably pats lovingly at the pterosaur's metallic snout from time to time.)

Yeah, John would totally get attached to his aircraft. And I'm glad you like it, and that's a very kind comment about my acrylic technique, especially since this is only the fifth drawing I colored with them (my pet rats chewed through my tablet cable, and I'm too broke to get a new one...).

To me acrylic paint (used as glazes not as impasto or like whatever you do on actual true paintings on canvas) seems much more forgiving than watercolors and easier, because you can just paint color layers over each other, and they won't dissolve again, and you have a white for highlights and can easily be more or less opaque and also paint over things if it just went wrong (really I tend to think of acrylic glazes as "watercolors for dummies" *g*). Because I don't have any real clue about painting, I actually started out to use acrylic paint more or less like I'd use color layers in a computer program, and have only slightly modified that approach sometimes as I gain experience, but I still mostly just color like this: I have an inked drawing I want to color, then I pick a base color for something, then make that a thin glaze so I can paint it like water color and get shadings of the color by doing layers (for which the water works like the opaqueness setting in the computer) and paint with that several layers on the thing so that some areas are lighter, some darker, and for some stuff I use slight variations in color to make it livelier and less uniform, like skin, then I do shadows with a glaze, like a complimentary color, or sometimes a different darker color or even brown or black (there's some trial and error how they overlay I do on an extra sheet), and at the end I do some things with white, like metal highlights, and as a final step I redraw some of the ink lineart where it has become too covered.

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belovedsnail.livejournal.com - 2008-05-14 22:44 (UTC) - Expand

Amazing. SO creative, and your watercolor technique blows me away!

Thank you, I'm glad you like it. This is actually colored with acrylic paint, just applied in thin glazes not impasto. I find these much easier to handle than watercolors because the layers don't dissolve again if you paint over them, and you have a white.

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