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Concept and work-in-progress art

Concept art

The faces and the rooms of the ship. Everything here is concept or work in progress, and each piece says how far along it is. The sky behind the bridge is not painted: it is the game's live relativistic sky. Click any image for the full-size file.

Art direction

The look comes from French 1970s science-fiction comics, the ligne claire and Métal Hurlant tradition of Moebius and Philippe Druillet. The brief takes their qualities, never their images: technology that looks grown, organic and mechanical blended; saturated colour against vast emptiness; tiny humans in huge structures; clean, flowing curves; cathedral-like spaces.

The ship is a sphere, the Higgs bubble, about 100 m in radius. A spire runs through its centre. The bridge is a disc at the very top of the spire, right under the bubble's forward pole, which is its dome, and it is the smallest level. Below it, open levels radiate from the spire, widening toward the sphere's equator and narrowing again below.

Interiors are seen in an isometric, layered view. The play area is a toon-shaded, ink-outlined 3D scene; behind it sits a painted panorama with every patch of space left transparent; behind that is the live sky, rendered through exactly the same camera. As the camera pans, the foreground moves fastest, the deck 1:1, the panorama slowly, and the sky not at all. One rule binds the artists: never paint space. So when the ship runs at 0.99c, the stars outside the bridge railings crowd forward and turn blue, exactly as in the sky flight.

The whole ship

Style concept proposal
Ship layers: whole-ship cutaway and bridge-rim roots
Ship layers: whole-ship cutaway and bridge-rim roots. Style concept v1 for review, 4 October 2026. Proportions and sightlines are illustrative, not dimensionally reliable. One central spire inside a spherical bubble; the bridge is the highest occupied deck. Lower levels widen toward the equator, and the rim detail proposes attached supports rising from below. Zoning and mezzanines are proposals; the boundary outline is a reference aid, not a physics rendering.

Compare two measured Blender layouts, rotate the models, download the source files, and inspect bridge sightlines on the bubble-ship geometry and style review page . Use those models for dimensions; this drawing guides style.

The captain

Picked, final quality
The captain: the Longline Navigator, life-stage sheet
The captain: the Longline Navigator, life-stage sheet. Front and back at ages 30, 50, 70 and 90, with the small figure-height checks the isometric decks need. Cream longline coat, ochre shoulder yoke, violet trousers. Picked by Mark on 3 October 2026 from three silhouette proposals (game PR #98).
Age 30
Age 30
Age 50
Age 50
Age 70
Age 70
Age 90
Age 90

The game runs across a 100-year career, so the captain ages on deck: the same figure at 30, 50, 70 and 90.

The Medic

Accepted portrait set
Neutral
Neutral
Loving
Loving
Grieving
Grieving
The conversation scene, rehearsed on the stub. The portrait cross-fades as emotion markers in the line arrive, and the subtitles build segment by segment. Placeholder voice The voice is the stub's test tone, not a performance: no live AI call has been made yet.

Crew cast

Proposals

Proposed faces for the rest of the crew, one neutral portrait each, labelled by role. Names and everything else about them are still open.

Engineer
Engineer
Scientist
Scientist
Pilot
Pilot
Diplomat
Diplomat
Quartermaster
Quartermaster
Analyst
Analyst
Skeptic
Skeptic
Zealot
Zealot
Dreamer
Dreamer
Fantasist
Fantasist

The bridge, v1

Demo art, merged

The first real interior, merged as demo art for the playable journey, replacing the blockout (game PR #97). The v2 work below will revisit it.

Bridge v1 in the engine, at rest
Bridge v1 in the engine, at rest. The bridge disc at the top of the spire, rendered in Godot over the live sky: the Milky Way behind the railings is the real panorama, drawn through the same camera. Flat toon shading and contour ink; blockout figures.
Parallax check: rest and 0.99c
Parallax check: rest and 0.99c. The camera pans 6 m left and right. The deck moves; the sky stays fixed at infinity. In the bottom row the ship cruises at 0.99c and the same window shows the sky crowded forward and blue-shifted, the physics from the sky flight composited behind the art.
Walk map
Walk map. The walkable floor (green) and the obstacles (red): consoles, benches and the spire at the centre, with the way off the bridge at the lower left.

The bridge, v2

Style study: final art in progress
Bridge v2 quality study: four treatments
Bridge v2 quality study: four treatments. v1 as shipped (flat toon, contour ink) against three candidate finishes: textured with hatching, a richer kit, and an illustrated plate projected onto the geometry.
Treatment c in the engine, beside the captain
Treatment c in the engine, beside the captain. A Godot capture of the illustrated treatment with the live sky and the captain sprite on deck, next to the captain sheet it has to match.

Home, while you were away

Concept set: going into the game

A crossing at near light speed takes the crew a few years; on Earth, decades or centuries pass. While the ship crosses, the player reads a review of the voyage, and its Home page shows the same headland as it is now, chosen by how long Earth has had: the departure still fresh, then ordinary life moving on, then a town no one aboard would recognise. Each span of time at home has its own picture, and some have more than one: a voyage shows one of them.

Less than a year
Less than a year
A year or two
A year or two
A year or two
A year or two
Under ten years
Under ten years
Under twenty years
Under twenty years
Under twenty years
Under twenty years
Under thirty-five years
Under thirty-five years
Under thirty-five years
Under thirty-five years
Under fifty-five years
Under fifty-five years
Under fifty-five years
Under fifty-five years
Under ninety years
Under ninety years
Under ninety years
Under ninety years
Under 130 years
Under 130 years
Under 130 years
Under 130 years
Under 250 years
Under 250 years
Under 250 years
Under 250 years
Under 500 years
Under 500 years
Under 500 years
Under 500 years
Under a thousand years
Under a thousand years
Under 3,000 years
Under 3,000 years
Under 3,000 years
Under 3,000 years
Under 10,000 years
Under 10,000 years
Under 10,000 years
Under 10,000 years

Credit

AI-generated art, made with image models and Blender under Sunholo's art direction. No copyright is claimed. See Credits and licences.