Getting Serious by Getting Silly: Meet Galaxy Cadet Aster Alpha

I've decided to get serious about the graphics side of story-telling this weekend: so I played with DAZ Productions Bryce. I've found that I learn more, faster, when I've got a picture of what sort of result I want in my mind and the excellence or lack thereof of the result is relatively unimportant.

In this case, I wanted a cityscape, seen from the air, with vast acreages of big buildings and other structures in the middle distance: and 'good grief, how big are they' buildings behind them.

Here's what I got:



The 'foreground' structures are from the Rigel Orionis Megalopolis product. Those weird airships are the Bryce Flying Steamer. My oldest daughter tells me that they're done in the 'steam punk' style. I created what's on the horizon in Bryce.

That picture isn't related to any story or setting I'm working on. The flying steamers are - sort of - but that's still pretty vague.

So, why bother? I need to re-learn how to use Bryce - and how to make more effective use of it - if I'm going to make quite a few of my projects work. Putting that picture together helped. Quite a bit.

Getting Serious About Being Silly

Galaxy Cadet (Heroics and Hairspray in the 27th century) is a project that's been on the back burner for years.



Baum Media Productions is a fictional company - part of Loonfoot Falls' world. (Loonfoot Falls Chronicle-Gazette features a 250-word column from the equally fictional town paper each week.)

I don't have the resources to do what BMP did - create feature-length animated Galaxy Cadet movies - but I think I can have a shot at writing stories about Galaxy Cadet. Her name's Aster Alpha, by the way, and after a brief but spectacular mission on the Stellar Guard carrier Wotan, she's been assigned to the fringe patrol ship Albatross.

That was the most remote, obscure, isolated, dead-end spot they could find. And yes: there's a story behind that.



That's Aster Alpha again. I have no idea where that picture was taken. Some sort of planetside port facility, apparently.

If those names don't sound like the sort of terribly serious stuff I've been talking about - you're right. I think I need to loosen up a bit: and following Galaxy Cadet's career may be a good way to do that.

Related posts:

• "Interstellar Empires, Imagination, and an Occasionally-Sozzled Detective"
  (Friday, March 12, 2010)
• "New York City, 3650"
  (March 1, 2010)
• "Making a Plausible Setting"
  (February 22, 2010)
• "Baum Media Productions: From Light Bulbs to Galaxy Cadet"
  Loonfoot Falls Chronicle-Gazette (August 21, 2009)