Rose City Comiocn 2022

Will be doing the Rose City Comicon in Portland OR in two weeks time, if you're in the area come by to get a book or just to say hi!

Is the Megastructures Book Sold Out? And Other Answers

Hey everyone!

Getting pinged a lot on this, so decided to write one big Q&A post on the Megastructure book.

First off, a huge thank you to everyone who bought the book, this has been a tremendous success. I was blown away when we funded the Kickstarter in just over 24 hours, but then the presales on gumroad afterwards were also tremendous. And every positive comment I've received from people who got the book and are enjoying it just brightens my day.

So for those who don't have a copy of the book and still do, here's the current situation. We have sold and shipped almost 1400 of the 1500 copies of the book that were printed. So there's approx 100 left. I have tables at both the Rose City Comicon in Portland on Sept 9th-11th and Lightbox Expo in Los Angeles Oct 14-16, and so the current remainder books are reserved for those two shows. I also have a couple extras I'm setting aside for now in case a book gets damaged or lost during shipping so I can get the kickstarter and gumroad people replacement books.

Once the shows are done, any books that are left over I will put back up for sale on my gumroad store, likely on or around Oct 18-19th.

So if you still want a book, your options are...

1) to follow my social media posts, and I'll post the moment those books go up for sale. 

2) email me at artofsoulburn at gmail and I'll add you to a wait list which I will email the moment those books go up for sale.

3) Purchase the digital copy of the book which is available here: https://artofsoulburn.gumroad.com/l/qnntu

Will the book ever get reprinted? So I'd love to do a second printing of the book, but to make it feasible, I'd have to print minimum another 1000 copies of the book. Which means I'd need 10s of thousands of dollars up front to get them printed and shipped. That is not out of the question, but I'd really need hundreds of presales to do that. Or maybe a second Kickstarter. So it's possible, but logistically difficult. I'll have to do some thinking on this and see what the demand is like, and what's the best way to turn that demand into enough presales to get a new book made. 

Anyways, hopefully that covers most of the questions, again, I am equal parts shocked and happy there's so much demand for the book, I want to find some way to get a book into the hands of every person who wants one, so I'll do what I can.

Any further questions, feel free to message me.

- Neil

http://www.neilblevins.com/megastructures/megastructures.htm

Heart of The Giant Poster 4

Here's a reworked teaser poster for a future project named "Heart Of The Giant". https://www.artstation.com/artwork/eJ6GBJ

Space Ship 154

My recent combo of photo / ai generated elements heavily painted over. I tend to go with symmetry, so decided to expand my horizons with this one and go asymmetric

 

New Video Tutorial: Designing Robotic Joints

Made a new video about designing robot joints for concept artists. We've all been guilty of using "magic joints" before that don't actually work, this video tries to counter that by explaining a little on how they actually function. 

https://youtube.com/watch?v=H3pSCi_aHsY

Orbital Ring

Part of the "Megastructures: The Visual Encyclopedia" book project, on sale now at http://www.neilblevins.com/megastructures/megastructures.htm

An Orbital Ring would be an artificial, ring-shaped structure placed around the Earth just above the atmosphere (at 100 km).

The structure would contain two rings. The inner ring would rotate at an angular rate slightly faster than the rotation of the Earth, and would have a current running through it. Then, a second ring would be created that would encompass the first ring, held in place by electromagnets. The second ring would be stationary, and in fact would have fixed tethers that would hang down to the ground. Due to the fact that it would be bound to the orbiting ring, the stationary ring would be held in place above the orbiting ring (this is called an active support structure). 

Spider Walker Robot 37

Another new technique. The shape was inspired by an AI image, but rather than doing the details using standard photobashing, I used photos I took of actual parts of a scale model kit, the kind they used in film for all the 80s spaceships. So almost a real kitbash :) 

Royal Palace

Since my previously posted alien royal palace image was mostly 3d, https://www.artstation.com/artwork/vJBb6d decided to move the camera and try a more dramatic camera angle for a second image. I like both views for different reasons.

Creeper 3

Always loved the "Orbb" skin in Quake 3. This is pieced together with bits of photos, bits of about 6 midjourney images, and a bunch of hand paint. Also channeling a bit of Wes Benscoter here.

Megastructures Warp Gate 2

A Warp Gate would be a structure that would house the entrance to an artificial traversable wormhole, which is a distortion of space-time that provides instantaneous travel from one point to another in space, in time, or even between different dimensions. The gate would consist of two parts - one at the point of origin, and one at the destination.

Different sizes of gates could be constructed to allow for human travel through person-sized gates on a planet, or even objects the size of spacecraft through orbiting gates. Popular literature has even spoken of the possibility of giant gates large enough to transport a planet from one location to another.

Part of the "Megastructures: The Visual Encyclopedia" book project, on sale now at http://www.neilblevins.com/megastructures/megastructures.htm 

Video Lesson: Comparing DALL-E and midjourney

So I recently go DALL-E 2 access, & have just posted a video lesson comparing it to midjourney. If you're interested in adding AI to your workflow (photobash or inspiration), this may give you some ideas on which to use for what https://youtube.com/watch?v=ibLxR32CRAk

Megastructure book shipping update!

Megastructure book shipping update! Over 1000 books have shipped out, the remaining 271 books should be shipping monday-ish, so we're in the home stretch. 

Here's just some of the books that have already arrived, keep those pics coming! Thanks everyone for your continued patience! 

There's about 200 physical books left for purchase, so if anyone wants to grab one, here's the link: http://www.neilblevins.com/books/megastructures/megastructures.htm

Lith Orbiting Artifact 1

A mix of photo and DALL-E 2 generated elements, sprinkle in some 3d and a ton of hand painting in Photoshop. Really channeling my inner 70s scifi artist here. What is that mysterious artifact in orbit?

Ink And Such

Gettin' all traditional on ya! Passenger Transport.

Turorial: Painting A Robot

Another older video, first time for free on youtube. This tutorial discusses how I use simple 3d, hand paint and photomanipulation in photoshop to render a more detailed design of a robot character. Watch clips of the painting process while I discuss the techniques, and then get a more in depth layer by layer tour of parts of the painting. 

https://youtube.com/watch?v=cyFtgLkLnSQ

2 New Megastructure Paintings

Two new paintings from the book Megastructures: The Visual Encyclopedia.

A Dyson Sphere would be a structure that would enclose a sun to capture the majority of its output energy. The energy could be used for various purposes, such as powering supercomputers, providing a living area for its inhabitants, and other industrial uses. It would come in three varieties: a Dyson Swarm/Ring, a Dyson Bubble, and a Dyson Shell.

An Orbital Shipyard would be a structure that would assemble or repair spacecraft in orbit around a planet. Shipyards would likely be modular and expandable to accommodate more ships as needed.

If human workers were onboard, a segment of the shipyard could be spun to provide gravity, with the zero G areas reserved for work purposes. But considering the cumbersome nature of spacesuits, the need for oxygen, and that certain types of assembly would require a larger crew, it’s more likely the shipyard would be manned by a series of drones and robots. Drones could be controlled by shipyard personnel, either on the planet or in the shipyard itself. Giant 3D printer modules would manufacture necessary components, which would be placed and welded by robots and drones that would fly and crawl.

Buy the book here: http://www.neilblevins.com/books/megastructures/megastructures.htm

Dramatic Lighting Tutorial

Another oldie but goodie, first time on youtube! Many times the best way to get dramatic lighting in your painting is to reference the real world, so this tutorial discusses how I used the lighting from two photographs in two paintings of a sci-fi scene from my book project "The Story Of Inc".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBv3-ukklR4