Obmunjalae pilot’s deck and ‘flippers’

There’s not really much that one could call weather on the Voidplane, but the pilot’s deck of the Obmunjalae did not feel complete without a roof over it, so I created one.

This is the dock door at the center of the big window on either side of the hangar. There is now a control station (on the right) that includes the lever to open the door, an intercom for communicating with the pilot’s deck or machine room, and a four-color dial that can be used to communicate a basic status to those same central stations. Typically the pilot’s deck is the center of command for the vessel, but a fully redundant control and communication system is located in the machine room for emergencies or maintenance.

The contraption to the left of the door is a “flipper”. The voidplane presents a unique challenge when movement from either side of the plane is required. As an object passes through the plane, the part that has crossed effectively experiences reversed gravity. How does one conveniently and safely transfer themselves? The flipper is one such device that facilities moving from the obverse side to the reverse and vice versa. It is a rectangular four-walled box with two moving floor panels. The video below shows how the transfer process works.

The right side of the video shows the reverse side of the same flipper.

The box is sized for a person and has a button on the inside of the box that triggers the transfer. The user lies on their back and presses the button. The floor panel they are lying on moves away from them, lowering them into the plane and leaving them to float in it as the panel rotates out of the way. The second floor panel swings in and moves towards the user, pushing them through the plane. Once the machine halts, the user can then transition to their hands and knees, then to their feet. They then can exit the flipper, now technically upside down from when they entered it.

Voidskimmer Vessel

Click for larger image

The Voidskimmer is a standard craft design of Sha Rephart which is primarily utilized for scouting, small scale shipping, and short-range passenger travel. It normally has a minimum two-person crew, and has enough beds and amenities to comfortably support those two on longer journeys.

The last image posted of this vessel… in February 2012, wow.

Well, ten years and I finally came back and made some significant updates to the Voidskimmer. A major change is the placement of the propulsion. The old design had vents along the edge of the vessel’s outer “ring”. It came to my attention that placing air inlets right on the plane of the void was a bad idea, as all solid materials settle along that plane and would then easily get sucked into the engines. Instead, there are eight curved funnels on the sides, redirecting the flow off of the plane. The funnels are divided into left and right sets. By independently changing the direction and output on either side, the pilot can steer the vessel.

The boarding planks now rotate from an upright stowed position to the deployed position, instead of awkwardly sliding into place. There is also a box on each side for mooring supplies, including bumpers and ropes. The railings are built a bit better now, going off of things I learned designing the Obmunjalae. It’s not apparent in the images, but there is a cargo hold below the front deck; the hexagon visible in the images is the door to access it. The height of the front deck was increased to allow more vertical space in the hold.

The Obmunjalae Vessel

I made some considerations and decided to remove balconies from the back end of the ship. The main engine intakes are placed on the top of the machine room and it likely would be an unpleasant place to stand within relatively close distance to those. Also, the view was dominated by the machine room anyway, so it was not as nice a view as the forward facing balconies. In its place I put a decorative element to the frame, enclosed the section, and turned that section into what may be a lounge type area:

It is in an odd curved space of the vessel, so I’m not exactly sure how to arrange the furniture in there. Have to figure in the height of the ceiling and all that. For now, it’s arranged a bit like a bar and grill, I guess.

Click to see the full size view.

I made up a little sort of x-ray view of the vessel as it exists now. In it, you can see that I added shelves to the storage rooms and tall tanks to store liquids in the last section of the storage rooms. You can also see the location of the new lounges and the current shape of the decorative frame elements right next to them. They… have a Earth 1950s vibe to them.

Ayra Katrin Library – Construction

I’ve made various updates to the library recently. In the shot above you can see there are sets of skylights in front of the front hexagon, the seven-pointed star symbol in the middle of the main tower is now a window, and the gazebos to the sides of the library have glass tops now. I removed a decorative tower piece from the south tower, as being able to see the big sculpture (upper right) from the back area would make for a better view.

My posting of an update has been delayed because I’ve been doing more than just designing the building. I’ve also been imagining the process how the building was actually constructed by the Ayra Katrin Engineers. I’ve finally gotten to the point where I can make a little video showing off the construction process concept:

Yet More Sheshai the Purifier

Hey, I got it to where I can pose her limbs a bit better!

I reached another milestone for the novel – I read the entire thing out loud to my wife, partly as a way to entertain her and partly to hunt down any remaining typos or other structural issues, which I have come to believe make themselves more apparent when spoken out. I only made a few additions or alterations here or there; no new plots or characters. I may be ready to call its current state my final draft. I guess the next step would be to find some ‘beta testers’ to go through it and get some feedback from outside parties. Where exactly do you go to find willing readers for a not-for-kids fantasy adventure starring anthropomorphic characters? Well, where I won’t regret going…

I also added a new page for Sheshai the Purifier to the site to go along with Agwilika Rhe, Elehura, and Sharpheart, so check that out. In there I added an image of another character, Besuri, and I’ll go ahead and post it here too:

Still needs some work on the fur, like figuring out how to handle the matted and uneven areas better.

Ah why not, another character model – Adri of the Grepir:

My first attempt at an avian character model. I’m going for a gigantic songbird vibe for the Grepir race. I debated a long time on what colors to give Adri, but settled on blue highlights because no other character has that hue in their natural colors.

Ayra Katrin Library Floor Maps

While working the recent changes to the library’s structure, I got the inspiration to create maps of each floor.
Yellow: interior floors
Gray: exterior floors (except the two diamond shapes on floor 1, those are bathing pools, too lazy to adjust that)
Tan: natural ground
Blue: areas open to floors below

The first and second, or “lower” floors.

On the left, the third or “ground” floor of the library. On the right is the “fourth floor”, though it only amounts to a bookcase walkway in the main library. The south tower has six floors, with the top three floors depicted at the lower right.

Ayra Katrin Library Underground

It’s been a long while since I made a proper architectural update. Back to the Ayra Katrin Library, which is called “che keh-ah-bek-oh se ayra katrin le agwilcress” in ANP Kahwan (Agwil-Naryyd-Prerart language).

The two lower main floors of the library were constructed to artificially appear as being under ground and are enclosed by the perimeter road that forms the “tail tip” of Agwilcress. I’ve been building out these floor layouts to more thoroughly fill in the space. The main library and south tower are the only sections that rise above the third floor. The north underground section includes a first floor entrance and the kitchen. The south underground section includes a first floor entry into the south tower and bathing pools. Both sections also have restrooms, showers, and general gathering space. The are four residential sections, each with sixteen rooms accessed from a triangular atrium. The west and east sections are now officially dubbed the library’s wings. That’s where the latest major changes have taken place.

In this picture you can see the new layout for the wing, with bookcases that wrap around the buttresses and circular bookcase clusters to fill in the spaces between. The hexagonal space underneath the gazebo is now an enclosed reading room. New additions also include side passages that connect the wings to the underground sections. The wings initially only had one exit which went to the main library, but now they have three. There was also enough room to add a little alcove to each residence room that accommodates a private toilet and sink.

A view of the library wing. This is looking north along the passageway against the main library. There are light fixtures that sit atop the circular clusters.
In the wing, looking towards the entrance to the reading room.
The interior of the reading room.

You can see in the first image of this post that there’s some unclaimed territory around the south tower, so I might be expanding its lower two floors. I’m not sure there is enough space to make something out of the slivers of space on each side of the underground sections.

Ten Years – Reija in a formal dress

Today is the tenth anniversary of criticalsystemsdigital.com and its existence as a WordPress site. It is not, however, the anniversary of CSD or the existence of a CSD website. Prior to this current and long lasting iteration, the site was hand-coded in HTML, with some interactive pieces made in Macromedia Flash (rest in peace). I didn’t keep a full copy of the previous website, but I did keep a copy of the content text, and the first “post” was dated in October 2006. But that wasn’t even the first version… I have an early CSD logo image from 1999, so CSD being the name representing my creative output is over twenty years old at this point. I vaguely recall using “Critical Systems Inc.” as a name in a BASIC program I wrote waaaay long ago… so yeah, I’ve been doing this a long time.

But back to this particular milestone. In recognition of it, I remade the first image I ever posted on this site iteration:

The original was a 2D vector image made in Flash, before I went full open source and moved to Inkscape. At that time I already had started 3D modeling and had one made of Reija, but never modeled out this particular dress.

Miryin

I put some more work into Miryin’s model and tried my hand at Blender’s hair particle system again. You can see a major change I’m trying out here: giving the Felcae race a different lower face, making it more like a Gwil snout instead of a Pritar-like nose. In fact, the old nose was simply copied from a Pritar model and widened a bit. Here’s what that looked like:

The Felcae having facial features closer in resemblance to the Gwil (now adding the snout to the similar horns and ears), as well as the Felcae and Gwil both being herbivore races, suggests they have a closer genetic relationship to each other than to the other races. Note that the Gwil, whose name originates from the term “Dragon Children”, are not a race of reptiles, but mammals that evolved to not have any hair or fur. Felcae have their own genetic anomaly, having evolved to not have mammary glands.

Anjil

Anjil is an adept user of magical powers. He is a member of the Ayra Katrin, an organization of the best sorcerers, scholars, and engineers of the Seven-Star Nation. Anjil has shown exceptional talent and has risen up in the Ayra Katrin ranks quite quickly. He has even been able to teach his girlfriend Reija some magical abilities.

I used to have a blue and silver color theme for the Ayra Katrin (as seen in his staff… guess I might have an update to make), but changed it to golden yellow. This was mainly to differentiate them from the the Kylal family’s primarily blue (with teal and silver accents) color theme. The Syrsia royal guardians and the national army have a red theme which you can see in Reija’s uniform.

Oh, and to follow my recent theme of looking back at the history of characters, my oldest existing Anjil picture circa 2001: