With War in Mind

.And I can be found here: http://wingsofwrath.deviantart.com/

The IAT-180 is a heavy interceptor / ground attack plane of the "Confederation of Tambr", derived from the ubiquitous IAT-153 carrier borne fighter. Like it's parent, the basic structure of the aircraft is aluminium, with the wings covered with laminated plywood strips glued with tree resin derived glue. To give a measure of "self sealing capabilities" to the fuel tanks in the top wings and fuselage in the conditions in which rubber is unknown in this world, those areas are also padded with a layer of resin bonded cork. Unlike the fighter version, though, the ground attack/heavy interceptor is fitted with an aluminium supercharged 16 cylinder H water cooled engine, capable of producing 120 abe (1500 hp), in a stretched nose, but, because of the type's increased weight, the top speed is only 300 ksome (498 km/h, were one "ksom"=1 verst / 1 ur) at an altitude of 1000 steje (1333 m) and about 315 ksome (523km/h) at sea level, with the engine running at 1600 revolutions/tem (3136 revolutions/minute). Since the engine is water rather than air-cooled, the whole of the lower wings are given over to radiators, with the right one for cooling water and the left for both oil and water. The armament is the main difference and consists a single 40 hatte (53.3mm) autocannon firing in between the two crankshafts of the engine, with an ammunition reserve of 52 rounds and a cyclic rate of fire of 130 rounds/tem (254 rounds/min). Since the recoil force spikes at approximately 7 terran tons, the cannon is fitted with a gas vent channeling some of the gas through two venturi nozzles towards the back as well as a muzzle brake, reducing the recoil force to a much more manageable 4.5tons. Because the cannon itself, along with the ammunition feed system and the recoil nozzles approach 350kg and is placed very close to the CG, the 400kg aluminium engine is placed well forward. This results in a somewhat nose-heavy design with poor low speed handling characteristics, but, as firing the cannon moves the CG back the designers decided to err on the side of caution, because, as the old saying goes, "a nose heavy aeroplane flies poorly; a tail heavy one flies once". Also, the pilot is provided with an optical illuminated gunsight with three levels of magnification (5X, 2X and 0X) ensuring theoretical long range interception capability, obviously more useful against stationary or slow moving targets.

The IAT-153 is the mainstay fighter aircraft of the "Confederation of Tambr". It is a diminutive, compact design, well suited for carrier operations and it's launched and recovered via the trapeze hook situated in between the upper wings, whose tips also fold down for storage. The basic structure of the aircraft is aluminium, with the wings covered with laminated plywood strips glued with tree resin derived glue. To give a measure of "self sealing capabilities" to the fuel tanks in the top wings and fuselage in the conditions in which rubber is unknown in this world, those areas are also padded with a layer of resin bonded cork. The aeroplane is fitted with a supercharged 9 cylinder air-cooled radial engine capable of producing 100 abe (1300 hp), giving the design a top speed of 312 ksome (517.92 km/h, were one "ksom"=1 verst / 1 ur) at an altitude of 1000 steje (1333 m). There's a small oil radiator integrated into the lower left wing. The armament consists of two 12 hatte (16 mm) machine guns placed underneath the engine and firing through the propeller arc, with an ammunition reserve of 950 rounds for each gun and a cyclic rate of fire of 450 rounds/tem (882 rounds/min). A ground attack / heavy interceptor version of this aeroplane, named the IAT-180, also exists.

This is another Shadowless concept art, the finalised design for the French flying destroyers. Like their British counterparts presented here previously, I tried to make my design as "national" as possible, a fact facilitated by the fact that French torpedo-boats of the era were indeed pretty distinctive. In real life, since the French Jeune École ("Young School") of ship warfare emphasised the use of small torpedo boats over larger cruisers and ships of the line, they produced a lot and thus never bothered to name them beyond giving them a number. For my design I kept this practice and also adopted the real life numbering conventions, including actual font and the brass plaque affixed to the funnels. Unlike the British Destroyers, which in the Shadowless universe are based on the work of John Thornycroft, the French ships are based around the hydrofoil designs of Italian engineer Enrico Forlanini, who also experimented with hydrofoils around 1898 in real life. In terms of paint schemes, the first two liveries closely mimic those used in real life by French Navy small craft around the turn of the century (larger ships had black hulls, buff superstructures and red marking their water lines) as well as the all grey livery used during WW1. The third painting scheme is a fictional camouflage loosely based on the real life tank camo used by the French in the interwar era. In real life, torpedo boat Nr.209 belonged to the "type 37m" class also known as "dos de chameau" (camel hump), capable of attaining 26 knots (using conventional triple-expansion engines rather than turbines) and was built in 1898 by Bordeaux based shipyard "Ateliers et Chantier de la Gironde".

Finally, I can say I finished with the design of the Shadowless flying ships. It's been a long road, and they went from steampunk flying ships to more realistic WIG - wing in ground effect, or "ekranoplans"- craft capable of skimming a few meters over over the waves rather than true flight. For examples of the earlier incarnations of these designs, you can see here. The ship itself is based on the "torpedo boat destroyers" of the late 19th century with elements from the first hydrofoils. In real life, British boat designer John Thornycroft, the man who built the first torpedo boat for the British Royal Navy in 1876, also experimented with hydrofoils between 1899 and 1901, so it's not actually that far fetched that his experiments might have resulted into a craft like this, especially when paired with Sir Charles Parsons' 1884 invention of the steam turbine. Basically, while the ship is at anchor it floats to the waterline, but, as it gathers speed, it rises out of the water, first on the hydrofoils and then completely out of the water, skimming 6 meters (20 ft) above the waves. To help the ship rise out from the water,  the planing surface is stepped just forward of the aft wing set, another design feature first introduced in real life by John Thornycroft.   Propulsion is provided by two Parsons steam turbines connected via gear boxes (so there is no need for additional, "reversing" turbines and the propellers can be driven at a different speed to the turbines) to a pair of shafts containing two four bladed wooden aerial propellers each, set at 45 degrees to one another. The two shafts revolve in opposite directions, thus annulling any gyroscopic force that might arise. Since flying uses a lot of fuel, for extended patrols the ship can cut power and drop back down on the hydrofoils, thus maintaining a cruise speed of "only" 40 knots. There are two colour schemes presented, one based on the real life late Victorian "black, white and buff" livery and the other a wholly fictional camouflage design, however with colours used in real life by the RN during WW2. The name, "HMS Python" was also used in real life for one of the members of the "Viper Class", the first turbine driven destroyers of the Royal Navy. Following the loss of the other two ships in accidents (HMS Viper foundered on rocks in fog during naval manoeuvres near Alderney on 3 August 1901, while HMS Cobra broke her back in a storm in the North Sea on 18 September 1901) HMS Python was renamed "Velox" and served until 1915 when she was sunk by hitting a German submarine deployed mine off the Isle of Wight.

In real life Gustave Zédé was one of the earliest commissioned naval submarines, launched in June 1893. Unlike more modern submarines, she was exclusively electric, running off batteries and without any onboard means to recharge them, which gave her a range of only around 220 nautical miles (410km) at a speed of either 9 knots (17 km/h) surfaced of 6.5 knots (12 km/h) submerged. Also unlike more modern submarines, she was made almost entirely out of bronze rather than steel to resist "aqueous corrosion" (electrochemical corrosion of steel due to seawater being a superb electrolyte), which also allowed a magnetic compass to operate inside.   At 45 meters long and 264 tons surfaced (274 t submerged), Gustave Zédé was also much larger than any other contemporary submarines (in fact the earlier Gymnote, from which it was derived, was only 17m long and weighed 30 tons surfaced), and also quite well armed, equipped with a 360mm internal torpedo tube and two external torpedo launchers. In real life she did two successful submerged torpedo practice attacks on the battleship Magenta in 1899 in the presence of the French Minister of the Navy and invited journalists, which spurred the further development of the submarine as a weapon of war. Since she was an experimental design, she went through a lot of iterations as they tried different equipment, but I have drawn the submarine as she appeared around 1900. Belle Lurette, (which is a French phrase meaning "for a long time", a reference to the fact floating around the canals of France does take quite a lot of time) is a special type of canal boat called a "chaland de Rance", a boat endemic to the north of Brittany and which is able to sail on both the sea in the Rance estuary and the "Canal d'Ille et Rance" and by it's connection to the  Vilaine river in Rennes is able to traverse Brittany north to south from Saint Malo all the way to the Bay of Biscay. Because she has to negotiate the locks of the various inland waterways, her dimensions are fixed to 26.5m in length, 4.5 meters on the beam, a draft of 1.6m and a total height of 2.5m in order to pass under bridges. For this the masts also fold down along the top of the hold covers. In terms of propulsion, each mast carries a single lug sail (itself the traditional type of sail used by Breton fishermen on their boats) while on the rivers and canals she is towed along by either animals or, since the start of the war and the fact most horses have been confiscated for use by the army, by her own crew.

Here are some work-in-progress pictures of the thing.

The file is 1000px wide, be sure to click on it for full view!

Long story short, these are the "attack and abilities cards" for the game I posted yesterday and which is located here.

-the final character is the "brains" of the team, the scientist/tech. Their protective garb allow them to take only half damage from the basic grunt attack, but they lack an actual offensive capability, being instead relegated to a support role. Their abilities include first aid, which heals a number of HPs on each friendly character in game, "revive/cpr" which brings back a previously dead character and "analyze/probe", which boosts all friendly attacks for that particular round.

Jedi (green): Yoda, Luke Skywalker, Meetra Surik (Jedi Exile, KOTOR II), C3PO, R4 series astromech droid and a random twi'lek jedi, modeled after Aayla Secura (expanded universe, Ep II, III)

A rainy drawing for a rainy day, drawn back in 2010. As anybody who has been in a combat situation can vouch, war includes a lot of marching around the countryside in appalling weather... Luckily, after the first 10 minutes or so, when you're completely drenched, you tend to just ignore the rain and keep going. Even better, the Adrian helmet is very light and helps keep your head dry while the woollen material of the uniform retains heat even when wet, so you'll be warm as long as you keep moving. Still, it's not a pleasant experience to find yourself in a sudden rain squall with 20 miles to go, especially since your boots are now miniature aquariums and will be wet for the next week or so...

Some time later, tttroy went to a contest and drew this,  so I took the liberty of "borrowing" said character for this birthday present, and here is the result... Since the original was BW, I settled for whatever colours looked best. I initially wanted to give our protagonist a Bundeswehr para beret (same, but maroon in color), but it didn't look right with the rest of the palette, so I settled for an infantry one instead. Also, as a joke, the guard who is about to piss itself in fear is wearing a multicam tactical vest and patches from my airsoft group... Also, in case you know a thing or two about guns and you're interested, the weapons are a MP5N with added suppressor for the guard and MP5SD6 with a small plastic pony attached for the main character...

It has become painfully clear, that, with my current workload I can no longer afford to update this every day, since that entails trawling old sketchbooks for worthwhile drawings, scanning and setting them up for publication which uses up an unexpectedly large amount of time, so I will be knocking down the updates to this blog from daily drawings to two each week, on Wednesday and Sunday until at least the middle of April, so for about a month starting now.

This drawing is closely based on the imagery of a dream.

Also, the part of town discernible behind Riegel in this picture isvisible in this drawing also, on the middle left.