Progress over 11 years of Blender3D practice

Over the past few years I have created lots of assets, including control panels, furniture, and textures, for an ongoing neovictorian/steampunk personal project that began as bedtime stories that I told my kids from about 2008-2013. Around 2012, the story I was telling required a mid-range support craft larger than a shuttle, so I roughed out this design for a steampunk ethersloop.

Since then, my texturing and lighting skills have gotten much better. I redid the main hull and the interior, but the wings are the original models (just with better textures).

Originally I put fans in the holes in the wings, which I know wouldn’t exactly be aerodynamic, but I imagine that magnets can control the flow of ether over the wings, and this is a fantasy ethership, so it doesn’t have to function in the real world.

Eventually I’ll put some kind of glowing energy orbs in those holes.

Because I had already created the furniture, railings, control panel surfaces and other bits for other parts of this project, I think the only new texture I had to make was the riveted plating, 

I’m not thrilled about how obviously thin and flat the brass windowframes appear when we see them from edge-on. Eventually I’ll have to model that framework so we can see it from the side. 

In this still shot I see a beacon that should be fixed right onto the ship’s nose is floating in space.

And even though I have already modeled books and ledgers and tea sets and all sorts of little things that would give a set piece a lived-in look, I’ve told myself that at this stage of my creative process I don’t want to model or place anything smaller than the occasional desk lamp.