Hello everybody. I have a new tutorial for you and this one is an interesting one. I am going to teach you how to design your own starship. First of all if you’re an "grownup" you probably think that this is ridiculious. Hey, there is a lot in designing starships as you soon will see (if you keep reading).

So, can you swallow your pride and design a starship? Well, let's get started.

STEP 1

First of all a starship is a vessel that has the ability to travel through space. Because of long distances between star systems the vessel will have to find some way to cross all that space really fast.

Depending on the mode of travel you pick, will dictate the design of your vessel.

So, take your piece of paper and sketch out a couple of designs that you would like for your hull (the hull is the frame of your starship.)

Okay, here's my sketch:

For your information, I used Microsoft Bitmap to make this design. You are probably drawing it by hand and have more freedom to design.

So, you have the side look of your starship. Now you need to draw the top and bottom of the starship also. To give a whole look around it.

Like this:

So, you know have the look around of the starship in question.

Here I have color coded each section of the starship and added a color key to the thing so I know what each section is (and so will anyone else who looks at your stuff).

You have now completed the main components for the starship. The Frame is complete.

Step 2

Okay, most people who draw starship stop at this point. If your a detailed person (like I am) I would want more then just a little thing like this.

In this step we are going to set up it's deck listing and size. If you ever watched Star Trek you will know that a starship is divided up in floors like a building. depending on how big your starship is makes up everything. It's size is important too. Is the vessel small enough to land on planets like a shuttle or is it as big as a Star Destroyer for Star Wars. It could be medium size of the largest vessel ever seen in the Galaxy! You get to decide.

Alright, I have found that the easiest way to figure out the size of a starship is to imagine the starship is as wide as something on Earth. With my Orion Class Starship, I'm going to find out how big each module is and then add them up for a total.

NOTE: to figure out decks and so you have the height correctly, an average deck is 10 feet high. If you want 7 decks on that module section then it should be around 70 feet high, add a few more feet for the deck floors and space that the wires and so forth run through.

Well, how was that? Not to difficult was it? You just figured out what is your starship length. And that is the hard data for my Orion Class starship.

STEP 3

Well, now you have the frame of your starship and you have the deck numbers of your starship. Now, you have to figure out what goes on each deck. Every deck cannot just stay empty. How are people going to live on it?

First of all, we assume that the designers of the starship has already added the life-support system, lights, power, etc. All we have to do is add in what is on each deck. To do that we must make a outline of the decks and what's on them. Now, this is the fun part (if you found what we have done so far fun. I'm assuming that if you got this far your interested.)

Alright, this is going to take some imagination to pull off so bear with me. Imagine yourself standing in a starship in the middle of space over four MILLION light years from Earth. What are you going to need onboard? When you think of some of the things, place them somewhere on your ship. Here is an example of what I did with the Orion Class Starship.

ORION CLASS DECK LAYOUT

Deck 1

Bridge, Captain's Briefing room, escape pods

Deck 2

Captain's Dinning room, Senior officer quarters, escape pods

So, you do that down the whole way and use up all your decks. Remember to keep a deck for just Engineering. That usually is the deck closest to the engines. You can add swimming pools, lounges, mess halls, quarters, gyms, etc. it's almost like making a home in the stars.

STEP 4

Alright, Now comes the questionaire for your starship. What is this? Well, I have prepared a list of questions you are to ask about your starship and then answer them. This will give you the specs on your ship.

Here they are:

Name:
Class:
Captain:
Armament:
Maximum Speed:
total Enlisted:
Total Officers:
total Crew(officer + enlisted):
Specific task(if any):
Engine type:

If you think of any more questions you can add them. Now, you have a complete diagram of a starship. All that is left is turning it in to a picture. How well it comes out depends on how good your drawing skills are. If you know how to use 3d graphics program, draw it out like that.

STEP 5

The last step is what to do with the starship? The answer to that is..."Have an Adventure!"...depending on what your creative talents are, you can use your starship for what you want. By the copyright laws (of the USA) since you have put the starship on paper, you are the sole owner of all rights pertaining to it. You can write stories about the crew of your starship, build a fleet with other starships, write a computer program with it, draw comic adventures of pictures with it. It's your choice.

If you have designed a starship using this tutorial and you have a scanner, I would love to see your work. If you don't mind either I'll even put it up on the website with this tutorial so other people can see it.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. It takes some work and thinking to put this thing together. If you have any questions or any comments please email me at jtworld@jtworld.net. Don't hesitate or think you'll inconvenience me. I love talking to people and meeting new ones.

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