Back in 2002, in between high school and university, I decided to teach myself 3D CGI artwork. I have a vague recollection of wanting to make spaceships for the Celestia program, which in the end I never did. But I did learn how to use Blender, and for years afterwards I would spend most of my spare time creating digital stills and animations.
These days it's harder to undertake the kind of extremely time-consuming projects I would once spend weeks or months on. I still use Blender routinely at work for data visualisation, but finding time for pure artwork is tough. Even so, on these pages you can find pretty much all the stuff I've done over the years. If you want to use any of these, a selection of my works at much higher resolution are available for sale through Stock Trek images, or you can get in touch with me directly. If the lower-resolution images available here are enough for your purposes, feel free to use them ! Relinking back to this site is much appreciated, but not necessary.
Project Orion : The original, ultimate heavy-lift vehicle. My Bachelor's project was to study just how effective this nuclear behemoth could be. As far as I know, I was the first to ever animate this in CGI, and though there are a few more around these days, there still aren't as many as there should be. Includes the original idea of launching a bomb-propelled ship from Jackass Flats, an early concept artwork for the Discovery spaceship from 2001, and my own fictionalised setting of what the cold war might have been like had Orion been brought to fruition.
Arecibo : My home for two and half years, once the world's largest and most powerful radio telescope, but now no more. It lives on in these renders, including a VR tour of the site.
Sci-Fi : I'm the typical sort of sci-fi nerd that any self-respecting astronomer ought to be, so naturally a lot of my early renders were about the science fiction I enjoyed. Includes the War of the Worlds (set in Cardiff), Stephen Baxter's epic Xeelee sequence, and spaceships from 2001 : A Space Odyssey. And yes, a wee bit of Star Trek/Wars as well.
Historical : I love history, so as well as the ultra-nerdy space stuff, I also do the occasional medieval castle and Greek warship. And a bizarre recreation of Troy filled with aliens and a giant exploding rocket sheep.
Terragen : Some landscapes I made using the Terragen landscape generator. That's version 1. I'm horrified to discover they're now on version 4. I've been out of the CGI game so long I missed the existence of an entire version !
Illustrations : Mostly science-based images, comparing the sizes of different galaxies, stars, asteroids; showing the evolution of the Universe; the motion of our Solar System, and general... stuff.