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Gallery:

One of my hobbies is making computer art. I don't consider myself an artist per se, as I have no formal training in the area and moreover lack many of the basic skills of a serious artist. However, with the aid of the right software, I can still make pretty pictures. The main purpose of this is not to accomplish anything aesthetically, but rather is simply to help visualize ideas.

Some of my better pieces of computer art are on display on Elfwood. Other pieces can be found by following the links in the writing section. However, for those who wish to do neither, here is a small gallery.

Elfwood pictures:

Hand spellcannon	Switchsword	Autosling	Ray crossbow
Ray crossbow II	Swordlance	Xenathri fighter	Xenathri landed
Xenathri landed II	Xenathri fighter II

Other pictures:

Arc lantern	Death orrery	Tortoise	Rayballista 1
Rayballista 2	Rayballista 3	Rayballista 4	Swordpike
Vortex guide plane	Y-wing plane	Diva SST

Explanations:

Most of the pictures shown here are part of my Locus of Connected Worlds fantasy setting. A few are not. An explanation for these is as follows:

Xenathri: The Xenathri are a fictional alien race I invented. They are basically space nomads, living their entire lives aboard their space ships. They are few in number in any one place (because their population is spread out over several galaxies) but are very technologically advanced.

The fighters shown here are equipped with a powerful beam cannon called a surgical beam. These weapons are relatively inefficient in terms of the volume of damage they inflict relative to their power consumption, but are also accurate and highly penetrating, allowing them to target enemy internal systems. Xenathri fighters work like space snipers, using cloaking devices to conceal their positions until they can line up a shot with their surgical beams.

Y-wing plane: This is a wing design for an aircraft designed to permit the aircraft to remain airborne despite large changes in center of gravity. The main wing is highly swept, thus permitting the wingtip extensions to be used as vertical stabilizers. Because of its high sweep angle, the main wing is excessively long relative to its wingspan, so struts are used to stiffen the wing. The struts also serve a second purpose: by adjusting the control flaps on the main wing and on the struts in opposite directions, one can change the plane's center of lift without creating additional lift-induced drag.

Note that the picture shown is not structurally correct. After creating these pictures, I realized that a swept vertical wingtip extension creates torque on the wing. The correct layout would therefore have the wingtip extensions tilted away from the fuselage slightly.

Vortex guide plane: This is another wing design to permit CG changes. In this case, a canard provides a significant proportion of the plane's lift. To prevent extra lift-induced drag from the canard, it is connected to the main wing using vortex guides. A vortex guide is a wing that is so highly swept as to assume a nearly circular (actually egg-shaped) cross-section. The notch in the main wing reduces its lift near the root, creating a reverse vortex that cancels the vortex from the canards. By simultaneously adjusting the canards, main wing flaps, and vortex guide angle, one can force their vortices to cancel, thus shifting lift between the canards and main wings without creating extra lift-induced drag.

As with the Y-wing, the angle of the wingtip extensions is not structurally correct.

Diva SST: A friend of mine once told me that he tended to refer to delta-winged aircraft as "she" due to their graceful shape. I then asked, if a delta-winged plane is "she," then what is an ogee-winged plane? To this his wife replied, "A diva!"

This inspired me to try to create an aircraft design worth of that name. The plane shown here is designed for distinctly feminine contours. It is wasp-waisted (to compensate for the extra area from the wing roots) and has its engines mounted in a wide tail section. The air intake, aside from any advantage in funnelling air to create ram pressure, is actually inspired by a v-cut bikini bottom.

The spot underneath the nose is a dome housing a closed-circuit camera. Since the nose does not fold down as with the Concorde, the pilot would otherwise have no way to see the runway. With modern technology, it is simpler and more cost-effective to add avionics than to alter the structure and aerodynamics of the entire airframe.