Archive for June 11, 2010
That is so amazingly amazing I think I’d like to steal it.
Book: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Posted by: John Martz
Something a little different this month. I wanted to do a simple spot illustration of the Starship Heart of Gold. Now, if you’re familiar with the story you’ll recognize that what I’ve drawn bears little resemblance to the ship described in the book:
…a huge starship, one hundred and fifty meters long, shaped like a sleek running shoe, perfectly white, and mindbogglingly beautiful.
It seems to me that all spaceships look like, in some way, sleek running shoes. I wanted to have a little fun with the design of the Heart of Gold, and as I had been collecting images of vans and RVs, it also seemed to me that the Heart of Gold would look just as mindbogglingly beautiful if it resembled a retro camper van.
After all, with the Infinite Improbability Drive at its heart, it seems all too likely (or rather, unlikely) that the most impressive starship in the galaxy would (or, in this case, would not) look exactly like a retro camper van. So the very improbability that the ship would look quite the opposite of how it is described in the book makes my interpretation all the more plausible. I think.
In a post on my personal blog, I have shared the rough sketch for this illustration and some of the photos I used as reference. Of course, this sort of artistic license comes with a price; after finishing the illustration I had the horrible realization that a spaceship that looks like an RV, had already been done, and that I had just ripped off Spaceballs.
“That is really amazing,” [Zaphod] said. “That really is truly amazing. That is so amazingly amazing I think I’d like to steal it.”
