The Red Starfighter
This deliverable is crucial to complete the first graphic novel of the series. This particular spaceship uniquely belongs to a very important character and will frequently re-appear until the end of the series.
A Mystery Yet to Be Solved
The Red Starfighter may feel out of place in the Universe of ZARYA-3 for many reasons: First, none of the warring nations have been using single-seater fighters for decades – such small ships are simply too light to carry any significant weaponry and too fragile to approach any military vessel.
Second, there is no known technology to the human kind that would allow the Subspace Engine to be small enough to be fitted inside a fighter. It means that without a mothership nearby, nor any fear of being shot down in a single barrage, the Red Starfighter becomes a peculiar anomaly for any human who happens to observe it.
From those few witnesses who managed to observe the Red Starfighter and file reports to the intelligence services, it seems to look human-made and completely alien at the same time. Partially it is because this ship has clearly defined cockpit, weapons, and familiar propulsion systems, but completely lacks any legible signage, or elements that would hint at it’s manufacturing techniques.
As of now both Federal and Imperial intelligence services have assembled a small task force each to resolve the mystery behind the faction or person who operates this unique piece of machinery.
It's Like an Insect, But Also a Bird... That is Designed by Insects
The Red Starfigher was among the first models that I attempted to create for ZARYA-3 before I even knew how to cut the default cube in Blender. Early on though I knew that it’s going to strongly stand out compared to both the Imperial and Federal vessels alike!
The first major decision was the color of this Starfighter. Red is the most recognizable color on the spectrum and a military vessel that is painted red is clearly not afraid to get in a fight with a bigger opponent!
When the color was locked in, I proceeded towards gathering references of spaceships that were at least somewhat close to my desired aesthetics. Since this ship was built by [REDACTED], I used real life insects as sources for inspiration. This is how wings of early iterations were inspired by the limbs of a common water strider, and ship’s tilted nose felt exactly like a proboscis searching for a flower.
For the body texture I first wanted to make something similar to angular patterns of Split ships from X4: Foundations, but pretty soon it began to feel too nonsensical from the aerodynamic perspective, so I proceeded with more conventionally sleek hull while maintaining a mix of organic curves and angular shapes where appropriate.
The final design retained an aggressive tilted silhouette that is very similar to real life attack helicopters like Boeing AH-64 Apache and became a truly unique piece that I locked in as a final version of this vehicle.
A Red Masterpiece in the Making
The current shape of this ship has been locked in as the final design, but it still requires some crucial additions and final polish to be deemed complete. Nevertheless, the Red Starfigher does already look great on early renders and is going to become only better in the near future.
The final shape of the red fighter was locked in pretty recently. One of the biggest departures from the original idea was the removal of lower wings. As a result, this ship looks more like a bird then an insect now, but realistic aerodynamic shape makes this a worthy loss.
Furthermore, since the lower wings were serving as the landing gear on the early concepts, their removal has created a new engineering challenge to solve. This problem was solved by making the large top wings able to fold down and act as landing gear instead. When landed the new Red Starfighet started to resemble a prehistoric pterodactyls which added even more of predatory vibe to its design.
Aside from polishing and animating the wings, the Red Starfighter is still missing a highly important interior and requires some tweaks to its retractable weapons. These issues are being worked on right now.
Early iterations of the Red Starfighter were widely experimenting with placements of the wings and insect-like features. Also, low amount of polygons was treated as a feature to organically give this spaceship an angular look.
While some elements like the tilted nose and segmented body remained as integral parts of the design up until the final version, every part of this ship has undergone multiple iterations before reaching the desired aesthetic quality.
