The artistic principles behind SCI-FI ship design 

Star Wars ships, especially the older ones, typically have a gap between to top half and bottom half of the hull, that runs all the way around the ship, and is stuffed full with greeblies. That's because they never could get the plastic shells for the top half and the bottom half line up perfectly to get a seamless edge. It always looked crooked. By separating the shells and adding lots of noise between them, this slight misalignment becomes completely invisible. And creates an iconic look.

Funny thing is, the Republic Venator isn't a rulebreaker. The evil triangle-shape is broken down by squares. Its like watching the Republic turn into the empire. There is a definite design language in Revenge of the Sith, that goes beyond mindblowing, if you analyze it further. I don't speak for the rest of the prequels, but Episode 3 is a masterpiece.

Ill add a hidden principle/rule to this: Breaking rules is ok, but you need to understand the rule before you break it. If you dont, it will fail and come off as sloppy or weird or bad. If you understand how these rules work, you can then break them and *improve* your design edit:i paused to write this immediatly after the main rules and just before he went on to explain exactly that. i promise om autistic not stupid XD

Its funny. Something I realized when you were talking about the greens of the Borg Cube looking like disease and sickness... But when i use my white-green color schemes in Battletech, Nebulous Fleet Command, and so on, people mention how peaceful and almost passive the colors look. So not only are colors a big deal, but how you mix them can dramatically change how people see the same colors

The Star Wars star destroyer is basically a perfect design for it's job. It goes into the design of WWII warships, with big cannons along the midline that can be turned to the side plus smaller guns on the sides. But space is 3D and the angled surfaces allow for the guns to be placed in ranks like seats in an auditorium. Every gun can see the target and fire, both sideways and to the front.

The first picture I see being of an Independance-Class Libertasian/LMC Unification Cruiser from Infinite Space, and I'm happy. Finally, that game gets some love.

One of my favorite ships I the Deadalus from Stargate SG1. It follows most the rules you laid out. The only rule it breaks is the color rule. It is a gray ship but it is a shade of gray that say utilitarian more than bad guy.

When you brought up how color has different effects on perception of a ship using Systems Alliance vessels from Mass Effect, my mind went straight to how I feel that the Normandy SR-2 looked better in ME3 than in ME2 solely due to the fact that it was painted in Systems Alliance colors rather then colors Cerberus put on it.

Jesus, I just realized: Systems Alliance ships in ME3 use a variation on UN colors. How did I never catch that?

This video feels like it's 60% on mark but you missed a lot of the intersectional design philosophy of fictional starships. I could probably write for hours about it but silhouette iconography was skimmed over which is an important part of every design trying to be evocative. The merging point between human scale and machine scale was also largely glossed over and that is genuinely something i think is most important to characterizing spaceships.

I have a quote for your video! “In art, design language is key, for many in the sci-fi genre, make sure things are clear, creative, futuristic and style.”

Round is friends. Pointy is harm. Brick is wall. How much friends ,harm, or wall is your ship.

In defence of the Quarian liveships, they actually are described as mobile space stations.

Most of my designs tend to be very utilitarian. Partly because I like the idea of a civilization having a focus on practical designs first, and partly because simple designs are easier to do. Which means most of my ships are indeed a collection of blocks except for a couple few special ones that are fluid on purpose. But I have a set of aesthetic guidelines for my main faction: - Ships are always longer than they are high or wide - Ships are always wider than they are long - The lower sides often have "pods" at the bottom sides (around the 4 and 8 o'clock positions), similar to the hangars on the Galactica or warp nacelles on Starfleet ships. The pods are more towards the back than the front. Sometimes directly connected to the main body, sometimes offset. - Some ships have a large hump on the top that balances out the side pods, especially if the ship is very wide. (which gives sort of a triangular shape from the front) - If the ship is more smooth, it begins at the front. Functionally they are multipurpose ships, but primary military. Part of the defense fleet, but also with scientific equipment (basically the inverse of Starfleet, where ships are science and exploration first, and defense second). Some have a large fighter bay at the top (as homage to aircraft carriers)

I was looking for a somewhat unique theme to apply to some ships in my setting, and one thing I came up with was swords. The society is very warlike by necessity, so it seemed appropriate. One thing this video made me realize was that what probably helped was that a sword-like shape is naturally a combination of squares and triangles, so it pretty much works perfectly!

The Taiidan from Homeworld have some of the most charismatic looking scifi warships - a mix of practicality, simplicity, and..fish? The shark like destroyer, hammerhead like missile destroyer, grouper shaped heavy cruiser, etc. Perfectly mixes "space empire" and "alien to the protagonists"

Thank you for this video. In designing a ship, i forgot the most important element: "blocking it out" with basic shapes, and your video reminded me to it.

My favorite ship design is the Outlaw Star. It's one of the few examples of a ship actually using the ability to rapidly change direction in 3 dimensions during space flight. It actually seems different than just a boat in space.

I will say you forgot one thing about warhammer ships in general: while they are all very busy, they make extensive usage of various patterns of shapes that come together to make other shapes with each constituent part being distinct enough to not to melt into a morass. Their broadsides are a very good example, utterly covered in filigree but clean, with highlights for the guns as they’re studded in devil intervals. The viewer’s eye sort of marches along their flanks in much the same way one expects the ships themselves to march to war while between their prow armor and bridges they evoke and impression of a stiff and stood soldier and their war drum ready to stride unflinching into the battlefield. With the unstated benefits of making it very easy to gloss over or ignore other stupid immersion breaking detail. Also bonus! My favorite boats are the tritachyon hulls from dreadnought. I still hold that the death knell of the game was officially sealed when they kept nerfing tac cruisers just to buff those fugly corvettes but anyway, bright white hulls with glowing green accents were the perfect choices to highlight their ships as basically floating health pick ups from any other shooter game. They were rounded and friendly looking, almost soft in fact, very much the image of a doctor in scrubs or a lab coat. But their entire shape would come together over all in the the silhouette of a big and blunt triangle, implying just how happy, willing, and more than capable they were to absolutely ruin someone’s day if they amde the mistake of underestimating one.

Macross has Carriers and other ships of rather unique in design. Scale depends on purpose and user. 18:59 funny thing about the Borg Cube in Star Trek Online the Borg Cooperative as opposed to the collective use blue not only as a friendly signifier but to show optimization, while the mirror universe Borg are red glowing as they are aggressive and show an unending burning hatred of the "imperfect" inside ( almost like the beast from Homeworld Cataclysm).

Escape Velocity: Nova made great use of shape and color to make not only each faction immediately recognizable, but also the function of each ship and in some cases specific ship manufacturers. There was a series of cargo haulers that start at a single cargo pod with a cockpit and engines on top to rings upon rings of those same pods for the bulk hauler. Then you had the pirate Manticore that cut said bulk hauler in half, threw away the front part, and used most of that cargo capacity for five each of every gun and more engines. It looked intimidating while also looking “craft produced” or salvaged, befitting its piratical origin.

Something which I think should have been considered, although I understand why it might not be considered; realism, which definitely can be artistic choice. Just as an example, the real USS Enterprise, by which I mean CV 6, is extremely cluttered right below the flight deck. A lot of steel warships tend to be extremely clutter topside because of radar, rangefinders, AA, other secondary guns, torpedo launchers, depth charges and so on. Only some of the most recent warships look like they have a minimalist approach without a lot of clutter. I would also like your take with this on the B5 ships, as some of them are pretty weird.

The Pegasus from the reimagined Galactica series is my favorite Ship design in Sci Fi. A close second would be the Donnager Class from The Expanse.

So I remember years ago a friend of mine found an online tool for seeing how different gun pieces would look together(pimp my gun (I think)) and we would use that to make spaceship images, it was great for both industrial and military ships. For instance I notice that a lot of the design language for the UNSC ships from Halo is that the look kind of like a gun, alternatively when you just use a bunch of images for rail systems for the middle of a ship it looks very stripped down and industrial.

In Star Trek: The Next Generation, ship designs of the Federation universally have a pale blue color scheme, combining white (simple/innocent/honest) with blue (trust/peace/loyalty/compromise). As the Dominion War approaches, that white-blue color scheme grows increasingly grey, connoting the approach of violence to the peaceful/honest Federation.

I love how different species have different ship designs based on so many tiny minute details. But in reality space warfare ships would all look extremely similar like how most period warships ships look similar to each other. Of course their are exceptions (turtle ships) but there are only so many ways for two technologically similar groups to optimally build a ship and any massive paradigm shifts are going to cause the enemy to steal and begin using it before enough of the paradigm breaking ships can be produced (Dreadnought). After all, before the new ship exits the slipways years would have passed since conception.

I've always been amused that the Paris class looks like a rifle, I mean its basically a MAC with engines so it kind of is just a rifle but it has the shape of a small arm.

While the ISD is amazing, the best villain ship in my opinion is the shadow battlecrab from babylon 5. It looks like a black spider from your deepest nightmares, that even telepathically screeches at you to drive home the utter evil it's made of.

Speaking of scaling cues, Gene Roddenberry asked Andy Probert at the end of the design process for the Enterprise D to extend the length of the warp nacelles to match the proportionality of the nacelles of the original Enterprise.

The only thing i conscioudly missed from this vid was a nod to the elegant line of Light to Heavy Fighters from Freelancer. Specifically the Dagger, Stiletto and Saber fighters. My eternal love goes to them and the gentle purring growl of their engines.

Looking at the UNSC ship in 8:20, looks like someone put a comically huge Colt 1911 inside a ship and the muzzle is poking out of the front... And considering what MACs are in those ships, I think it's a pretty accurate description.

After watching this all the way through I can confidently say that I will forget all this useful information and never change how I build

I found your channel through your Battletech videos. You are very underrated, and you do good works.

16:55 i would love a dedicated video to the navy of the GodEmperor

You know what scifi work does a beautiful job of illustrating some basic concepts of visual aesthetic metaphor and how your ship design concepts can express varying moods and ideas? Last Exile

Dreadnaught is dead for a reason. It was Free to Play, but Pay to Win. If you didn't fork over regular payments, you couldn't even paint you ship, let alone advance, and were relegated to the status of Ugly Gray Target for the people who did. The game was hardcore PvP only, with nothing environmental about it, not even shifting objectives, just forever skirmish, and kill. The ship designs might have been cool, but most players will never know, because they got tired of being whale bait and left for a more fun game where you were at least allowed to change your colors for free. Good Riddance.

i think what makes 40k ship design "work" is that despite they are noisy and greebly, the ships designs remain consistent between most of the various imperial patterns, so if you can understand one type of imperial battleship, you easily figure out how to see most other patterns of them

Aesthetically (as is pretty much the case for pretty much any conceptual sci-fi ship), something to consider would be how the ship is meant to be seen. I mention this because the question came up in an SF forum with regard to why certain SW ships look the way they look, particularly small craft. Generally, long and thin is good for straight line fly passes, but not good for dynamic, maneuvering shots. In a sense, the Y-wing, as attractive as it looks in general, is not dynamically as good a looker as the broader TIEs and X-wings that can bank and roll. I suggested as a comparison, you could look at war thunder (or any air battle simulator) and compare an F-104, a very narrow and long fighter, and compare it to something with a broader wing plan, like the Sea Vixen. The broad swoops of the Sea Vixen seem to carry weight and mass in a way that the Lockheed fighter just visually doesn't...even when it gets shot down! Curiously, if I were to say what real life a/c inspired the design of the Y-wing, the De Havilland Sea Vixen would be it.

Oh man, loved Dreadnought back in the day... Fantastic work with the video.

SCI: I would recommend Babylon 5 Ships for a review. As they have a interesting rule, the more advanced a race is the more the they focus on aesthetics. The majority of the younger races have some utilitarian features, IE Humans. The Mimbari have big organic designs as they have artificial gravity and better construction techniques, so they can play more with design.

Some shapes are more practical from an engineering perspective, for example you might want a sphere for a bulk cargo carrier as you get the most internal volume for the surface area, saving weight on the hull that is used for cargo. On the other hand a wedge or triangle shape is best for combat ships as to allows the most weapons to bear on a target.

Most enjoyable and informative.

For the golfball, i think in lore they were stations converted to ships after or during the Morning War.

While the parsability is good and all, the ships should still make sense from a mechanical point of view. Engines should be roughly in line with the centre of mass or you'll get the rocket sled syndrome. Nothing should be blocking the engines drove cone, and yes, this is something non-movie star wars ships did a lot. You probably also need a toilet and a sink. There should be enough space for all the systems on your shuttles, otherwise you'll get a cardboard box painted in ship colours rather then an actual ship. And other considerations.

Finally! I have been looking for this kind of information and these guidelines.

for a weird ship design, search "the lexx" from a 90's series called LEXX , its based on a dragonfly style and is mostly organic

World building is also something to take into account. For example I designed the Sunrider class of Knights (Large multi-role ships meant to serve as flagships for entire fleet formations and to carry powerful spinal mounts) to be almost like a Viper. It had a sort of hexagonal body, like a Halcyon destroyer, with "Wings" and a large glass observation deck on top. It was a luxury military ship. It was designed to be kept kind of far in the back line, allowing it's fleet to do work for it. It was also built by a young officer who knew he would be the first to receive one and designed it for that luxury. (Ironically he didn't get the first Sunrider. He got the first Legion class.) Then you have the Legion and eventually the Bismarck class Paladins (bigger than Knights and more heavily armed and armored, ranging from 1km long to 2km long.) which were more like Halcyon class Destroyers. They still featured the large observation deck, and early variants of the Legion class featured the wings which held additional fuel or equipment, but were more combat focused. Since that was what was requested by the nations military. You also have the truly ridiculously sized Leviathans which are just giant long rectangles with multiple prongs on the end because they are the command and control center for an entire campaign, and are meant as basically massive mobile space stations. Even larger are the Nation Ships, which carry massive amounts of people and roam the galaxy as a form of insurance policy for the nation who owns them, as part of a back up plan if they ever get destroyed. These are literally just massive rectangles because they aren't meant to dock with anything bigger than them. They are kind of like arks. Another example I like is the description of the Redacted, a mobile base for a project whose purpose was to create people who were dead. (Not zombies, more black ops the country who used them had death certificates and would always deny they existed.) The ship literally was a "headache of a design" because it was "Multiple ships slapped together and the interior has just the right amount of drywall to not notice you're in about thirty different ships." it was meant to be a lot to look at, because it was never meant to be seen, and it was cobbled together using what resources were available. For where I was inspired, go find the Sunrider Visual Novel (The Sunrider class is basically the same, it was one of the first ships I used to write and the series inspired a lot of my work so I haven't had the heart really to change anything, though there are several key differences inside the ship and to it's capabilities.) and of course the Halcyon class and the Imperial Star Destroyers helped inspire designs. I do love this video, lots of great points not just for visual descriptions, but written descriptions. It's important to know what a ship looks like so you can convey it over to another person. And these points were spot on, thanks for the help.

Honestly had never considered this. Thanks.

No B5?!? Some of the best designed ships out there...

Oddly, this is helping me build functional ships in Space Engineers - where the hardest thing to do is avoid either a brick or phallic shape and end up with a mix of the two.

4:03 Ah yes, the negotiator.

Greetings I am A High Lord of Terra, despite the miniscule amount of heresy in this video, The Emperor approves.

and if a ship does break the rules of convention, it needs a reason for example, why would a ship need all those guns, in lore answer (madeup) the reason it has all those guns is because it's meant to intimidate and make anyone hesitant on attacking since they will likely be outgunned immediately, namely for intimidation more than anything this makes sense and could help explain some more questionable design choices

Science Insanity: I do check several Sci-Fi videos on youtube for that very reason. I am hoping for a more, as close to reality as possible. So for me designs wraps around real world systems. So if the ships was built above earth right now, the design, and ships systems would actually function. I also think about production of the spaceship. this makes it easier for size scaling.

The FTL Music in the background is very fitting for a video like this.

10:00 "So... How many guns do you want on your ship?" "All of them." "Ok... One inch? Two inch? Five inch? Ten inch? Fifteen inch? Twenty inch? Fifty inch?" "... ... ... Yes."

Adding onto anothers comment about mixing colours lets review a few classics Red and white = hospital/medical Blue and silver = Envoy/peacekeeper Red and black = Aggressor/Evil Yellow and Grey = pirate/salvaged Blue and Black = Robotic/Cold etc.

This is a wonderful video for people trying to design ships. I hope you don't mind but I linked this to a game I played called Space Engineers where many players have trouble designing spacecraft.

You played Dreadnought as well. Yes great game but I don't remember why it died. At least I ran into someone who has played Dreadnought as well!!

Okay, in regards to color combinations, can anyone tell me what color combo radiates; “Hey, I’m friendly. If you want to crack open a couple of cold ones and watch some funny things on the internet with me, I’ll be very happy to accommodate. But if you come wide at me, then the chainsaw’s coming out!”? I ask this because I play space engineers, and I want my warships to have the proper color scheme for my personal starship philosophy.

What's the ship shown at 24:45? It almost feels like a Star Destroyer if the Mon Calamari made it.

The ugliest design was that of the Ori warship in Stargate SG1. It was basically a flying toilet seat.

My absolute favorite ship designs are tue Destiny from stargate universe and the Leviathan from Fractured Space. rip Fractured Space, this game was truely a feast for the SciFi eye and had amazing ship designs.

The Golf Ball looks like something out of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

19:55 I would also argue that it is important, especiall for the imperial star destroyer, to look at historical parallels and how they influence how we perceive things. Grey in Grey colour scheme with a hint of white and a bit of black, with no colouring at all, combined with clear cut shapes (hell, even the shield generators on top of the bridge aren't perfectly round, they are spheres, but spheres with edges) - tot everyone who has gone through a history class or has seen a documentary once in their life, this design aesthetic is almost copied from the Wehrmacht. These are the signs of a fascist regime. In only a few seconds on the screen and without any words at all, most people who you'd show this to who have been raised in a western country, even if they have never seen Star Wars, they could tell you that this ship is fascist.

Ay dreadnought. A bloody amazing game, and the only game like it other then like world of warships but nobody should suffer that lol.

Interesting video I’ll probably incorporate in the ship design of my ships for my book.

Great video thank you! 🙂

The Cygnus from Disney's The Black Hole is a work of art.

Power armour

Finally, a useful video to society, took you long enough

Screams at your ship design video in Ork!

"I don't have a quote for this. Have a Star Destroyer that totally has no relevance to this video instead" -Science Insanity, July 2023

There is now a faction of Borg that use red instead of green. The cube looks angry, not scary. Resistance ... will be annihilated.

maybe si could redesign the ships from that game you mentioned

Whats that nice little corvette/frigate thing at the begin?

Oh! You did talk some eve ships!

Flag design is the same way, it has some agreed upon rules which you can break if you know why your breaking them. One particular rule of flag design is no text especially not the name of what the flag represents. Look at the flags of Colorado or Ohio and suprise they have a C and a O on them respectively. Normally text on flags is small and hard to see from a distance and clutters the design but these flags use one big letter. Another rule of flag design is three colors or fewer. Many flags break this rule and fail because they look like a painting which is hard to see from a distance or they look like colorful vomit but a few flags carefully add 4 or more colors and because they use it in a distinct way it works. Or how about no small details. The US flag has tiny hard to see from a distance stars, but there's 50 of them right next to each other so you can still see the whole group. All the flags that break rules and get away with it, do it carefully and usually only break one of the rules.

Honestly, "ugly" ships can have their charm. One of my favorite ships is the "Omega" Class from B5 and fuck, it's ugly. It's a brick with large rotation brick in the middle. But...I love it. A lot. Similarly, the "Prometheus" from Stargate. A box with a comically large tower at its back. It looks so stupid, but I kinda love it.....

A ball has the biggest volume amoung all shapes.

I'll keep that in mind 🤔

23:34 "greebly overdesigned detailed nightmares" ok well can't say I'm well versed in 40k, but you said church ships. that description definitely describes gothic churches lol

10:10 oh man the Dreadnought from the past, I haven't see them in a long time since the game shut down. It was fun, had potential, but they the Devs made some awful changes like drastically altering the UI and other stuff Right before or during the Steam launch. It really should have stayed on its own launcher or added someway for the community to preserve the game on their own servers or p2p connection, but what's done is done. o7

The Daedalus class from Stargate and the Defiant class from Star Trek are my favorite ship designs. You lose points for not mentioning either.

the trafalgar destroyer ship type looked kinda cool from the game dreadnought

I have tried to come up with a better design than the star destroyer for decades to no avail. It ticks all the boxes and is just such an aesthetically pleasing shape but it takes more than triangles to achieve this, look at that ironing board of ugliness which is the first order dreadnaught. It's too good and because of its simplicity I doubt I'll ever top it.

Don't talk shit about Acula-Vector Dreadnoughts. Their destroyers might be hot garbage,but their Dreadnoughts looked clean Same for Jupiter arms Destroyers. As you pointed out, their Dreadnoughts look like shit, but JA DDs are amazing.

Covenant ships be triangle af

Have you ever seen a dreadnought? A real one? If I had to describe the appearance of a dreadnought battleship in one word (besides imposing, because that applies to any warship) it would be busy. Real life dreadnoughts are some of the most visually busy ships to ever exist. Their decks are a cluttered mess that leave not a foot of space unused. I'd say the problem with those game dreadnoughts is that they don't go far enough. They should add even more greebles and squeeze them all together in one area, then trim off the empty sections of hull until its surface area is 60% greeble.

What is your opinion on the ship RED DWARF from red dwarf

Talks about sci-fi ships ignores anime sci-fi completely. Okay my dude. How about all of Macross, Battleship Yamato (The Yamato and alien), Harlock's Arcadia (bluenose or skullnose)

Where do flying saucers fit into this, they are clearly circles but the edge of that circle gives the impression of a sharp angle.

Ya know, you could just...Do the power armor video anyways? Who's gonna be able to tell your lying?

Someone else who remembers Dreadnought!!!

Here are some suggestions for future videos. Take them or leave them as you see fit (just offering ideas. Also just mentioning things that have to do with sci fi military/tech, but if this is at all useful and you want to cover more than that, just let me know. Also, sorry in advance of some of this is being captain obvious. Skipping power armor though since you explicitly said it’s on the list already. Energy weapons. FTL methods. Drones/AI. Electronic Warfare. Planetary assault. Fortresses. Tanks and armored vehicles. Star fighrts (and bombers, interceptors, boarding craft, etc). Mining. Power plants and fuel. Nanites. Armor, shields, PDC, and other defenses. Production, logistics, and economy. Technological progression. Stealth and sensors. Megastructures. Armed civilian craft/pirates or lack there of. Asymmetric enemies (two sides of a war, often still in conventional war, who are vastly different, like the human covenant war, Yuson Vong invasion, or when any of these giant space bugs of death/parasite factions attack). Asymmetric warfare. Organic technology vs mechanical/electrical tech. Cybernetics. Espionage and infiltration (and counters). Artillery. VTOLs like helicopters. Teleporters/portals. Black holes (existing, as projectiles, as power sources, etc). Communication. Size/scale (as in relative to other things, not itself like in the video). Doomsday weapons. Ramming. Radiation. Heat in hard sci fi. Propulsion. Subterranean stuff. If that list is to long, a few choice things: FTL Power plants Star fighters and similar craft. Drones. Propulsion. Scale. Fortresses.

You should look at the ships from Fracture Space.

How to design a good scifi ship: 1. Ask Syd Mead.

ISD-chan is second-best space waifu. After Excelsior-chan.

Sarcastic Reply Rule 1: Add a lot of stuff that shows how technologically advance it is. Rule 2: If good, make it look like a good guy with it being only rusty and rundown yet still able to run liike the flash, if evil, add at minimum 2.4 billion sharp evil looking pointy things that saws "a yes, evil, but i am good" even though people say it makes it look like a mess and unable to see anything, they are haters, ignore them. Rule 3: People who are against war have ships with no weapons, yes, even if it makes sense to arm it for pirate raids, they still don't have it. the hate violence. the ship are also either super tough or super fragile, no in-between. Rule 4: Ignore all forms of science, that is what makes good designs, just make it what you want. people ask, just say space magic and there. Fin. But in seriousness, designing the ships are based on a few good principles of character designs and art directions and what people find good and appealing in said designs. If you want a realistic take, go ahead and ask yourself how it would be or look like IRL if it had our current understanding of physics. If it is less hard and given leaway, then how would it interact with these special items and properties? Would it change a good deal or what? If pure fantasy, then you can just ask the question of, "Can't you make this jump with that amount of fuel left, can you?" and answer with "Alright, bet." and have fun with the rules you established in that world.

I would ask u to start talking more about ship designs etc