Very small, indeed. Great scene and ships. Corrie

Wow, cool texture!

Nice living ships !

Predators of deep space... Excellent modeling, as always.

These ships are just awesome! Great models, nice metarials, and as usual a wonderful background! Nothing else to say! ;)

Really cool ship design and textures,plus and excellent background starscape...well done!

These are very cool textures and vessel designs – very organic looking, nicely done. I think you are probably right about the nature of life we might find – predator, hunter, fearfully advanced, or alien beyond our understanding … All of the evidence thus far suggests that the universe contains literally a countless number of planets and planetary systems – and everything we know about the nature of life itself suggests that it is exceedingly tenacious, carving out a niche where-ever the barest sliver of an acceptable environment can be found. I have little doubt we will one day find microbial life on Mars along with life swimming in the lightless depths of salty-oceans beneath the icy crusts of Jupiter and Saturn’s moons. In regards to the Daedalus Myth, I feel moved to present a more exhaustive analysis: Icarus' father, Daedalus, a talented and remarkable Athenian craftsman, attempted to escape from his exile in the palace of Crete, where he and his son were imprisoned at the hands of King Minos, the king for whom he had built the Labyrinth to imprison the Minotaur (half man, half bull). In Renaissance iconography, the significance of Icarus depends on context: in the Orion Fountain at Messina, he is one of many figures associated with water. His depiction on the Bankruptcy Court of the Amsterdam Town Hall - where he symbolizes high-flying ambition – characterizes the subtext as promoted by Ovid, however it is not clear that this interpretation is the sole, or even the most important characterization of the myth – much depends on the historical and cultural context, or which author is doing the interpretation. Ovid's treatment of the Icarus myth and its connection with that of Phaëton influenced the mythological tradition in English-language literature as received and interpreted by major writers such as Chaucer, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Milton, and Joyce. I’ll address interpretation of Phaëton, but first consider the context embedded within the Daedalus myth: Daedalus was imprisoned because of the knowledge he possessed – he had designed the Labyrinth at the palace of Crete – a valid question is was his imprisonment just or unjust? Daedalus, the superior craftsman, was exiled because he gave Minos' daughter, Ariadne, a golden thread in order to help Theseus, the enemy of Minos, survive the Labyrinth and defeat the Minotaur. So the crime of Daedalus was the revelation of knowledge to an enemy of his king – whether his choice was ethically correct or not depends on context: the relevant question is, was his loyalty to his king, and his own oath of secrecy, justified by the circumstances, the character, and nature of Mino’s rule? Was the betrayal of his oath an act of justice or not? Was Minos a tyrant? So the major contextual theme is the act of challenging authority, and the conditional nature of loyalty as a choice dependant on the nature of the circumstances. Ovid’s interpretation of Phaëton in this context suggests that man is foolish to challenge the divine authority of kings and gods: In Greek mythology, Phaëton or Phaethon was the son of Eos and Cephalus. Perhaps the most famous version of the myth is given us through Ovid in his Metamorphoses (Book II). In Ovid’s interpretation Phaeton seeks assurance that his mother, Clymenē, is telling the truth that his father is the sun god Helios. When Phaeton obtains his father's promise to drive the sun chariot as proof, he fails to control it and the Earth is in danger of burning up -- Phaeton is killed by a thunderbolt from Zeus to prevent further disaster. So the context accepted by the authors of English-language literature is that which fit the assumption of the “imperfection of mortal man.” Politically this interpretation plays to the reign of intellectual elites and a select “ruling class,” those who might assert their own worthiness to preside over the affairs of the “common man.” Today this subtext is widely promoted as an underlying assumption of Radical Environmentalism, the Political Correctness doctrine, Cultural Marxism– the influence of which has saturated America’s Universities. Ovid’s interpretation asserts that the aspiration and efforts of man to overcome limits and boundaries in knowledge and accomplishment can only lead to folly – that man is by nature inherently limited, imperfect, and therefore must fail, and that aspiration which goes beyond certain defined limits seeks to drive man beyond his “naturally limited state.” The religious social and political culture of the European authors held a form of Judeo-Christian mysticism as their underlying explanation for existence – this asserted that mankind was divinely ordained to suffer – and effort to change this circumstance was defiance of the divine judgment of god – an act of mere ego with no other purpose --thus it is said that hubris, or ego, is mans downfall. The view that all of mankind’s achievements are rooted in ego denies the fact that our achievements in sciences, technology, medicine, and engineering are of benefit to man and thus hold real value. Mysticism in general is rooted in the “malevolent universe” premise, and its metaphysics are mounted on the theory that man, by his very nature, is helpless and doomed—that success, happiness, achievement are impossible to him—that emergencies, disasters, catastrophes are the norm of his life and that his primary goal is to combat them. The chief exponents of this were poets and the Romanticists. The leading one is Byron, whose name has been attached to this particular, “Byronic,” view of existence: its essence is the belief that man must lead a heroic life and fight for his values even though he is doomed to defeat by a malevolent fate over which he has no control. Nietzsche derived from this premise nihilism- a related category of thought. Nihilism is the philosophical belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. A true nihilist would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, and no purpose other than, perhaps, an impulse to destroy. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value. Moral nihilists assert that morality does not inherently exist, and that any established moral values are abstractly contrived. Nihilism can also take epistemological, metaphysical or ontological forms, meaning respectively that, in some aspect, knowledge is not possible or that contrary to our belief, some aspect of reality does not exist as such. Personally I do not accept the views of the Mystic, the Romanticist, or the Nihilist. As the simplest empirical refutation of that metaphysics—is evidence of the fact that the material universe is not inimical to man and that catastrophes are the exception, not the rule of his existence – and certainly empiric evidence shows man’s achievements possess real value -- and, as I say, it is not clear that the intrinsic limitation of man (or folly driven by ego) is the core message of the Deadalus myth, consider: Daedalus fashioned two pairs of wings out of wax and feathers for himself and his son. Before they took off from the island, Daedalus warned his son not to fly too close to the sun, nor too close to the sea. Overcome by the giddiness that flying lent him, Icarus soared through the sky curiously, but in the process he came too close to the sun, which melted the wax and so, Icarus fell into the sea in the area which bears his name – thus it can be seen that it was not ego, but rather inattentiveness to the design limitations of the wings – and not any inherent limitation of man – which led to Icarus’s fate. Thus it is not man’s quest for knowledge, or mans curiosity, which is cautioned against – but inattentiveness. The core message states that skill and craft, and an understanding of the scientific principals underlying nature (in this case those which govern flight) can only fail through inattention to the physical facts of reality.

Excellent sf!

STUNNING...LOOK LIKE GIANT OCTOPUSY ORGANIC VESSEL

Man, your ship designs get more fantastic with each new one you do! These are just amazing, Mike! And your textruring is top-notch all the way!

Yep...another good one! I love the direction you're going in and these ships are amazing. I love the textures; the overall feel of these puppies is nicely alien and deliciously ominous and alien in ways I really like. I also love the text and the idea that we are very small things in a very big universe...as Carl Sagan stated, there are more stars in the sky than there are grains of sand on every beach on the planet Earth. That's a whole lotta stars and a whole lotta space and we're a whole lotta tinyness. I rather like that idea. You encapsulate so much in this image, as always, and as always, it's quite a distinct winner.

a wonderful and very believable image. Always the blending of organic and mechanical!!