Oliver Thacker, BA (Hons) Computer Animation Arts, UCA Rochester

I wanted to design the ship before I jumped into the insides. I did this because I wanted the ship's layout to make sense and not be some kind of random mess. I started looking at ships designed in a retro 60's ish style but found most of them to look like rockets, which is not what I really wanted, or they looked too big, even when I tried to mentally scale them down while drawing. At first I tried to draw these ships, however I found more success blocking them out in 3D. I used my sketches as a starting point before adapting them into a shape that can work, below are a few examples.  With this final model, I took a screenshot of the side and plotted the rooms of the ship. I then took this back into Maya, modeling the rooms as I drew them here. I quickly found that the rooms were too big, leaving lots of empty space. I want a more compact space, I want the ship to feel like it can just about accommodate the one person. After fixing the room size...

While watching, listening and inbetween reading over the past week, I have been sketching things that could be placed on the spaceship. I tried to draw things I see on screen mostly, but at times I looked at the shapes and tried to form it into a piece of furniture or something that would serve some kind of purpose in making the ship work. I also went back to my notes from the book, trying to find objects mentioned in the books or objects that while not specifically mentioned I have noted down as being relevant, such as something inspired by a machine in Star Trek that lets a person make some foods from energy, being a complement to a chef's cooking. Another thing would be the type of things in the cockpit, monitors and controls that are not mentioned within the book but would be needed in order to fly the ship.

Ijon Tichy is the main character in the book "The Star Diaries" and appears in some of the authors other works including "The Futurological Congress", "Peace on Earth", "Observation on the Spot", and "Memoirs of a Space Traveller". He is a space explorer who seemingly travels alone and records his adventures and visits to different worlds. He is also a follower of scientific development, often being contacted or visiting researchers and inventors seeking his approval on their new projects or research. He doesn't appear to have a wife/husband or any children, his home on Earth housing himself and a robot servant that can't seem to do his tasks properly, which is presumably why he is able to travel so much. I have a suspicion that the character is rich, being that he is able to go into space, meaning he must have brought a spaceship, be able to pay for maintenance and fuel, as well as have a home on Earth and not needing a job...

For my Major project, I propose to make an animated environment based on The Star Diaries (1957, expanded upon 1971), specifically the main character's spaceship. The book, written by Polish author Stanislaw Lem, features a space adventurer documenting his various adventures on different planets or experiences of various phenomena. The adventures are generally lighthearted, mainly humorous rather than serious. He goes to many different planets and sees many different races and things. The interpretation of the main character, Ijon Tichy, I made was that he is some kind of rich and eccentric person that wanted to explore the stars, and so brought a starship and took to the stars.He's similar to Indiana Jones, except in space and more humorous, at least in my opinion. He also has a home on earth which is large enough to require robot butlers and servants. His ship is refereed to as a rocket in the books, however this could just be a translation error as the book was originally...