The Aliens are Not Sorry We Have Been Away

The weRobot tee posted here a few weeks ago has taken over my life here at wanderingspace. For anyone not aware, my real day job is running The Chopping Block and Chop Shop out of New York City. We were at the NY Comic Con over the weekend and while there Gizmodo and Boing Boing both posted our robots tee and we were slammed by traffic. So space has had to take a back seat for the last week or so. More appropriate for this forum perhaps is the more recent alienWe tee we just released on the temp site (yes, we are still recuperating from the server load). Take a look and if you like, mosey on over to the order form.

alienWe by chopshopstore.com

Titan’s Unnamed Sea

Tim Minton’s Map of the New World Map-makers of the world rejoice! For the first time since the days of Columbus, you now have the opportunity to map out the details of undiscovered shores! Tim Minton has a passion for map-making, but his pursuits usually involve Earthly destinations – how could he resist the new Lakes and Seas of another world? Check out his flickr page for other maps and in particular his Titan set.

My Sci-Fi Bookcover Past III

Giant Leap Dustcover from Tor Books This one was fun as it was supposed to be based upon real science, so we were able to take advantage of more reality based imagery. The idea was to get a good image of an astronaut with a suitcase and just have that with the title. A google search for astronauts turned up this excellent image of a guy looking like he is literally truckin to the launch pad. So we switched the color of his uniform, darkened the visor (one of the only things you cannot do with NASA images is show an astronaut’s likeness) and tried to make the case look a bit more like a suitcase than an oxygen unit of some kind. It really was perfect, but not high resolution enough to go large… so to fill the frame other astronaut legs were added to suggest the story is about mankind, not just the dude with the case.

Of all the Tor Books Chopping Block executed, this was always a favorite of mine.

Wander In Space Tee at redbubble.com

Wander In Space Tee at redbubble.com We posted this tee available for sale at redbubble.com that borrows from the old NASA logo to create this visual play on words. The quality above looks a bit low, but see the link for a better representation. This is the second tee we are posting here and due to a simple address error, we have not received either product to do a review. Once that happens we will post.

Cassini Tee at redbubble.com

Cassini Tee at redbubble.com One day wanderinspace.net expects to release a poster celebrating the Cassini mission. In the meantime, there is this tee available for sale at redbubble.com that features the Cassini spacecraft which will be featured in that design.

We just ordered one and it hasn’t come in yet. So we don’t know how the printing quality will be… we cannot vouch for that as of this time. But the site does offer that they come on American Apparel tees available for in men and women’s sizes, which are known to be top quality tees. When the purchase arrives here at wanderingspace control center, we will offer an update.

My Sci-Fi Bookcover Past II

Mars Underground Scored another one. This time it is hi-res and I think this came out around 1996. I also just happened to get a copy of “Mars Underground” (unrelated) on DVD just yesterday which is about Zubrin’s “Mars Direct” concept of getting men (and women!) on Mars. I am thinking perhaps now this may finally be embraced as NASA’s Mars 2.0 plan going forward?

My Sci-Fi Bookcover Past

Halflife Cover Once upon a time I did a large number of book covers (or dust jackets) for a Sci-Fi publisher known as Tor Books. While looking through old back-up files today I found this one that featured Saturn’s rings and it’s now famous moon Titan. Since I am currently working on a poster that celebrates the Cassini mission, I thought I should post this design on here as it happens to be one of my favorites.

I would have to guess that I have been involved with designing around 200 book jackets designs for Tor, both before and after starting the Chopping Block. Among some of the more famous titles I got to work on were Jonathan Lethem’s “Gun with Occasional Music”, Kim Stanley Robinson’s “The Three Californias” trilogy and vampire title, (soon to be a major motion picture) “I am Legend”. The Lethem and “Legend” books had provided artwork, but we also got to do a few other Lethem titles where we did all the art as well as the design.

Image Note: I found this file (not shown) I thought was the hard cover artwork, but instead it was the less impressive mass market edition of the jacket. I will upload a better hi-res version next week when I get back to the office. In the meantime I found this version online of the hard-cover and tried to clean up the jpg artifacts the best I could.

Completely Unrelated: chopshopstore.com

My full time company (unrelated to space interests) has launched its “shop” and is sporting a bunch of tees and designs aimed at computer nerds, designers, illustrators and nerds in general. While I don’t have any directly space related designs up there (yet), there is a poster we did for an event I spoke at does feature me as a robot surrounded by a few moons. You may even recognize one as slightly Mimas looking and the other a bit Europan. The other two are just your generic cratered looking ice balls.

Anyone Looking for Cialis or a Mortgage

I have been getting tons of comments lately about Cialis and Mortgages and deleting them as they come in. If anyone on here is looking for that I can forward them on to you. I know how common it is for people surfing space related subject are often also seeking deals on cialis, mortgages and especially diapers.

A Graphic Rendering of Saturn

I have two really… the more detailed one is a bit photographic and i’m wondering if that is “better”? I mean, we already have photos so what’s the point? I am trying to make a nicely designed poster so should I go with the simpler (and therefore) more graphic version???

Less details:
Saturn Drawing Simple

More details:
Saturn Drawing Detailed

At this size you really barely see the details. Click on for larger version of each.

By the way, the rings look really different because they are supposed to look back lit in this illustration.

I Drew the Cassini Spacecraft

So, I am tentatively planning to make a poster for the Cassini mission at Saturn. I always wanted to get a real nice graphic poster of some mission to Mars, Jupiter or Saturn… but the posters out there are always data driven and not so celebratory or artful. So I have decided to make my own and I started with drawing the spacecraft itself. I have no idea how accurate some of the instruments are as I was unable to find many visual references of them apart from the usual renderings.

Cassini Drawing 01