Kilrah Slings Some Arrows (December 7, 2005)

Bandit LOAF

Bandit LOAF

Long Live the Confederation!
Kilrah Moreira has sent us two exciting new wallpapers. You may recall his awesome Arrow V model from a few months back... well, now you can see it in action! The Arrows are out in force in "Scouting the Void" (left)... and they're tangling with a group of Strakha in "Break Formation!" (right). They'd better watch out -- Warbirds says that "a lone Straakha has been known to eliminate four Hellcats in the space of ten minutes"... and those Arrows are outnumbered five to two!



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A 1280x960 version of the Strakha/Arrow battle is also available here.

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Original update published on December 7, 2005
 
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Nice, definately one/some of the better fan made arrows that i've seen. I also like the use of lighting on the second picture.

Bandit LOAF said:
Warbirds says that "a lone Straakha has been known to eliminate four Hellcats in the space of ten minutes"... and those Arrows are outnumbered five to two!
Click to expand...

I never understood that, Strakha are about as flimsy as a paper aeroplane, it seems more likely that a lone hellcat would destroy 14 Strakha in ten seconds. Maybe the Confed pilots were drunk.
 
I love the *positioning* of the Arrow facing the camera in the 'battle' picture -- that's fantastic.
 
Plywood Fiend said:
I never understood that, Strakha are about as flimsy as a paper aeroplane, it seems more likely that a lone hellcat would destroy 14 Strakha in ten seconds. Maybe the Confed pilots were drunk.
Click to expand...

Remember how Seether blew up four Hellcats in under a minute in the opening to WC4 using a cloaked Black Lance ship? Being able to decloak behind an enemy, fire a few shots, turn invisible, and then do it over again and again is a very powerful tactic as long as you remember to recloak and dodge before your target's wingman can draw a bead on you.
 
Heh. The Arrow is one hell of a quick dodger. You'd be lucky to get more than one shot in. And that kinda assumes you have some weapontry onboard that could destroy a target in a couple of shots. I don't recall the Strakha having anything even close. The Dragon? Oh, hell yes.
As for the picture itself? Good job! the thing that most jumps out at me is the overbright ambient in the scene. You might want to turn that down - I suggest at least by a half, as this will help with the dramatic feel of the image. There's just no way to justify that much light in space. Other than that, just a few nitpicks. The glow from the sun is coming from behind the planet, but it's in front of the Strakha - this looks kinda odd. That along with the odd lighting on the planet istelf (where's the sun?) makes that whole area look weird. The Explosion blast-light isn't casting shadows. You've got a great oportunity to solidify the Arrows as actual objects in the scene - right now they seem like they're a bit...floaty. They don't look as real as they could. Also, the lighting on the ships is inconsistent - it seems to be coming from a lot of odd angles.
Other than those few nitpicks, though...good job!
 
The idea behind the WC2 Strakha was certainly one-shot one-kill weapons -- it mounted torpedoes and Dumb Fires.

As for the claim in the Warbirds writeup -- I'd also argue that the vast majority of Confed pilots are not going to be anywhere near Blair in terms of skill and luck. They'll be more like the generic Kilrathi pilots we shoot down, and will die in similar numbers against superior Kilrathi pilots.
 
The Kilrathi Saga calendar calls the WC2 variant the "Strakha Prototype"... I'm not sure we'll ever know what the actual difference between them is. Academy's "Strakha" 'shrouded' fighter just makes it even more confusing.
 
Wasn't the cloaking device fitted to the Excalibur in WC3 referred to as a shroud? Since it was also Confed's first attempt at a full cloaking device, perhaps the Academy Strakha is something similar, as in the Kilrathi's first attempt at a full cloak?
 
Sorry for not replying until now. I’ve been away from “my” Internet connection. :)

First of all I would like to thank you very much for all comments. I must say that I was not counting in such a positive reaction.:) Obviously this encourages me to continue learning 3dsMax and as a consequence producing more Wing Commander related material.

@Howard Day

Thanks for the remarks and suggestions. This was the first time I used lights in a scene and honestly I didn’t thought about those small but important details. I guess that’s what happens when you use a tutorial as a base for your work and you really don’t know how the (light) settings work. Casting shadows for instance is one of the things I must learn yet.
The light in front of the Strakha, the odd lighting on the planet and the inconsistent light on the ships are, probably, the result of an invisible source of light that I used based on the tutorial.
Next time I’ll try to pay more attention to those details.



Again, thanks to all comments.:)
 
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