Stulte’s stuff

[Stulte]

I could probably keep working at this, but Flash kept freezing up on me, so this is as good as it’s gonna get at this point.

Maria I Braganza in The Battle of San Bartolomé

[Herr D]

. . . there may be a way to enjoy war . . .

[Jeimuzu]

That is stunning! Your Battle of San Bartolome is just fantastic. Great work on Braganza, I think you did and excellent job making the musculature on her back.

[Stulte]

@ Herr D
At least if you’re as bats**t crazy as Maria

@ Jeimuzu
Thanks man! I’m honestly not that pleased with it, but until my laptop stops being obnoxious I can’t really do anything about it. Oh well.

Next megacorporation!

Stonefire Guild

Be Safe

Founded: 1661
Headquartered: Vienna
Corporate status: Private
Primary businesses: Macrotechnology, arms industries, electricity generation, mining, petroleum industries, electronics.

From the catalogue:

Stonefire PKD Revolver Mk VI.

Stonefire Tarentum Line Super Heavy Mechanized Body Armour.

Stonefire Tarentum Line Heavy Plate Armour.

Stonefire Tarentum Line Infiltrator Suit.

[JR19759]

It’s funny you say you prefer your other entry and that you aren’t that pleased with Battle Of San Bartoleme, because to be honest it was my joint favourite out of all this weeks contest entries. I think the details are superb, the ancillaries that aren’t the main focus of the picture (the vases, glasses and that clock) are just so well done. The fact you also included a damp effect on the towel and water on the floor really impressed me as well, a lot of people wold have either forgot about it or not included it at all. And then you have the scene in the window. The contrast between the dark and moody colours of the battle scene and the light and clean colours of the room really set the whole thing off. Obviously, you are right, it isn’t perfect. The characters back still needs a bit of work, but apart from that. Once again I’m gonna be honest, as soon as you entered it into the contest it was going on the poll. I’m just a bit disappointed it’s not doing better, because, as I said, it is my joint favourite of all the entries.

[Stulte]

Thanks JR. I’m glad you appreciate the contrast, because that’s really what I was going for; creating contrast between the room and the outside both in colour and tone. I was also trying to make Maria’s insanity come across by having her be dissonantly serene whilst in the middle of a battle. Burning airships, exploding rockets and thousands of men falling to their deaths are just a distraction to her; something to look at while you fix your hair.

I’m not saying I dislike the piece, it just frustrates me that I wasn’t able to finish it. My first entry (Battle Mode Activated) was complete, it looked the way I wanted it to look. The Battle of San Bartolomé doesn’t and that’s why I think it’s inferior.

[WARNING! THE PRETENTION LEVELS OF THE TEXT BELOW IS OFF THE CHARTS!]

As to why I’m not getting more votes, well, it doesn’t really scream steampunk, does it?

That kind of brings me to what’s bugging me about that entire artstyle: it’s really shallow. Most steampunk media just has the characters dress up in Victorian outfits and glues gears to places where they probably won’t do much good. Which, to me, completely misses the point of using a modified historical setting. It captures the style of the 19th century while ignoring its substance.

Steampunk to me is about rapid industrialization and capitalism run rampant, with no heeds taken to the workers and the environment; it’s about men in fancy uniforms dying horribly for grand, pointless wars; it’s about transhumanism, and whether mechanical augmentations take away ones humanity or not; it’s about decadent nobles seeing their place in the world becoming increasingly obsolete and acting desperately to hold on to the power they’ve held for thousands of years; it’s about predjudice and dictatorships gradually giving way to enlightenment, tolerance and fledgling ideas of democracy; it’s about natives fighting to reject technologically superior colonists; it’s about people using national romaticism to rationalize their oppression of other ethnicities; it’s about values and morality surrendering to the quest for wealth.

Steampunk to me is less about mustachioed men in smoking jackets and top hats firing guns with the clockwork on the outside, and more about a Portuguese queen tying her hair up with Chinese silk, watching her Italian mercenaries burn as their Ottoman airship is hit by an English rocket.

[/PRETENTIOUS RANT]

With that being said the goal of the contest was to create something steampunky, not to create something that aligns with my personal view of steampunk, my problem is with the genre in general, not with the other artists and nor with their work.

As a sidenote I voted for Nug’s Violinist, ‘cos that one was ******* rad,

[Stulte]

Ottoman Engineering

Tomorrow Today

Founded: 1859
Headquartered: Mekkah
Corporate status: Public
Primary businesses: Petroleum industries, macrotechnology, electronics, shipwrighting.

From the catalogue:

Ottoman Engineering Evren 44 Petrocar

[Legatus]

I officially order one.
How fast is it?

[Nug]

First and foremost… Thanks for compliment, and the vote! That means a lot Stulte!
I understand your frustration, and your rant. The premise of “steam punk” eluded me. I had to research just about every aspect of my piece, and yeah most everything I seen looked like a Victorian fashion show with gears and pipes in places they just shouldn’t be. You, my friend, seem to have a firm grasp on the concept! I enjoyed reading your opinions on the matter.
In your piece I didn’t picture her as showing insanity. I imagined it as… acceptance. Like it’s just another day. Your entry is incomplete? The amount of detail is amazing! It fits (from what i’ve seen) very well with the essence of the style, and time period it seems to portray. What is incomplete about it? If you feel that way finish it, man! Sucks it wont make it into the contest, but to have something that beautiful and be disgusted with it seems a shame to me. I would love to see what it’s supposed to look like! Sure i’m not alone in that. I as well thought for sure it would be up there at the top of the votes! Keep on keeping on Stulte!

[JR19759]

Stulte, I tell you what. If you ever finish it, I’ll feature it as COTW, because I absolutely love the piece and, like Nug, I think it deserves a lot more recognition than it’s getting.
I also have another little confession to make. I did do a Steampunk contest with you in mind, considering some of the stuff you up loaded on your first few pages (I’m thinking mostly about the prosthetics and body enhancements here), plus the world you’ve created on this thread seems very steam-punk inspired (forgive me if I’m wrong). But that was the sort of thing I was hoping would be entered. Nothing against the gears and cogs Steampunk (I mean, considering the quality of the other entries on the poll it would be stupid to say I disliked it, they’re all superb or they wouldn’t have got onto the poll. Plus of course I did say I had joint favourites. I’m not going to say who, because that would be unfair on the other contestants.), but you are right, there is much more to Steampunk than just period costumes with some clockwork attached.

[Herr D]

Yikes. I’m with JR, your Maria won my vote. The Violinist came 2nd for me.

Here’s where I go awry. Your interpretation of what steampunk means seems dead-on to me, but I think I only saw airships from you and I. The Violinist told an uncertain story, but I could believe that that violin and the thing behind her might have had a real purpose behind the gears. (My airship had gears as a deliberate decorative identifier, as a conceit to the apparent style, but it may have made the viewports too subtle and spoiled the composition.)

I also misinterpreted Maria’s emotion–not as insane glee, not as acceptance, not as insane apathy.
I thought she was staring out at what made her sad, inviting the man behind her to comfort her through seduction by languid pose and movement, perhaps wearing what she thought she looked best in.

[Stulte]

@ Legatus
Slower than a railcar but faster than an airship

@ Nug
No problem, man, your work is awesome!
I never said I’m disgusted by the piece, just that I don’t think it’s that good, and that it annoys me how I can’t make it look the way I would like it to.

@ JR19759
Please don’t get me wrong, I think the other poll entries (and most of the contest entries in general) are absolutely awesome looking, and I’m not trying to claim that I’m the only one who “gets” the genre. My rant was not directed at the other artists.
I’m genuinely glad you like the piece. Let’s see when I get the chance to finish it.

@ Herr D
It’s interesting seeing the different interpretations of Maria’s emotions. I was originally planning to add the reflection of her face, but figured it might be better if her expression was left more ambiguous. Your interpretation is as valid as mine.

[Stulte]

Hanseatic Enterprises

Profits Don’t Lie

Founded: Mid-14th century
Headquartered: Lübeck
Corporate status: Private
Primary businesses: Banking, import/export, transportation, aircraft industries, communications, shipwrighting.

Helsinki Hanseatic Customs and Banking Offices

[Trekkie]

Woah! The offices building looks great! I love it

[Stulte]

Thank you! I’ve been experimenting with linear perspective lately. The Machine isn’t really the optimal program for doing that sort of stuff, but that’s what makes it fun

Texcoco Mining Group

Perfodiemus

Founded: 1696
Headquartered: Mexico
Corporate status: Private
Primary business: Mining

Aetherite
Also known as aurum arcanum, zwergenerz, truestone, eterit, skumium and lönnsten, among others. Aetherite refers to any mineral charged with astral energy. To humans it is indistinguishable from common rock, but to dwarves it gives off a pale blue light. By running a high voltage electrical current through a piece of aetherite the astral energy is released, which generates immense heat. A pound of aetherite contains 200 000 times more energy than a pound of coal.

The Texcoco Mining Group provides 88 percent of the world’s aetherite supply, making it arguably the most powerful organization in history.

A simplified illustration of an airship’s truestone engine. Excess heat is channeled to the gas bag.

1. Aetherium core
2. Pumps
3. Boiler
4. Steamline
5. Piston
6. Water tank
7. Coolant line

February 1755: Emperor Gottfried V of the Protestant Union fights the Catholic Concordiate and their Ottoman allies in the Twelve Years War. He orders the dwarven engineer Marnr rukh Skandza to design the ultimate weapon. A year later Marnr presents his thirteen aetherium charges. By converting the heat output from the truestone reaction into electrical energy, and then using that energy to enhance the reaction itself he aims to achieve a snowball effect where the power of a massive block of aetherium is released in a few seconds, which will be heat enough to annihilate entire armies.

August 7 1756: The cities of Alexandria, Lisbon, Ankara, Dublin, Palermo, Novgorod, Istanbul, Madrid and Marseille are destroyed overnight. A tenth charge is dropped in Rome, but fails to detonate, later to be retrieved by Union troops. The Concordiate surrenders unconditionally two months later, and is disbanded the following year. Marnr rukh Skandza, horrified that his weapons were used on civilian targets destroys all his research and blueprints, and flees to parts unknown.

September 2 1783: The remaining four charges are stolen from a secret location. The perpetrators are never found.

August 7 1856: The dwarven hold of Rukh Skandza is destroyed, presumably by one of the missing charges. To this day (1900) any attempts to excavate the city that was once home to half a million dwarves have failed due to the immense heat of the bedrock.

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