A Billion Suns: Second Edition brings back the beloved ruleset for epic space fleet battles with a revised and improved hardback edition with new illustrations by Juan Richard Feliz and Rob Turpin. 

 

In this artist’s diary, Rob Turpin explores how he created the many spaceships that decorate A Billion Suns, taking them from sketches to the beautifully inked and coloured vessels ready to fly off the page. 

 

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It’s always nice as an illustrator to work with a new client. So when Chris from Osprey Games got in touch to ask if I’d be interested in drawing some spaceships for the second edition of A Billion Suns, I jumped at the chance. 

 

Chris asked for half a dozen pages of illustrations to represent the various spaceship styles across the four eras the game is divided into*. With outlines for the styles of each ‘faction’ ranging from corporate floating cities, to skeletal wrecks and scavengers - there was plenty of scope for me to have some fun. 

 

AEGIS (Autonomous Engagement and General Intervention System) fleets field elite ships that act as a single autonomous combat network distributed across a network of drones and colossal warships. A terrible weapon, loosed to defend humanity from an even greater threat… 

 

My initial sketches were done simply and quickly using Procreate on the iPad. Just a thick marker brush, and then a pencil in a slightly darker shade. Using a big fat marker to block in shapes help get some interesting silhouettes (THE most important thing for spaceships I think) without getting hung of on details. 

 

Initial feedback was good, so I went ahead and worked on sketches for each faction quite quickly. Getting the styles and designs approved first for all, before moving to inks and colours, meant we could be sure there was a good range of ships for the game. 

 

                         

With the silhouettes created, Rob sketches in further detail adding character to the ships. 

 

 A couple of my favourite pages were the Junkspace ships - which were battered old hulks adorned with the bones of weird space whale type creatures, and the Unity ships, which were very angular and industrial, with lots of cross bracing and structural stuff on show.  

 

Junkspace offers a way to play A Billion Suns as a solo game, scratching out an existence as a raider, scavenger or free-trader among the post-apocalyptic debris of the Jura system. 

 

Once sketches are approved - with any feedback taken in to account, it’s on to digital inks and colour. Again, all this done in Procreate on an iPad. I used to draw everything traditionally, making changes using tracing paper, scanning and tweaking, before using a Lightbox to do the inking. Now, I just find digital a lot quicker for client work. It’s not quite as satisfying as working on paper, but still plenty of fun. 

Once everything was inked and coloured I added some graphics here and there using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, and created some textures and patterns to add some more interest to the designs. The only ships that didn’t get any graphics were the alien Vyke ships. They were weird enough already!

 

Contact with the Vyke initiated a new era of total war, shattering the Age of Unity into the Age of Armageddon. 

 

Follow more of Rob’s work on Instagram @thisnorthernboy where he recently sketched a whole month of spaceships for #Shipember. The perfect thing to inspire your own armada of ships ready for action when A Billion Suns releases next month. 

 

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*Each of the four Eras offers a distinct way to play A Billion Suns: Second Edition which we’ll explore in future previews.

 

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A Billion Suns: Second Edition is available to pre-order now. 

08th December (US) // 10th December (UK) 

Keep your communicators open as we’ve got more previews coming to the blog over the next few weeks.