Capstone Part 1: Ship of Dreams

For our capstone class, we will be creating mini-games for a game called Kidscom.  As the only artist in the class, it's up to me to create all the art assets.  Our game is based on a Lunar Lander game where the player must land a ship on a planet without crashing, and my first task to create the final ship asset.  Below are some thumbnails I came up with to create an idea of what ship could look like.  To create a good thumbnail, a concept artist should use as little value as possible, that is, only using white, a mid gray, and black.  These three values create a very readable image, because our eyes immediately pick up shadows and uses those shadows to create form. 
1 and 2 were drawn from retro sci-fi movie posters, sort of the classic rocket ship.  However, most of them looked pretty similar and not like a lander.  For 3-5, I tried more of robotic drone look, and while I think they look good, they didn't fit the aesthetic of retro-futuristic.  6-10 fit the aesthetic the most, as they feel very Jetson's or Marvin the Martian.  11-14 are some of my favorites as I tried to combine elements from all the other ships, but they look too shell-like.  In the end, number 7 was chosen to be the final asset.

After choosing our final ship design, I took the thumbnail into Illustrator to create a final vector image.  I haven't used Illustrator in quite sometime, so this was rather difficult, but after a few hours, I managed to finish the asset to my standards.