This is a digital color comp of a concept I’ve wanted to tackle for a while – a spaceship approaching an inhabited node of a distant Dyson Sphere.  And a local friend asked me if I have ever drawn a Dyson Sphere, which I hadn’t. When I made this image, I ended up with a couple of variations and I wasn’t entirely sure which one I liked the best, so I’m presenting all three.

Dyson Sphere – Variant II (spaceship more to the center, darker)

Dyson Sphere – Variant I

Dyson Sphere Variant III – Features two habitation modules, darker

In this image we’re actually seeing part of a Dyson Shell. A Dyson Sphere would enclose the star entirely. Here, we’re seeing one node of many, as part of a giant but incomplete Dyson Sphere. It’s a project that would take many generations to complete. The inhabitants live on the sun-facing side of the node while our intrepid explorers are approaching from the space-facing side.

These color comps stop short of being fully-finished pieces and offer me the chance to explore different themes in a richer presentation than simply a line drawing. Typically these kinds of images take about two hours or so of actual drawing time, using a Wacom Intuos Pro Medium tablet and Photoshop.