Scored another one. This time it is hi-res and I think this came out around 1996. I also just happened to get a copy of “Mars Underground” (unrelated) on DVD just yesterday which is about Zubrin’s “Mars Direct” concept of getting men (and women!) on Mars. I am thinking perhaps now this may finally be embraced as NASA’s Mars 2.0 plan going forward?

Once upon a time I did a large number of book covers (or dust jackets) for a Sci-Fi publisher known as Tor Books. While looking through old back-up files today I found this one that featured Saturn’s rings and it’s now famous moon Titan. Since I am currently working on a poster that celebrates the Cassini mission, I thought I should post this design on here as it happens to be one of my favorites.

I would have to guess that I have been involved with designing around 200 book jackets designs for Tor, both before and after starting the Chopping Block. Among some of the more famous titles I got to work on were Jonathan Lethem’s “Gun with Occasional Music”, Kim Stanley Robinson’s “The Three Californias” trilogy and vampire title, (soon to be a major motion picture) “I am Legend”. The Lethem and “Legend” books had provided artwork, but we also got to do a few other Lethem titles where we did all the art as well as the design.

Image Note: I found this file (not shown) I thought was the hard cover artwork, but instead it was the less impressive mass market edition of the jacket. I will upload a better hi-res version next week when I get back to the office. In the meantime I found this version online of the hard-cover and tried to clean up the jpg artifacts the best I could.

My full time company (unrelated to space interests) has launched its “shop” and is sporting a bunch of tees and designs aimed at computer nerds, designers, illustrators and nerds in general. While I don’t have any directly space related designs up there (yet), there is a poster we did for an event I spoke at does feature me as a robot surrounded by a few moons. You may even recognize one as slightly Mimas looking and the other a bit Europan. The other two are just your generic cratered looking ice balls.

So maybe I’m just going to go with a more fantastic version of Saturn color. I also opted for the more familiar “front lit” view of the rings.

I have two really… the more detailed one is a bit photographic and i’m wondering if that is “better”? I mean, we already have photos so what’s the point? I am trying to make a nicely designed poster so should I go with the simpler (and therefore) more graphic version???

Less details:

More details:

At this size you really barely see the details. Click on for larger version of each.

By the way, the rings look really different because they are supposed to look back lit in this illustration.

So, I am tentatively planning to make a poster for the Cassini mission at Saturn. I always wanted to get a real nice graphic poster of some mission to Mars, Jupiter or Saturn… but the posters out there are always data driven and not so celebratory or artful. So I have decided to make my own and I started with drawing the spacecraft itself. I have no idea how accurate some of the instruments are as I was unable to find many visual references of them apart from the usual renderings.