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slshimerdla — Critical Error
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#broken #critical #digital #error #floating #futuristic #girl #glass #gun #helmet #illustration #painting #photoshop #planet #portrait #process #sciencefiction #scifi #space #spacesuit #woman
Published: 2017-02-02 15:31:29 +0000 UTC; Views: 13782; Favourites: 480; Downloads: 149
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Description
The evolution of this painting was pretty interesting. It started out as practice for painting planets, but I wanted to add a figure. She was originally going to have an organic life form over her mouth helping her breathe while she floated through space, but I eventually decided to save that idea for another painting with a darker background. So it became the tragedy that it is. Broken helmet, eyes freezing over, trying to get in one shot for who knows what reason before she either succumbs to the harshness of space or gets picked up by a spacecraft that's perhaps just out of the frame. Who knows. Insert your own story here. Love to hear what you come up with
Painted in Photoshop with a Wacom Cintiq tablet
Painting Time-Lapse: youtu.be/iQPdw23lXdk
Closeups
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Comments: 84
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You are really talented
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So glad you liked it, thank you!
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As Sara watches her space ship plummit to earth and her helmet shattered she doesn't have much time left but in the destints she sees something coming closer and closer to her. As she ready her laser pistol a Alien ship appears and she is teleported into the ship. Sara wakes up in a hospital bed not knowing how she got there and a sharp pain in her chest all she can remember is having something put in her from another life form.
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I'm suprised and a little dissapointed that no one else mentioned:
tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php…
Fine painting however.
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Yeah, people probably would never use a fishbowl helmet like that either, LOL! I was going for a halfway retro sci-fi style, with some modernistic elements.
That was a really cool and interesting article, thank you!
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"We've got to retreat, they're slaughtering us! I- AIUGH!" Was all that Ens. Della managed to choke out before Lt. Mara summarily executed her for cowardice with a single shot through the chest, disintegrating her heart and lungs instantly, granting her a mercifully quick death, and most importantly stopping her from spewing defeatist drivel onto the common comm channel. Of course, it was likely that only her wingmate, Ens. Elvers, even realized that that Mara had killed Della, as opposed to enemy fire. The young ensign had been right - they were being slaughtered.
In the few minutes since the engagement against the Combine Clones had started the screen of Alliance vacuum combat troopers had taken staggering losses. Less than ten minutes ago now Lt. Mara had been nothing more than a section commander in one of three over-strength platoons deployed to provide close support for one of the orbital defense batteries. Confident in their training, feeling lethal and, yes, sexy in their self-propelled battlesuits, the heavily gene-spliced women had broken into patrols and formed a dense, whirling screen around the station like electrons circling a nucleus. For almost thirty minutes Lt. Mara had nothing to do but crane her head about in her bubble helmet looking for visuals on the clones that they fully expected to engage using thermal camoflauge, making visual target acquisition essential, watch the comm status lights on the little indicators of the twenty girls in her command section go on and off in her HUD, and review the pleasant sense memory of Lt. Tygerin helping her into her suit.
Laura knew about Lt. Mara's "special" relationship with Lt. Tygerin, of course, they'd even met on several occasions when the two lieutenants had had planetleave together, and there had been one magical afternoon when the three of them had thoroughly enjoyed each other in an isolated grotto at the tropical arboretum. 2nd Lt. Zeratin Mara had almost worked up the courage to ask Professor Laura Trisgemetrus if they could consider what was now fashionably called a "triumvirate" marriage, but was ultimately glad she'd held her tongue as an offhand remark Laura made a few days later made it clear that the pleasurable experience had been a one time affair.
Even so, Laura was honestly glad that Lt. Mara had someone special to warm her bunk for the long stints when she was away, and comforted herself with the thought that a bond like the one her wife had with the dashing young Lieutenant couldn't help but ensure that Lt. Tygerin would try even harder to keep her love alive if the war with the Combine ever reached them. Of course, with the shortsightedness so characteristic of love she failed to consider that as eager as Lt. Tygerin would be to risk her life for her beloved Zeratin, her wife would be equally eager to put her own life on the line for a woman that Laura would readily sacrifice if it would mean ensuring that Zeratin would come back to her.
None of this mattered anymore, of course, since Lt. Tygerin had been killed in the first exchange with the Combine Clones, along with so many other Alliance troopers, and Lt. Mara no longer fancied her own chances of survival much either. Her heart had almost broken when she'd first made visual contact with the Clones and realized that their vacc suits; although similar to her own in most regards being little more than a bubble-helmeted suit equipped with weaponry and a thruster pack to transform it's wearer into a sort of mini starfighter - the "Infantry" of orbital space combat; differed from her own in one chillingly revealing design component: They were completely skintight. Without the form fitting rigid plates that formed the outermost layer of her own suit the Combine Clones were totally exposed to the solar wind, their lithe, lethal forms constantly exposed to the ionic radiation that would mean a death sentence for anyone who spent more than a few minutes unshielded. “It’s a suicide mission.” Lt. Mara realized at once. “Not one of them expects to… or will… survive.” In that moment she knew that Laura was doomed.
Over the next several minutes she and her element had pushed their bodies to the brink, pulling zero-g maneuvers so radical that she was barely conscious when she’d made her first kill in the swirling dogfight, her disintegrator pistol vaporizing the heart and spine of one of the Clones so close that she could clearly see the woman’s last expression through her bubble helmet. Seeing was one thing, and interpreting was quite another, however, and Lt. Mara couldn’t decide if it had been sorrow, pain, accusation, or relief. Maybe it had been all of them.
In twos and threes the little life-signs indicators for her element had gone red, until only she and Ensigns Della, Elvers, and a handful of other had remained. By that time it was clear that the Clones were taking roughly equal losses, but the Alliance troopers were outnumbered three to one and it must have been obvious to command that the defense battery was doomed.
Even so, no retreat order was given, which made sense despite Ens. Della’s terminal hysteria because if they and the other forces like them all around the planet didn’t find some way to triumph there would be no place to retreat to.
A few seconds after Lt. Mara had killed Ens. Della Capt. Komba had died, her little indicator flashing to red on Lt. Mara’s HUD, and suddenly her own element was expanded to include all surviving troopers from the entire command. It was a smaller force than she'd commanded at the outset… she was one of less than twenty survivors now.
She’d blown the head off one Clone then, and atomized the pelvis of another, a twinge of guilt accompanying the horrified expression of the young woman, her beautiful face indistinguishable from any of the girls under Lt. Mara’s command. She’d been told that the Combine Clones had no emotions, were more like machines than human beings, but watching the pain and fear in the eyes of the young Clone soldier as she spun away from the station, her dying body writhing is she spent the last few seconds of her life dying from vacuum exposure with her womanhood blown away, Lt. Mara knew that they’d lied to her. She’d just taken that young woman, who had sealed herself up in that humiliating, skintight suit knowing that she would die, and turned her death into a form of agonizing torture.
Fighting back the urge to vomit (a death sentence), Lt. Mara pulled out of her sweeping turn and ordered the dozen or so of her surviving charges to join her at the entrance to the battery.
“Remember why we’re fighting, ladies, and who we’re fighting for!” She shouted, hoping her brave words could counteract the demoralizing effect of Ens. Della’s defeatist talk, even as she pictured Laura’s beautiful face, her chestnut hair and stunning, silvery-blue eyes, and knew that she would never see her again.
At that moment Ens. Elvers issued an abortive scream as her center mass vaporized and she went spinning away in two halves. Lt. Mara whirled to see the Clone that had killed her wingmate, and the Clone’s four friends that were going to kill her as well.
Knowing that the Clone was doomed anyway, and seeing vaguely in her peripheral vision the last life-signs indicator from her final command go red, Lt. Mara raised her disintegrator and fired, coring the Clone that had killed Ens. Elvers before a beam tore through her helmet, missing her head by centimeters and sentencing her to death by vacuum exposure. She fired again, killing another of the hapless Clones, before the tears froze in her eyes and her ability to fight abruptly came to an end.
Her last conscious thought as her blood boiled and her body was wracked by an agony she could never have imagined, was that the bright glow she dimly perceived through her frozen eyes was the discharge of neutrino bombs on the planet’s surface, which meant that she and so many other girls like her had given their lives for nothing, and, more importantly, that Laura, if she was not already dead, would be soon. Despite the agony Lieutenant Zeratin Mara was glad that she would not live to be told of Laura’s death, and hoped that the afterlife promised by Laura’s beloved priestesses was real, and that beyond this agony fear and darkness she would be reunited with her true love.
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Wow! Did you write this to go along with my painting?! It's awesome!
I'm all smiley.
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I'm so glad you liked it, and yes, I did. Your piece really inspired me. I have a huge thing for space suit combat and your piece just hit all my buttons. I absolutely loved it. I took a look at some of your other work and I have to say that you are quite brilliant. This piece in particular made me think of my girlfriend
though she's a bit younger than my GF and her eyes are not quite the same colour, I'd imagine this is a lot what my GF would have looked like at my age, or maybe just a bit younger even. A really enchanting piece. I also loved this piece
which somehow perfectly evoked the mood of... well... a rainy evening in Venice even though it is quite non-representational. But then, capturing what neither words nor film can is what great art does.
I know I took some significant liberties with your piece and I'm glad what I wrote isn't distasteful to you. Sometimes my writing can get dark, erotic, extreme, and it certainly isn't everyone's cup of tea so I know I was taking liberties posting it here.... In any case, I'm thrilled you enjoyed it.
If you really enjoyed my little short story and want to read more like it, I'm afraid the theme of beautiful women dying in combat is something I've explored in my own art. Let me know and I'll refer you to a good "starter" piece for the short stories and vignettes I've been writing on the subject! Thanks again for creating these wonderfully evocative works, You're an amazing talent and I can't wait to see what comes next!
Hugs!
Eva
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It's awesome to hear when my paintings have inspired someone to this degree, so thank you SO much for sharing it all. I really appreciate it.
I will absolutely check out your work when I have some free time to really sink my teeth in. I enjoyed what you wrote, you're very talented.
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That's what you get for wearing such a fragile fishbowl helmet.
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Will she hit the ground before she sufficate? Untill next time on Critical Error
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Thanks so much! Glad you liked her
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She most definitely did.
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Thanks so much! Was fun to paint
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Why error?
"Transfer energy from weapon systems to life support!"
"Aye, captain!"
Easy as that.
That is an impressive picture with a rather unusual motif. I like it.
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Whew! So she'll be alright! I was worried.
Thanks so much, glad you liked it!
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Don't be afraid, universe is full of breathable air and it has nice room temperature.
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Whew, that's good to hear! I was worried.
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