Designing a Fictional Airship 

    I'm at a point in my book where an airship is needed but at a loss for how it will appear. It's my intent to browse through other fictional airships for inspiration and design my own. 

    Apparently real life airships are lighter than air crafts filled with lifting gas. Helium is preferred as it is nonflammable. We're going to deviate to more fantasy designs which give the freedom to be whimsical and not worry about practicality. When searching on the internet I had to add "fictional" to find what I was after.

    There are many styles I could go for. From a steam punk machine with gears and smoke to an elegant, colorful machine like the ship used in Final Fantasy X. Final Fantasy games frequently feature airships and are a great place to go for inspiration. There are many factors to consider. Is it a grungy weapon of war? Appealing commercial flight? Does it use propellers, balloons or rocket engines? Or wings even? How large and so on. We need background and history.

    In this case the airship is of military use, designed in my fictional dimension of TriCora. TriCora is a pocket dimension where various races that have slipped through the fabric of reality end up as it is the point of least resistance. They take great artistic pride in their craftsmanship. My airship is also carved from the giant trees of Harpe Forest. As such I want the airship to not look ultra futuristic but rather artistic with propellers and crystals serving magical functions. 

    I'll continue this in the next post with some sketches. Things like this are easiest divided into simple shapes then later added details.