Avalanche 9000
The biggest upgrade to the Avalanche blockchain
All aboard? Can everyone please buckle in. We’re going to the moon.
The idea behind the Avalanche 9000? A spaceship with many compartments—some that even hold whole other universes. The main spaceship is like an ark. And each pod is attached to the main spaceship. As the mothership hyperjumps through space and time, so do all the pods. That’s kind of what Avalanche 9000 is. Explore more of what it really is here.
I’ve been secretly wanting to make this epic spaceship for ages. I wanted to call the project Intergalactic Space Boats, and riff off of IPFS (interplanetary filesystem). It didn’t take me long to connect the brief with my spaceship idea.
Connecting ideas to briefs.
With the idea plucked from the past and connected to a present project, I took an afternoon to sketch the idea in Procreate. I’ve illustrated rockets, spaceships, and mechanical things before, but nothing at this size and detail. It ended up being bigger than A2.
The original Sketch in Procreate.
One of the biggest decisions I needed to make was to include the 2 Happy Suns in a realm above, or to include a big one at the bottom.
This is the biggest project I’ve created in Procreate. Because of this, I hit layer limits early and needed to use Photoshop to compile all the layered elements together. I needed to merge layers, use the selection tool, and alpha locks rather than clipping masks. I also duplicated docs so I could work on separate elements without needing to merge layers.
Because of the layer limit, I did the gradients after each colour section. This actually gave me a lot more context for additional colour choices. I think if I’d worked in my usual way it would have taken a lot longer. The layer limits helped me speed up my work flow.
There were some new things I tried, and want to explore more of:
- The rainbow glow from the port and starboard portals.
- Geometric patterns.
- The glow on several elements, like the rocket flames, and Avalanche 9000 billboard.
There are, of course, some things I’d like to change and explore more of, but meeting deadlines is something I pride myself in. This project needed to be turned around quick.
Avalanche 9000 Procreate timelapse.
Notable links
- On Bēhance.
- I made a big X thread on the creation process of this piece.
