A study of a modern-day stoneyard I saw during a walk, done to develop the context of Off The Books
Off The Books is a world me and a friend have been working on for a very, very long time — since 2016, in fact — and we have practically reinvented every single facet of it at least three times each. It is a soft science-fiction world that hosts far, far more than what meets the eye. Slung into an interstellar era by a variety of exotic materials, precursor technology, and alien races alike, the broad factions of OTB all compete to understand and harness the things about the universe that can never be truly understood.
The world itself is a rather conventional space-science fiction world, but the underworld of it is where those rules are thrown out the window. Practically anything goes when it's off the books; besides, who's gonna find out about it, anyways?
The primary focus of this world is to focus on the people that're naturally swept under the rug by most settings of similar scope. Instead of ace star-pilots, bigwig dictators, spacebound ronin, and renegade salvagers, we intend to focus on the small-fry. People that keep low and slow, or people that maybe nobody wants anyone to find out about.
Normal people. Low-grade mercenaries, people signed off on lifelong contracts to corporations that don't even know their faces. Freighter crews. Explorers in dark sectors. Anyone who might have a chance at being the first to find something they were well-and-truly never meant to find.
At the moment, Off The Books is in a very protean stage of development. The direction and focus of the world is rather new despite the broad strokes dating back to 2016.
Study 1 for mechanical art direction of OTB
Study 2; ditto to previous
Study 3 of a spacecraft
Study 4 of a hoverbike
The Mniminsoo, a species of enormous, quadrupedal slug-people that breathe poison
A Mniminsoo outcast that now serves as a mercenary for hire
