Scene: The Milky Way Cruise

This retro-style postcard mimics the vintage ocean liner ads and posters, the ultimate holiday postcard to send back home! The Milky Way liner features the classic space colours, and the distinctive shape of an old cruise ship, with the addition of warp engines and a couple of wings (made of dinosaur jaws). I love how the old posters use two shades of colour to give the hull a very simple three-dimensional vibe, so I tried to achieve the same effect with blue and dark blue wedges. The Galactic disk in the background is rather blocky, similar to the low-resolution images from radiotelescopes, though I have coloured the star-forming regions with their characteristic magenta colour due to the ionised hydrogen emission lines. A collection of stars in different colours shows their surface temperatures, ranging from colder (red) to hotter (white). Finally, the frame recalls that of international mail... surely interstellar postcards fall in that category. :)