Ship Volant

Son of Witz · 17 Feb 2009, 19:37 · from 2009-February.txt.gz

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From: sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org (Son of Witz)
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2009 19:37:58 +0000
Subject: (urth) Ship Volant
Message-ID: <W9896619235325951234899478@webmail44>

yeah, we had discussed this over curry.
You're right about Severian not having been on Tzadkiel's ship as of that writing.  Using the rising angle is not a bad idea at all, that's how some birds are depicted in Heraldry sites that mention Volant or "rising"

Jordon, did the idea of the ship looking like a rose come from my crappy sketch of it, which did have a rose quality, or did you picture that before?

Isn't there some point where Severian is horrified looking at some painting or depiction of a ship?  what was that?

Re: Ad-Astra,

Interesting points about wings.  Those ships look very Battlestar Galactica to me, probably technically "realistic". I think why I'm attracted to illustrating this novel is that it "looks" nothing like Space Sci Fi. Even Tzadkiel's ship has wood and sails and rigging. While the ship is a solar sailer, it doesn't seem to look like our modern renderings, somehow it looks like a 7 sided hull with masts coming off from EVERY angle. I think he literally meant a sort of mylar fabric, sheetlike sail with rigging, and not, say, hard solar panels such.

thanks,
~witz

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Jordon Flato [mailto:jordonflato at gmail.com]
>Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2009 11:15 AM
>To: 'The Urth Mailing List'
>Subject: Re: (urth) Ship Volant
>
>I think we talked about this before, but I am of the firm opinion that it
>should not attempt to look like Tzadiels ship at all.  First off, Sev,
>writing Book of the New Sun, hadn't been on Tzadkiel's ship yet.  And as you
>said, if one just saw a representation of it, it wouldn't at all look like
>anything someone on Urth would call a ship.  So I think we can write off the
>idea that it is to look like Tzadkiel's ship at all (although I've always
>liked to think that if one looked at The Ship from far enough away, it's
>seven sided and many sailed silloutte might look a bit like a rose....)
>
>And, as coats-of-arms are made of symbols and not literal figures, I would
>think a traditional ship would be what is depicted.
>
>Volant?  To me, I simply picture an upward tilted profile of a ship.  Or a
>ship straight on with it's prow tilted upward to indicate that it's rising
>(which would work either profile or head on).  On the sea, ships aren't
>normally at that angle, so it would indicate 'flying' to me.
>
>-Jordon
>

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