'NOE Afterburner'

Phase: Beta Concept.
Medium: Pencil & blue line.
Chronostamp: Circa early 2000s

Lore:
A flight element of two FB-57D Strike Hammers (VF-899 War Horses), based on the airship battle carrier Sarnera (CVFA-42) in a high energy burn on the deck roaring between the twin islands of the Yalsol Republic's southern coastline. This mission required them to fly a nape of the earth infiltration profile in order to deliver their direct strike munitions, with maximum shock, onto inland enemy positions somewhere in the Northern Mountains.
This shot was captured by an inbound Marine Corp AV-28B Super Peregrine squadron that had just successfully engaged and destroyed enemy coastal ground defenses in that area of operations. The Hammers were cutting across the Peregine's previous flight path.



Personal:
Inspired by the Cold War era FB-111 Ardvarks of the USAF these Steel Hammers are advanced versions of the fighter bomber concept.
The rooster tails of water being thrown up by the energy wash is dramatized but just looks too cool to not have in there.

Discipline:
My focus for this illo was speed. When I was very young I had received several books about trains. One in particular had several pics of Japanese bullet trains or shinkansen. The picture that still stands out in my mind was a lateral shot that nearly captured a clear shot of the engine but the forest behind it was completely burred. That was the effect I wanted to capture here.
Contrasting the sharp images of the fighter bombers against the unclear blurred images of the water and passing islands hopefully makes the main focus (the aircraft) stand out.

Design Aspects:
These Steel Hammers have 4 supercruise tier 2, afterburning engines. You can't see it in this shot but in addition to the two on top of the wings there are two underneath as well. Unlike their fighter attack cousins the slightly larger fighter bombers were never intended to dogfight. Thus they were given much more speed to egress out of a potential air to air engagement and equipped with the latest in stealth, electronic & digital counter measures, as well as direct attack digital weapon systems (IE digital warfare in the form of hacking, viruses, etc to disable or destroy an enemy).

References:
FB-111 Ardvark, GR-1 Tornado, and MIG-27

Effects:
Blurring speed effects.
Eventually I'd like to apply this effect to the rooster tails and the aft end of the tactical aircraft to attempt to give more of the impression of speed. I think the effect has the potential to be applied to dogfight banking shots to communicate the heavy G forces and hopefully make people feel like they've been slammed into their seats and must hang on or be thrown off. Concussion shots could benefit from this effect as well to make people feel like they've just been hammered by a heavy shockwave from an explosion.