Moebius

Moebius or Jean Giraud is one of the great Belgian cartoon artists. According to the wikipedia article, he already started working in the 60'ties and is primarily known for his Blueberry series and wierd sci-fi stuff.
Besides cartoons, he's been involved in the designs for sevaral sci-fi movies, most noteably "The 5th Element", is mentioned as a major source of inspiration for the original Starwars trillogy, and I furthermore suspect that the Homeworld universe and much of what we otherwise label "Japanese" spaceship design owes him a great deal.

In my opinion, his greates strenght lies in architecture and a perfect balance between cleanness and greeble, from a Lego spaceship perspective however, he has an unfortunate tendency toward either organic and curved designs that are hard to replicate, or very basic shapes that make his stand-alone designs (crafts) balance on a knife-edge between boring and iconic.
However his restrained use of detailing with greeble, texture and colour often saves the day.

These tendencies will be explored in the pictures below: So far they're all from Jodorowsky and his "John Difool"/"Incal series" and I've included a reference to album and page number (Danish version) so you'll be able to buy a copy or refer to it correctly if you wish to use any of these as inspiration for space models (the full titles behind the abbreviations are written out in the list at the bottom of the page).

As usual, you can click the pictures to see a larger versions.

Although early in the John Difool/Incal series, this picture really show the artist's grasp of depth and organic architecture. The use of birds is a classic way to increase the feeling of vertigo, something that I've tried to use in both my Hearse and Busstop artworks

While basic shapes often end up boring, they also hold the promise of truly iconic qualities, like the combined Incals as a spaceship. His patched texture with yellow and orange highlights is also very bold.

Here's an example of basic design - a fungi in space. I can't decide if I like it or not, but it does surely have iconic potential.

Not a very interesting design, but as Moebius will prove time after time, it's the details and surroundings that make a craft realistic: With such a cool background and stuffed with people, how could it look anything but basic in the most practical way?

With slightly curvy lines and a pinch of details and variation, he often seem able to make even a box look cool

Much care has obviously been put into the arrangement of station, ships, laser beams and white engine tracers.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Homeworld crew had been very much inspired by Moebius work.

The two general design trends in Moebius' work: the basic geometric shape and the curved organic one.
Unfortunately the first approach often end up pretty boring when it comes to lego while the latter will often be way too much trouble for the gain.

This picture show Moebius' perfect grasp of interiour details and innovative greeble. I especially like the probe-arms above the guy.

The only problem is that he tend to allow himself vast interiour space for such that is usually a very expensive luxury when it come to lego models.

Roughly contemporary with the original Starwars trillogy, it's not hard to guess where Moebius has found the inspiration for this space station.

While the previous space station design relied heavily on a clean, simple shape, this one is much more self-concious, evil-looking and able to support much busier detailing.

The organic shapes and long pointy antennas/spires of these crafts give me a strong "Rocket Ship"-vibe, however, the detailing, and the shape-variations away from the inflated blimp or zeppeliner really make these ships...

There's inspiration for an entire faction in this little picture...

Although I'm sure that both the gun picture angle is strongly inspired by some of the large Death Star guns from Starwars, possibly with a pinch of Slave I, this design simply scream "innovative masterpiece!" by departing from the usual "a gun is something with a long round barrel"-blundering, and by it's sheer black shiny hotness!
This is how a sci-fi gun is supposed to look like: with a shape dictated by wierd sci-fi technology we don't know about yet!

Succesfully combining the existing cool shape of grashoppers with perfect detailing, these small crafts are simply too hot to touch!

I'd be tempted to label this layout and detailing style Japanese, as it's precisely what I admire about Mecha inspired crafts: however, the comic book was already published in 1983, so I'd be inclined to believe that the inspiration went the opposite way(!)

Another example of Moebius' love of basic designs: Bubbles with a small floor for airborne attack!

Too bad he's overdone the detailing a bit so they're hard to make out.

The tank itself isn't particularly interesting, but the turretless gun is a nice variation on the barrel-style gun.

Another example of great detailing and texture: The ships might be fairly limited colourwise, but the greebles look very functional, and after all .- would you expect spaceship designers to colourcode vital ...?

Another unorthodox gundesign: If you have some kind of wierd reactor and emitter technology, you may not need a barrel at all!

If you're really using a laser, all you need is basically optical fibers and mirrors, not turrets and barrels...

With a fairly boring drop-shape, what really make this design work is the detailing and slightly protruding airlock.

John Difool: Alejandro Jodorowsky & Moebius/Jean Guirad:

JD1: John Difool 1: L'Incal Noir. 1981
JD2: John Difool 2: L'Incal Lumière. 1982
JD3: John Difool 3: Ce qui est en bas. 1984
JD4: John Difool 4: Ce qui est en haut. 1985
JD5: John Difool 5: La Cinquieme Essence, Partie 1. 1988
JD6: John Difool 6: La Cinquieme Essence, Partie 2. 1989