Art Major? I guess that's me. I don't just do 3D stuff, but I paint landscapes, still life and interior scenes in a sorta rennaiscance/Dutch style, using acrylic on board. I sell quite a few too, and have just received a commission for 10 paintings. I studied art history too. I earned my right to say what I say the hard way.
I can't understand why having brightly painted or beautiful ships is such a problem. Wind back to WWII. You'd think this era would just produce practical, serviceable aeroplanes that merely fulfilled an operational requirement. And yet we have some beautiful aircraft... who can say that the P51 wasn't beautiful, or the B-17, or the Spitfire, and yet they were made purely as 'tools'. And look how they painted them - look at the German ME-109's with bright yellow noses, the nose art of the bombers, the pale blue hi-alt reconnaisance aircraft, and the B-24 Liberators that were painted as formation lead aircaft, spots and stripes in every conceivable colour! Battleships painted with mad zigzag patterns, I could go on with example after example, but you get the picture. Of course they accumulate a patina with use, and it's good to depict this too.
We don't live an world designed by beaurocrats, engineers and accountants. Hands up anyone who wants to live in that world?! It's already been tried, in Eastern Europe, where I just happen to live. It's a crushing, soul-destroying, oppressive, grey, bleak, inhuman experience. How did that experiment turn out, BTW?
There's every indication that the future won't be that way either. Witness the design of the computer - must it always be a soulless beige box, designed down to a cost? No - we have visionaries like Johnathon Ives at Apple, producing luscious designs that inspire the users, and the imitators. No loss of function - there's no reason not to have great design AND function. It's a human thing... why else would car manufacturers plough gazillions of dollars into designing cars?
Rant mode off...
