Custom Ships

Thanks!
I start with Starship Symbols by Robert Pearce, Available at his Yet Another Traveller Blog website. The original version of the grid background is in his download section there, too.

Starship Symbols entry

I use the pdf version set at 178% magnification. I changed the file name to append 178 to the end of the name so I don't forget the setting.

Then I use PaintShopPro. I update mine whenever the Black Friday sales go under $35. Last time was 2022, when they bundled it with their Paint.
GIMP will work just fine. You want something that handles layers. Snapshot the piece you want, clean up the white around it and paste it in place. Use a separate layer for hull lines, so when you go pasting internals you aren't messing them up. Just goes under or over. Use several layers for Engineering so you can build up an interesting look.
For the ship images, either the ship designer in Galactic Civilizations III or screenshots from Elite Dangerous. The next one will use the ship designer from Galactic Civilizations IV.

Once you are done with the layers, save one copy with layers in case you find a mistake later and save another copy as a png.
 
Thanks!
I start with Starship Symbols by Robert Pearce, Available at his Yet Another Traveller Blog website. The original version of the grid background is in his download section there, too.

Starship Symbols entry

I use the pdf version set at 178% magnification. I changed the file name to append 178 to the end of the name so I don't forget the setting.

Then I use PaintShopPro. I update mine whenever the Black Friday sales go under $35. Last time was 2022, when they bundled it with their Paint.
GIMP will work just fine. You want something that handles layers. Snapshot the piece you want, clean up the white around it and paste it in place. Use a separate layer for hull lines, so when you go pasting internals you aren't messing them up. Just goes under or over. Use several layers for Engineering so you can build up an interesting look.
For the ship images, either the ship designer in Galactic Civilizations III or screenshots from Elite Dangerous. The next one will use the ship designer from Galactic Civilizations IV.

Once you are done with the layers, save one copy with layers in case you find a mistake later and save another copy as a png.
big fan of PSP myself. Do you make the white space transparent or do you just make sure they line up properly with the background?
 
Grid layer is the background layer. Pieces and hull lines (line tool) go on separate layers. Paste a shape, use magic wand on the outer white space, then delete. Reselect with box or lasso to move/rotate/resize.
 
The Mononoke 600 ton Stealthed Raider strikes suddenly from the shadows and retreats without a trace. With enhanced stealth, a concealed drive rated for 2 G's and stealthed Jump capable of traversing one parsec, a simple trader or remote backwater outpost has no advance warning of their impending doom. Meanwhile, its main drives can escape from all but military interceptors, and its J-3 can either traverse the expanses or carry a captured free trader, ensnared in its jump net, two parsecs away from the scene of the crime.
Mononoke 2.png

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So, speaking of mistakes, like around midnight last night I only counted half the bridge squares, 20 instead of 40. By saving the layers, it was easier to move everything over. Above image is now fixed.
And -D'Oh.
 
The great thing about Traveller is the infinite variety. There is an engineer/naval architect in every port absolutely convinced that they have the solution to every problem. In such an expansive populated areas of space, there have been millions of designs produced by such minds. Some of them may have suffered from the Dunning-Kruger Effect. This design may well be one of them.
After negotiating a contract for ten shuttles and instead receiving all ten Drop-Stack Shuttles without the benefit of design approval, the broker asked the lead design engineer what he was thinking.
Naval Architect Henry McCullough replied, "I don't know, I was really drunk at the time."

Drop-Stack Shuttle.png

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