Bella's OS-tan Artwork Thread

[Bella]

That's such a cute card, it looks great for the era.  Like a Lincoln Labs Christmas card.

Thanks! But now that you mention it, missed opportunity to throw a Lissajous Curve into the design somewhere...

Since PDP-tan (re)designs came up in the other thread, color concept sketches I did of them. Minus VAX-tan. [nudges]. The original and a sliiiiiiiightly updated version since I'd like to incorporate more white into their clothing. (Running with an idea I have about white accents/trim being a good way to unify different color schemes.)






A few other notes about design language:

• Gave the 18-bit branch buns, blonde hair and blue eyes both to tie them to their eldest sister, PDP-1-tan, and visually tie them to their relatives (Whirlwind & MTC, and SAGE by association). PDP-9-tan got color-flipped between her mom(s) (?) hair/eye colors.
• The 12-bit line is meant to look rounder, curlier and generally approachable owing their friendly reputation as the earliest home computers (LINC was the first computer in a home). Unfortunately PDP-8-tan's hair color is recessive so it doesn't show up in any of hers' and LINC-tan's kids. (Pending some wizardry with LINC/8-tan's design.)
• The 36-bit line are much taller than the others as mainframes, but also nimble and lanky as more scientific/networking/timesharing-oriented machines vs. their muscular batch processing cousins.
• PDP-11-tan is flippier and angular looking, and more of a traditional office lady type than her PDP-8 cousins. But still pretty approachable (influenced home computers).

Feeling masochistic, might try to redesign all the PDP-based OS-tans next.

[Bella]

And the DEC operating systems!

Fullsize

Sorted roughly into "families", by the hardware model the OS originated or was popularized on. I tried to give each grouping a coherent visual identity in-line with the depiction of their hardware.

Notes/changelog:

• OS/8-tan (and by extension MS/8 & MENU-8) have orange hair now to fit in better with the PDP-8 family.
• RAMP-tan is styled after MTS-tan but more in line with the PDP-8 color scheme.
• SCPSYS-tan is sort of like LINC-tan mapped with PDP-8-tan's colors.
• WAITS-tan has a robot arm now. Unsure whether I want it to be a power armor piece or prosthetic.
• ITS-tan is one of the biggest overhauls here. Envisioning her as a bit more of a hippie type than before. I'll probably get around to re-writing a proper bio for her at some point.
• Same with TENEX-tan. Decided to model her more closely after her parents (?) BBNTSS-tan and BTSS-tan (who herself will likely be overhauled to incorporate more gold/yellow) and FASTRAND-kun, as well as incorporating terra cotta into her color scheme to match the DECSYSTEM-20 appearance.
• I felt that Ultrix-tan's color scheme was a bit nondistinct and disjoint with the other Unices so I switched it up.

[stewartsage]

Beat me to posting again even though I had all that time....

Probably not a bad time.  There's definitely more information out there on a lot of the DEC systems, even if we thought there was everything we needed years ago.  Yes, yes, VAX-tan.  You've heard my ideas about her, but I'll post them in my thread sometime soon.

I love the family connection's you've drawn between the different groups!  Probably not a surprise that the LINC-line is my maybe my favorite, the green outfits with dark hair is very striking, as is -12's green eyes.  -10 looks like she stole that outfit off a Boston & Maine locomotive.  All the small blondes are very cute.

All the creamsicley PDP-8 related OSes have really nice color palette.  RAMP looks fantastic!  Good combination of PDP-8 as one mom and MTS as the other.  Gotta compress quite a bit into that frame. That's a good take for SCPSYS, really fits how she was designed.  I think I need to expand/spruce up her characterization tbh, I feel like I left it thinner than it should be. 

WAITS-san......


TENEX's dual-tone hair is cool.  Honestly forgot MUMPS was a nurse.  Oh look, she's there to keep the saddest time-sharing OS from just falling over.  I like to think BBNTSS-tan is comparing herself to the rest with that side-eye.  DOS and RT-11 look like they're gonna beat me up.  RSX-11's coat and bell bottoms combo is baller.  I'm glad UNIX is miserable to be here.  Where on earth is there VAXELN information kept?  Is VMS here to take my order?  LOL.  ULTRIX very fluffy, very nice.