My primary inspiration for the look of the spacecraft were the designs of Syd Mead for Alien and Aliens, particularly the USS Sulaco. As I didn't intend the film clip to portray any special narrative, I did not work out a detailed back story for it. However I imagined the vessel as being a civilian freighter, with the gun turrets presumably to defend against piracy.

The unnamed planet in the background is simply a sphere primitive onto which I had mapped a fractal noise pattern. It's cloudy atmosphere was a slightly larger sphere placed around it, again using fractals to generate the patterns, but this time with a transparency channel to allow the surface beneath to show through in places. Some additional glow effects were added later in the compositing phase.

Overall I'm pleased with what i achieved here and it took less than two weeks of my spare time. However I now feel the ship has an unnecessarily 'boxy' appearance and if I repeat this exercise in the future I will try to make use of use some more complex shapes.