When I was designing this whole set, I said to myself, "You know, since this one is my last weapon ever for STO, let's make Destiny-style weapons." "Let's have fun." The core philosophy was to make them look both magical and luxurious, so I continued the design language I started with the ships, where you basically take a crystal and wrap it with tech. I like it so much that I'm actually considering 3d printing it.

As you can tell from the sketches, it was a fun project, but at the beginning we had no clear idea of where to go. It was decided to make a bunch of sketches in different directions hoping we could land on some interesting shapes and create our weapons' looks from there. The good thing is I created this whole look (Aetherean), so I was able to extrapolate very quickly and come up with some effective designs. This is why you shouldn't rush that early concept stage. Take your time and create a solid conceptual foundation so everything gets to be future-proof. As they say, "measure twice, cut once".