Nose Art

The Manifold Sky setting is rife with dieseltech vehicles of all sorts, ranging in sizes from the humble motorcycle and auto-armor to the massive airship and mobile remote operations base. Despite the best efforts of military commanders and corporate overlords to promote such machines as impersonal, expendable appendages to the more valuable operators inside, drivers persist in desiring some way to make their personal rigs stand out from the crowd. Nose art is the natural product of this desire.

History

'Nose art' is any piece of art placed around the anterior extent of a (typically military) vehicle or suit of auto-armor that primarily serves to enhance the aesthetic appeal of the vehicle or otherwise distinguish it from its peers through pictographic (as opposed to alphanumerical) means. Nose art is typically distinguished from standardized idenification codes, nation-state emblems, or symbology related to function or regulations (i.e. cargo bullseyes) in that it serves no purpose other than as a piece of aesthetic embellishment that is most likely unique to the vehicle itself.
While the practice of using ritualistic or aesthetic embellishments on one's personal armor or mount extends back into prehistoric times - examples including the rostran dexai as-osang and painted armos nonengu - the term 'nose art' initially arose in the Manifold Sky's aerospace industries. Such decorations would be applied around an aircraft's nose more often than any other part of the vehicle, hence the name.
Over time, as auto-armor came to be a common type of war machine and armored units began to share unit cultures with the air crews which deployed them in farflung cubes, the practice of decorating one's personal vehicle beyond the typical photos or trinkets on the displays spread to those armored units. At the same time, retiring pilots and mechanics would develop a fondness for their 'signature' nose art and apply it to their civilian vehicles, marking a deviation from the staid single-color-and-chrome livery found on vehicles of the era.
While the need for camouflage has grown in importance in the modern battlespace, nose art has persisted as a traditional morale booster and as a creative medium in its own right.

Execution

Each culture in the Manifold Sky setting has a type of nose art that it favors over other types:

In the various human cultures, images of attractive women and various animalistic features (i.e. a wolf's muzzle overlaid over a vehicles intake ports or weaponry) are the most common motifs. As with all things artistic, the Voxelians take a great deal of pride in executing the most eye-catching nose art possible. However, as the War of Reunification between Voxelia and the Coalition of Breakaway Colonies is ongoing, the more practical concerns of camouflage and ease of maintenance take precedent for ground vehicles and auto-armor. For ground-based machines, nose art for front-line units is typically executed in the same hues and values as whatever camouflage applies to the environment; this has the added benefit of making the art easily reproducible through grayscale prints as one might recieve through print services or RadNet tele-image signals.

In the Rostran Arc, nose art tends to be more geometric and abstract in nature, often evoking ritual sigils, birds, and aquatic motifs of all types. The heightened senses of Rostrans make camouflage less useful in their eyes - indeed, in regions like the Red Velvet Desert especially, visibility may be rendered completely moot by environmental conditions. Sacred Eudoxium inlays and metal leaf coatings are common. Many Rostran nose artists are connected to the Rostran Esotericist faith, with some Hierophants' acolytes using their artistic talents to lay the blessings of Ixaumosana and Ixeunvatio upon the equipment of the RACMF in the hopes of the soldiers' safe return.

Among the verdial peoples, nose art is somewhat less common, the various fruits of the dieseltech revolution (and thus the practice of decorating vehicles) having come to the verdials later than among other cultures. Verdial nose art tends to revel in abstraction and natural motifs in equal measure and is often considered an extension of the of the Forgist Deco art movement. Semi- and quarter-circle elements are combined with long parallel lines to create the shapes of leaves, mushroom caps, and layered stratocumulus clouds. Autumn colors are preferred when camouflage is not the primary requirement for the vehicle - as opposed to ambushers like the CB-1c "Brushaxe" Auto-Armor Destroyer - though it remains viable within Petalcap Vale itself due to the proliferation of orange-hued megafungus species.

Participants

Nose art may be applied by the owner or pilot of the vehicle, a mechanic, or a painter commissioned specifically for the purpose of creating such art. Later, when a vehicle is decommissioned or sold on the secondary market, the nose art that goes with it may itself appeal to collectors and becomes a sort of mobile portfolio piece for the artist. Whole and partial pieces of nose art associated with important personages or historical events fetch high prices at auction from collectors, historians, and museum representatives.
Organizations, such as the Manifold Conservation Society Defense Bureau, may set standards for what may or may not appear in nose art in the same manner that they may set uniform standards. For example, in the progressive Commonwealth of C, depictions of women in suggestive poses are considered to violate uniform standards among auto-armor crews, while the Hive City Royals require some kind of flashy red-and-gold embellishment as a means of drawing attention to themselves instead of whomever they have been hired to protect. Like with all forms of art, nose artists tend to balk at such strictures and revel in 'toeing the line' with their creations - especially as many of these artists are adjacent to industries full of macho, adventuresome personalities.

Observance

Nose art may be incremental in nature, expanding and changing in response to the exploits of a given vehicle's operators. For example, an Avarix Corps pirate airship often has a patch of the envelope skin that slowly fills with skulls as the crew successfully completes heists, while Navigator's Guild nose art features the navigator rank insignia (as found on their uniform and a cube emblem for each cube layer visited in pursuit of the much-respected titles of Courtier of Ironies and Seeker of Misfortune.