Ok sorry, I didn’t look at your blend file before posting my previous comment…
I was thinking to a variation of roughness with a bit of glossy, like an old metal material.
And for this kind of metal material, it can be really nice.
But your idea of contrast is a good one, it’s nice to have those different materials.
As it is, it doesn’t look wrong to me at all.
And, I tried a bit to vary the roughness, but no nice result… I prefer what you’ve done.
The blend is if somone want to have more info than that I provided you dont have to look at it so no need to apologise. Plus I probably learned somthing in the process, I said not a lot to learn not nothing at all.
I don’t used a glossy node on the external material of the sphere aint on the vinyl text but you can actualy make some effect of variation on velvet too. I used it on my previouse project but dont realy plan to use it there, aint maybe in the geometry edge once the next verssion of blender is out. But it’s hard to say if it will render well before testing especialy as there will probably not be a lot of tutorial since the node will be new.
I did nothing in blender today but I will try to add some vinyl tomorow if I manage to paint the texture I have in mind for the two external canons, and find how to uv them properly.
Aparently I lost my pen pressure in photoshop so it will probably not be for today.
It’s mainly finished. the only thing that I’m not happy with is the reflection in the ceramic part around the power core that reflect stangely and definitly wrongly. I tryed diferent thing to solve this problem but inset and additional edge loop both failed me. I have no clue where it come from, plus I want to keep this shape and the bevel is suposed to avoid these promblem if i anderstand well.
I can simply switch to the original light pading material that I used here befor the ceramic one as it’s not reflective it will probably look ok. Anyway if someone know how to fix it with keeping the geometry shape, I’ll be happy to keep the ceramic material.
I may come back to this model and try to add some worn mark on the ceramic when blender 7.4 is out. I dont realy see the point on doing it now as it will probably be easier then and isent realy essential anyway as si-fi ceramic can be argued to be pretty tuff.
Any other critic is welcome.
I’ll probably will try to use some space background when I consider the model totaly finished as I’m too lasy to try to build an urban environment to put it in situation right now.
The drawing doodle from where I started.
I know it’s not realy acurate and I added some things. It was a starting point as, for some reason, I like it. It started as a pencil shading exercise I made for myself long ago. I figured somthing with a lot of rounded surface will be good for this purpose so I drawed this. As you can see, I realy need to improve my shading, above other things. 
The .blend
http://www.pasteall.org/blend/35249
I made an image of the drones in action. The background was made in postwork in 2d using a radial blur on a hubble space image from NASA. I guessed it will provide acurate space colors this way.
I made it mostly to have something to show more than just the model, it’s not that sofisticated. I hope it’s at least watchable.
I wanted to rework this drone and can’t fint it ( I m pretty sure I deleted it O_o)
If anyone downloaded the last version and can post a link I will apreciate it.
