Now that would feed one of me or 150 sparrows!!
Yes, it is very silly that space ship inspiration can come from anywhere, and with me it usually starts with food!!! Working at Paramount is like living on an Island! A high walled fortress surrounded by gangs, ghettos and a huge cemetery that has family movie night on Saturdays. IMAGINE THAT!!!! Just hope they don’t play Dawn of the Dead or Night of the Zombies!! HAAA! It is really the last survivor of what once was a very nice and posh area; now it stands alone, situated in an extremely nasty area. There are two outside restaurants to walk to if you dare, or they have a shuttle that takes you far from the studio where it is safe to get some lunch! A couple of miles away; however, is one of the original Arby’s that often would call to me like a siren around 11:00 everyday…I would try, but couldn’t always cut out the sweet songs trying to pull me away from the safety of the lot and out into the rocks for a delicious, giant, mouth watering, Roast Beef Sandwich, Potato Cake and a soda!!!! MMMMMMMMMMMMM-MMMMMMM!!! Anyway, it was a big day. There were some new Xindi ships to draw up, and I was running out of new spaceship shapes to draw with. So to refresh my mind I went to Arby’s, got my tray of goods and was lunching outside…before I had even opened my sandwich, a parade of Sparrows landed with in inches of my lunch waiting for a hand out!!! Looking at these little fellas as they ate my fries gave me a quick new idea. I raced back to the office and threw a few sketches together, and by the end of the day had a new ship to check off the list. Here are those nutty sketches and also the second Xindi ship drawn up for Episode 74, “The Council”. This was a big show and will have to be a two part post to get everything up for you to see. Included in today’s is the hidden mountain base for where the Xindi Council Chamber was hidden. I am off to Comicon this afternoon so I’ll be off the blog till Monday, so tell jokes and stories amongst yourselves, and I’ll try to chime in once in a while if I can!! OK have a great weekend everybody!! And thanks for stopping by.
The Arby's on Sunset
pass #1
Pass #2 & 3
and the final sketch.
and here is the final color pass,,
this is the second ship called for from the script, and it was a lucky one and went thru approval on the first pass!!!! WOOO-Weee that doesn't happen often
camo pass #1
& camo pass #2 inspired by the paint schemes of the Messerschmitt Bf 109
the bf-109
xindi council concept 1
pass #2, love when we got to make ruins in the side of rock faces!
and the final.
Eavesdropping with Johnny 
Rejoice citizens! He hath returned!
Outstanding drawings John. I was wondering, do you have any special training or experience that helps with the city/landscape drawings? I ask because on Tim Earls’ site it mentions his experience in architecture and I get the feeling from your work that you might have a similar background.
Thanks for all this cool stuff.
Hey Barrie, are you going to be at the con????
I’m afraid not as the cost of travelling out of the UK is something I can only do once every couple of years and I’m saving up to visit my Dad in the Phillipines.
If you manage to make it to the UK this year, I’d definitely come down and would consider it an honour to meet you.
Same here, if you ever end up in the UK for some reason be sure to let us know!
Aberdeen (Scotland) is a nice place!
Beautiful work but your first picture has sure made me hungry! Thanks for putting these up for us. Have fun at Comic Con. I’ve never been to it but I hear its a blast. One of these days I will have to check it out.
Hope you enjoy the con and have a great weekend.
Thanks and I made myself hungry too!
Too bad there wasn’t ever a space station inspired by the Arby’s roast beef sandwich itself. I hate to admit it but I lurrrrrrve those sodium-fueled artery cloggers!
Have a great time at Comicon!
Tis a great idea!!!! HAAA!
Or maybe inspired by the big hat!! 🙂
Ahh crap… I hate when I mix up the sites that require BBCode and the ones which use HTML! Grr. 🙂
I don’t know what your talking about!
BBCode uses code like this for italics: [i]this is in italics[/i]
Your site (and all WordPress blogsites AFAIK) use good ol’ HTML: this is in italics
and I used BBCode to emphasize how much I lurrrrve Arby’s Roast Beef sandwiches.
(p.s. I wanna a screen credit if you ever design a space station that uses this idea! :D)
Scott, your original post is fixed. 🙂
I use i instead of em for italics here, so I just changed it to the arrows.
Thanks, John. Now I want a roast beef sandwich…and it’s not even 9a.m. yet!!
I love the inspiration of the sparrow, though. Great work, as always! It’s amazing where inspiration is found.
You’re going to be at Comic-Con? Gah! I knew I should have tried to get some passes this year…I’m in San Diego too, how pathetic is that?! Ah well…have a good time! Take lots of pictures.
hey send me your # and maybe we can meet up for dinner or something!
You have a message waiting for you via Myspace, John.
Always loved the xindi ships, with each race havng a different design ethos so to speak. The small shuttle you posted was one of my favourites. Any chance of Pierre´s usual magic?
Sadly i don’t have much from Pierre with these ships,,,, If you give Doug Drexler ago I am sure he could bully Pierre into surrounding more goods!
Thanks, I will!
I’m glad that even the best designers come to a point where they’re looking around the room for unusual shapes to draw inspiration from. 😉
I don’t really remember the sparrow ship from the episode, which is unusual for me. Judging from the screencaps it wasn’t seen very close up, though? I bet you could find a lot of cool shapes looking at dinosaur heads as well. You did have a triceratops ship once, I think?
I liked this before, but even more now! Cute little bird ship!! 🙂 I can really see the shape in the ship now, and it is always fun to hear your stories of gastronomic and other inspirations.
See if the coin guy you told me about is at Comicon this year and look for Firefly stuff. Some pictures of the neato stuff available would be fun! 🙂
Both ship look great. but I love that second one ever since I saw it.
I love the different concepts for the xindi council chambers. the final version is my fav as it looks the oldest.
BTW you got a hugh UK following including myself. So if work or something else bring you over to our fair shores, there would be a bunch of us that would be honoured to meet you.
Have a great time at the CON.
Mmmm! Love me some Arby’s potato cakes! They took them away for a short time because they claimed that sales were not good enough to warrant them having them. I think they must have nearly had a riot on their hands because it wasn’t too much later that they brought them back. I always love hearing what inspires you on your designs. This one is a classic! I believe this is Degra’s ship?
The Aviary Xindi location is priceless! I love the architecture and how it’s built into the rock face.
I’ve been out to Paramount 2 times and both times, I had the same feeling, John. The first time I was there, I was shocked. Once you get inside the gates, it’s like a completely different world. The 2nd time was when I was out there in May this year. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to go on the lot as security there is about as tight as Fort Knox. The friend I was visiting used to be a stuntwoman during DS9 and Voyager and even she couldn’t get in! We visited the cemetary behind the studio, which I’m convinced is 90% Russian mafia members when you look at all the monuments built for them back there. 😀 Got to see where ol’ Rudy Valentino’s final resting place is and even Don Adams. The Don Adams marker made me sad because he seemed like a loveable guy. I loved Get Smart and Inspector Gadget!
Have fun at Comicon!! 🙂
If a hamburger and an olive was inspiration for the Millenium falcon why cant a sparrow and an Arbys sandwich inspire other ship shapes.
The sparrow ship has a neat lifting body shape.
Mmmmmmmm, those potato cakes esp.! With some Horsey Sauce on ’em! Oh, must have some Arby’s now!
Great stuff dude, always interesting to hear to source tales, eh. And danger tales as well in this case! Queue the Danger Music as John bravely sets forth on the potentially perilous jaunt to Arby’s! Sound like growing up in Chicago, eh. And great to see the über-cool results that came forth from your courage and hunger for Arby’s tummy goodies. :9
Have a blast at KAHN!!!!!!!!!!!!!
LLP,
deg