correct direction and approved design
rear view,,, or is it the front view???
profiles
top and bottom
fly-N to the left
fly-N to the right!
By popular demand here are the ships of Insurrection, Today’s ship is Ruoffo’s flag ship and the most controversial design I have ever had to deal with on all of the Star trek films. This ships scale stayed fairly consistent, and the on going argument was which way do she go! The ship itself is based on a horseshoe flying forks forward. the internals were based on the Grand Piano over on the scoring stage. I was watching Jerry Goldsmith score First Contact and looking in that piano inspired the main detailing on all of the Sona vessels. In the first group of drawings you’ll see the ortho’s and the color rendering showing the ship flying in the original designed direction. the final sketch shows what direction the ship wound up going!!! overall it didn’t really make a big difference,, That is being that that was over 10 years ago, so my sadness has faded. HAAAA!!!! Tomorrow will be the Sona Battleship and hopefully the new larger ship scales.. OK Have a great Wednesday!
Eavesdropping with Johnny 
Oh, I love it. This is definately amongst the best Trek designs.
They should make another TNG movie with the Son’a, just to show of these awesome designs in much better detail.
Hmm. I think both directions have their merits. Traveling to the right the forks look like a tail, like on some kind of ray, which works quite well. But the other way makes the forks appear as aggressive looking pincer type things, which probably makes more sense since the Son’a turned out to be evil. Either way it’s a distinctive design.
It does work either way!!! which is funny!
Wow, this is amazing. I see details I never recognized from the VHS, like the way the nacelles are mounted.
Thanks for posting these John!
You know that with this army of nerd-minions at your service, you could post anything you want and it would probably get modeled 😉
VHS!!!!! That’s an old word,,,Haaaa! I had this one on the gigantic laser Disc!!!
Nerd Minions,!!!! Haaa-Haaa you nut! I hope to be able to do some 3d modeling one day too.
I absolutely love the design of the Son’a ships and this one has always been my favorite. Thanks for the cool shots!
Thanks and I wish they would have had more screen time and closer shots!!!
“Popular” and “Insurrection,” two words you don’t often see in a sentence together. 8)
HAAAA! that’s so true!!!
I think Insurrection doesn’t get the credit it deserves. It’s my favorite TNG movie. It has an unusual villain race, it has fine action, a VERY good score by Jerry Goldsmith, and stuff like the Riker maneuver or the final showdown aboard the collector with Picard fighting Rua’fo, Worf throwing some punches and Riker fighting that command ship, those are great scenes.
Nemesis somehow manages to bleed onto Insurrection’s reputation, in my opinion. If Nemesis had been a success, Insurrection would be seen as what it is: a light and fun TNG adventure, closer to the TV show as any other TNG movie.
All true and The score for Insurrection is one of my favs by Jerry
I have to agree, this was one of the best designs. I would have never guessed a piano as an influence! Always looked like a Trek – H.R. Geiger fusion 🙂 These drawings are great, I do see a lot of projects popping up on CG sites because of this site!
that would be cool to retro in some Geiger!!! i saw some on Sci Fi meshes and there are some great models being made!!!
This is such a cool ship and one of my fav’s sa it so Alien.
see these, it make me want to go back and rewatch Insurrection, alas, I no longer have it after getting rid of my VHS colleagtion. Funny enough it the last one I need to Complate the movies on DVD.
I might wait though for all of them to be realsied on Blueray.
I watched a bit of it last night and there are fewer shots than I remembered!! loved hearing Jerry’s music again,, I am playing it at work today!
I also think that Insurrection was poorly treated.
It wasn’t a big action “die hard” type of picture. But it suited Picard’s character better than either First Contact or Nemesis did. And it had some poorly handled “comedic” moments between the crew. The floatation device line and the are your boobs firmer line are particularly painful.
The “forced relocation of an indigenous(sp) people” was a theme that was touched on in both TNG and DS9/Voyager.
Picard was really much better when debating moral issues than when he was picking up a phaser rifle and yelling “No More!, this far and No Farther!!”
Not great fodder for a summer blockbuster, tho.
Which way did he go, which way did he go? I wish I could do voice inflection on here. I heard this line from old cartoons go through my head as I looked at the pictures. 🙂
I really like it the original way, fly-N to the left, as you put it. Yes, it can go either way, but it’s more sleak and evil looking prongs-forward, which would obviously be my choice!!
Mr. Wilde, I totally agree! I enjoyed so many things about Insurrection. The aliens, battles, twists, new fun ships…and it DID feel a lot like the series. Years after I saw it in the theater, I was actually thinking the plot was from an episode (just for a second), but my daughter had to correct me!! “Oh ya, you’re right!!”
If only you could animate text with funny voices!!!
Beautiful work. It’s great to see more of the detailing as well!
Thanks Don, I am glad to be able to get this stuff out of the closet HAAA!
WOW! I always did like Ruoffo’s ship over the other sona ships…
If you ever decided to do 3D modeling you will get plenty of help 😀
Well it won’t be anytime soon so i’ll just enjoy all the great CG-genious’s work out there!
Well when you do decide to do a bit 3d Modelling. The Guys over at Scifi-Meshes are always will to help out.
Oooh! Thanx for sharing! Great to get a good look at these designs finally! I could never figure out why insurrection wasn’t popular, I loved it!
Ol Johnathan Frakes made that movie a hundred times better than it was destined to be!!!I have a special spot for that one because that was the movie I took my wife to see on our first date!
I wonder what would have happened to Star Trk Nemesis if Frakes had been the director.
remember Star Trek V!!!!!!
Haha! I guess it goes to show how much we sometimes miss the artist’s intent when looking at a design. I always thought it looked somewhat like a phoenix bird, which to me made sense becase the Son’a were obsessed with restoring themselves to a position of beauty…blah blah blah. LOL!!
Thanks so much for sharing these, John!! Fantastic!
It all secrecy,,,SSHHHHHHHHHH I try to sneak a little Phoenix Arizona in everything I do,,, On another funny note in the shuttle bay of every ship there is a shuttle named Siouxsie after Siouxsie and the Banshees
I never thought of it but the ship does look a lot more menacing flying the other way. Great design, definitely one of the best ST Alien designs ever, IMO. 🙂
You’d think the motion lines would have given it away…
Or maybe they thought it just looked too menacing, and didn’t want to let on!
Great drawigns John, thanks for sharing. Can you tell us what exactly you designer for DS9 and what’s your favorite concept starship design?
I have an odd habbit of just focussing on the effects and designs when I watch Star Trek films and then focussing on the movie as a whole on the second pass. I watched Insurrection with my wife, who had made constant jabs at the “face lift” aspect of the movie, and just distracted me throughout the whole movie, and she is a Star Trek fan. I never gave this movie the attention I usually give. These designs are great, and I’m going to watching Insurrection again tonight to see them in action.
I just popped my Netflix disc of Insurrection that just came into the machine, and the first thing I see is this ship coming out of the clouds going backwards! 😀 I REALLY think it looks backwards…forks first, please!!!