Hey it is one of those way busy days but wanted to thank everyone again for all the trek comments, the prayers for my daughter who is in the hospital again for a couple of days, and for all the B-day wishes!!! It is great to have some many good and new friends!!! Thanks again
John
Pass # 1 The saucer version
The pufferfish, my favorite!!!
I believe my motivation was gone at this point!!!
the forward bridge version
AAAAAHHHHH, THERE SHE IS!!! there she is.
the orthos!!!
In Star trek “Insurrection” A Massive Federation Holo-ship was called for and the following sketches show the process of how this one came to be. The early designs featured a saucer style ship, then transformed into a pufferfish, and finally a flying shoe box. The first two were my favorites and I didn’t really care for the flying brick, but it was what was chosen so I took most of the inspiration from Giant Oil tankers. In the first pass there was a bridge at the front of the ship and by the final design the bridge moves to the rear of the vessel. Jerry Goldsmith Composed the score for this one and I liked the metallic theme he wrote for it much more than the final design. I also included the orthos but to achive the same look simply get a shoe box, spray it completely with super 77, and then roll it thru a pile of legos and old model parts!!! HAAA! I am not really cranky if that is how your reading this,,, I was laughing and remebering all the silly horrors that came from this movie in regards to one of our supervisors… He was always changing the direction on which way things were to fly after the fact that they were approved renderings being built and lit in CG. This unnammed guy was really something!! (just wait till we get to the story of the Borg Sphere,, HAAA!-HAAAA! in advance) OH yeah and the unnamed guy also changed the scale of the ships from shot to shot!!! I can’t even remeber how many times I would have to run over to his office to try and correct all the insanity!!! It was during this film in particular that scale charts and directional arrows were attatched to EVERY drawing. There is a shot in the film where all the vessels fly under the camera to take orbit,, that is the closest to all the accurate scales. HAAAA!!! Remember that song from Seaseme street??? One of these things, doesnt belong here, which one is it,,,,can you tell??? Yeah that was his theme song. HAAA! what crazy days! Sorry To all those waiting to see the pics of the 602 club,,I didn’t have time to scan the photos so it will have to be in tomorrow’s post.
high profile version
version 2
cu
they Borged my ride
pierre 1
pierre 2
pierre borged my ride!
During Season II of Enterprise we got wind of a future script #49 called Regeneration. everyone in the art dept.. started to read the little teaser and we all gasped in Horror at about the same time, THE BORG!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!. We all were not feeling to happy about this new TNG alien showing up in an episode of Enterprise before Kirk… well this will throw all lines of trek history out the window. A few days later the first script arrived and reluctantly we all went to our desks and read away… Hey this is OK I thought It does work and it ties into Trek history as defined in First Contact. As you recall The Borg sphere went back in time to destroy the Phoenix warp ship thus changing earths history and killing the threat of Humanity in the future. The Sphere gets fired upon by the Enterprise-E and the evil plot is eliminated…….. Now we are working on Enterprise and this new story picks up on the debris from the sphere being discovered in Antarctica. like ” the Thing” once thawed out the Borg go back to doing what they do best! Assimilation! My job on this one was to create an Arctic exploration vessel that makes the discovery and later becomes Borgified. The fist sketch is high profile vessel that I thought when Borged could form a cube. This idea was passed on and the second sketch got the approval. The ship is lightly based on a stylized snow mobile. Once Borged it goes thru a variety of changes and this second sketch try’s to convey on of the stages of coverage. Pierre over at Eden modeled this one and here are some of his beautiful CG images.
the last of the NF-104's
Yeager and Jeannie!!!!
Oh my Jeannie!!
concept one
the blended body
concept one piggyback launch
Mike Okuda's beautiful logo
concept two
the lake bed sled track
a couple of chrome domes
a plug for one of my favorite books by Steve Cox
Episode 50, “First Flight”, This was probably my most favorite episode of Star trek Enterprise. The episode encompassed what was once the guiding force of the original Star trek and that was to explore, with a high mark of mans quest for going where no man has gone before.. I so wanted to be a pilot and astronaut as a kid and when I was old enough to actually pursue the dream I found out I was 4F due to color blindness. Not to many hard feelings though because I wanted to work in the movies as a VFX artist/model-maker just as much. working in the movies has let me fulfill those early dreams just in a fantasy kind of way. For First flight the script called for the First Warp 2 x-plane to be tested and I immediately had thoughts of the test planes from Edwards AFB and especially the Nf-104A. This was a modified F-104 equipped with an eternal rocket booster attached at the base of the Tail stabilizer. The wing-tips were also extended to add more of a surface to help maneuver at it’s extremely high altitudes. Chuck Yeager was one of the test pilots assigned to this highly experimental project, and if you remember the Movie “The Right Stuff” this flight is depicted towards the end of the film. Be sure to check out Chuck’s cameo’s in the bar scenes at Panchos. OK back to the flight, Yeager took this beautiful bare metaled baby up to 108,700 feet, thats about 21 miles. The aircraft went into a flat spin, and despite Chuck’s efforts the plane could not be pulled out of the spin. Yeager ejected at just over 8000 feet. He was badly burned but walked away to fly again. pictured here is the last of the NF-104s mounted at Edwards AFB next to the test pilots school. also is a picture of chuck and the ever lovely barbara {Jeannie) Eden, Next to the sunbeam bread girl and Little Debbie, Jeannie was my biggest and longest crush!!! so with that there are two pictures of her and also a great book if your a jeannie fan. Following is the first sketch of the Warp 3 ship hugely inspired by the previous story. I took a catamaran point of design wit a little bit of asymmetrical details. The first pass made it thru the early approval stages and a few variations of tis design were asked for,, non were as complete as this one so the go ahead to the next step was to figure out how it was to be launched. I didn’t think a space shuttle style launch would be appropriate. So i called my Friend Tony Moore out at Edwards to help with this launch sequence. Tony stated that a possible piggyback idea might be a good alternative to a rocket launch. Tony said that one of the future projects going on at the base was the blended wing aircraft. I looked it up when I got home and this aircraft was Ideal for this idea. pictured next is the X-48B that was modified to be the mother-ship the following illustration shows the trek version of the blended body and the launch of concept one. The art department was all ablaze with this one Doug Drexler was designing the hanger and would eventually work out the specifics of the craft, Mike and Denise Okuda were hard at work creating the signage and the interior of the 602 club ( a pilots Bar in the vane of Panchos happy bottom riding club) Jim Van Over and Anthony Fredrickson were creating the graphics and set extras.and everyone else was drafting and designing away!!!. The bomb fell one afternoon that the ship was not what they were envisioning and that a new idea was needed, My boss Herman Zimmerman and I got together and decided to create a vessel around the Phoenix capsule. That way we could carry on a style of architecture from Trek past and construction would have an existing piece to work from and cut off a fortune off their limited budget. the following sketch shows the new Warp ship based on this new direction. For the launch sequence we went with a magnetic sled system that got the ship up to an extremely high rate of speed across Rogers dry lake bed to achieve orbit from a standard plane type of flight system with rocket boosters to get er up there fast/ BOOM!!! another bomb dropped and the Edwards idea turned into a forest test sight. The sled launch stayed but on a much shorter runway with a huge ramp at the end. The Eden VFX folks took over from here and the rest is TV history!!! I snuck in for a picture of the modified PHX capsule HAAA!!! Wheres my hair!!!
shuttle concept
starship concept
A few years back I was surfing the web and came across the Australian Star trek fan club. The site was rich with dialog and the fans from down under had become a big family that came together regularly to celebrate with each other something that was very special to each of them. I was intrigued by what I had read and had to drop a note to say hey. I received an email a few days later from a guy Named Stuart Blair. He was president of the club and after a few more emails we became good friends. The club was just on the verge of a change and Stuart moved on and started a new club called the Starship Mawson. Stuart Named the club after an Australian explorer named Sir Douglas Mawson. Mawson was an Australian by adoption who was offered a place on Scott’s Terra Nova expedition but turned it down to lead the Australasian Antarctic Expedition of 1911 – 1914 sailing on the Aurora. Though less prestigious, this was a wide ranging scientific and exploratory expedition to previously unknown and unvisited regions of the Antarctic continent. It included a dramatic sledging journey that Mawson undertook with two companions, he was to be the only survivor, against the odds in appalling conditions.
http://www.starshipmawson.com/index.html
above is the link to the Mawson home page. Anyways when Stuart was starting up his page I asked if I cold design their ship for them, and he so graciously let me do so. The first version was a shuttle that is from the same line of architecture as the Argo, and the second was a starship design that I wanted to try and convey a more exploratory look to the lines. I think it still could use a little more refining, looking at them now I have reminded myself that I still need to put some more work into both of these to get em done. I am off for a couple of weeks so I’ll put these on the top of the list,,,, Also those lucky folks that are down in Sydney get one of the first peeks at the new Star trek film this Tuesday the 7th. You’ll have to write us and tell us what you thought of it!!!
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Happy Friday everyone and thanks again for all the great comments, camaraderie and great links to cool things. I had very little time to participate with all that was going on except for the daily postings. I have 5 daughters and sadly one of them has a bit of cancer and she started her chemo last week and it has been a long one getting her comfortable again. thanks for all the prayers, good thoughts and messages that we have been receiving for her. The Dr.’s say that it was caught very early and in about 4 to 6 months she’ll be as good as new. Thanks again and hope everyone has a great weekend. So with that here are some more great images of the beloved Enterprise model back from the 1960’s, Enjoy..
john
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as they looked in the ready room
Jimmy Meese was the set decorator on Enterprise and was also the decorator on Voyager. He has quite a talent for finding all the right things that dress the set perfectly. He is not only brilliant at what he does, he try’s to add the personality of the characters he is dressing for. In Archer’s ready room he wanted to mix a little art and sculpture with a bunch of little personal effects. With that Jimmy came over and asked if in my free time could I draw some versions of real ships called Enterprise with the NX-01 being the final drawing… I said sure and would love to make these pieces for him. so during lunch I went and got the colored paper to print on. and then got busy with all the other drawing assignments that were pilled up. Doug Drexler was finally into detailing his Enterprise after a long hard battle of getting the design thru the approval process. I sketched a rough angle and he made me a print that matched the direction and angle for me and I put it away and got back to Herman’s list of things to be drawn. well I got busy and forgot about this request and Jimmy came in a few weeks later and asked about his drawings!!!!! he said that he needed them no later than tomorrow morning,,, I said sure sure no problem,, He smiled and walked away, As soon as he was out of sight the panic hit,,,, My desk was right next to my Boss’s office door and I tried for about an hour to hide jimmy’s drawings under Herman’s so I could fake a quick shuffle so he wouldn’t see my moonlighting. It was almost impossible because he all of a sudden started visiting my desk every time he walked by. By about 2:00 I was really panicked and faked a quick emergency phone call and asked to be excused early to get home… Granted I grabbed my stuff and ran over to the backlot and hid in one of the fake buildings on New York street climbed to the top of one where I new there was a table chair and work light and drew away. I got most of the drawings done by about 9:00 and it was time to head back to the office to use the copier and finish off the details. Rats Herman was still in the office and he was there until after 10:00, I kept working in the shadows with his door in site. FINALLY He left and The trouble of an evil Xerox Machine began. By about 4:00 in the morning the copier started to take the paper and lucky for me because I only had 5 sheets left and 5 drawings to print. Once all was done I grabbed the black and white conte pencils and did some quick highlights and by 6:30 I was done just as Fritz came in to work. We were always the early ones and it was a tradition to take either end of the couch that was in the office and crash until 7:00 when everyone else came in to work. That 30 mins seemed like a quick blink. Anyways Jimmy was there at 7:00 sharp and when I pulled out the drawings he kinda had a frown/smile like he lost a bet with someone over these being done on time. He was very happy and said; Oh yah I forgot to tell you that there is only room for 4 drawings in the frame so the 5th wasn’t needed after all. so here are all 5 high speed drawings that made the following day at work majorly rough! I loved every minute of it though!!!!
the million dollar idea
the $12.00 versions
Enterprise introduced many new races of Aliens for the series banking on the idea that there would be so many races encountered not all we need to be mentioned of, or seen again in the already existing Trek films and series,,, I guess in a Galaxy as big as Star Treks there would be countless discoveries of different races that you could get away with what this show did regulerly,,,, So today I wanted to show some of the designs for the Xindi’s ultimate planet destroying weapon in it’s underwater cradle from Episode #70 “Azati prime” . In case you haven’t noticed, it appears that if you are to design the ultimate battle station with enough fire power to destroy an entire planet,,, the chosen shape is round. .. Let me see know there was the Borg Sphere, the Xindi sphere, the chrome sphere from Star Man, the sphere from “Day the Earth stood still, and I believe there was a big one with a dent in it from some show called Star Wars….HMMMM round must be a bad shape. Anyways here is the first pass of the assembly station hidden under the sea. the idea was big and the technology was to reflect a submerged ship yard with multiple layers of cabling, lights, and construction vessels working round the clock to get this bomb ready for delivery to Earth. This first idea was brutally rejected, and stripped down to a few not so exciting simple frame work ideas. I believe Doug wound up finishing this one up and his versions also were taken down to bare minimums. So despite it’s 4F rating I still liked how it turned out and it now is a fav in my Portfolio.
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Here are three images from yesteryear featuring that 11 foot Enterprise model being set up for a scene, and it doesn’t matter how many times you have seen these pictures it is always a treat to se them again!!!
pic 1 + pic 2 + pic 3 = the galiant seabreeze HAAAA! April fools!!!
Well I just got in and on, and it looks like my prank had a few hours of fun, HAAAA!!!! thanks for all the comments and I was laughing to myself last night when I was mixing and matching Luigi’s images together to make the very sleek and beautiful SS Sea Breeze,,, does anyone want the orthos to this one???? I don’t recall pulling another prank until this one,,, what is the other one that is floating around in the comments???
Eavesdropping with Johnny 
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