That is a handsome ship. So many fan Fed ships have to be Lamborghinis or Ferraris. But this...? This is an Aston Martin. Bulging, brutal, lumbering a furious, but not without sacrificing grace or form for speed or aggression.
I didn't really have time to develop this idea further, but this is what I was toying with for the February Art Contest. I love the Thunderbirds, and I just couldnt get them out of my head, so as you can tell it's very much a Thunderbird mash-up. Not so original at all but, hey ho.
Wasn't sure where to put this, but I guess it's as good a place as any. I just finished spraying a Clone Blaster Toy from The Clone Wars. Its "official" name is a DC-15S Blaster, but I just thought it was a nifty looking laser gun, and it needed the proper black weathered paint job to look right.
A very interesting and fresh design. Is this badass starship capable of separation, or it is a permanently all-in-one vessel?
Permanently all in one, but with large sections of the ship unoccupied. Given the state of war that exists in Star Trek Online, I figured she'd still be primarily intended for exploration, but at a moments notice out on the frontier she could spin around and evacuate an entire outlying colony on her own if need be. That's also why I made the nacelles all fancy and pointy - she's not a transwarp/slipstream super ship, but the design of her nacelles allows her to maintain a stable warp field at what I call "fractional" velocities - so warp 9.99999845 or something crazy like that, which is orders magnitude faster than warp 9, but still unable to break the 10 barrier. This would allow her to cross vast distances with ease and allow them to maintain those speeds for a far longer period of time than ships like the Galaxy Class.
Well, while everyone is twiddling their thumbs over the Design The Next Enterprise Contest, I figured I'd throw up what i've been working on lately. First up, everyone seems to have a version of a JJverse Excelsior, and while a lot of the designs are very good, I always felt they relied too heavily on the JJverse nacelles to help define them, and the nacelles are one of the defining features of the original Excelsior, so something was always lost (Of course though, MadMan's version did right by this, and I think his is the best one yet). Well anyway, here is a very rough i've dreamt up. While i'm at it, i've also spent quite a lot of time recently redoing my TMP Enterprise mesh. While its nowhere near as accurate/polished as ScienceOfficer's, I think it's certainly improved a lot from its initial origins 4 or 5 years ago As always, I look forward to hearing from you guys - Enjoy! - Dac
I haven't seen all of the different verisons of the JJVerse Excelsior yet but yours is close to Madmans. But also close to the original. I like both so far.
Dac I stumbled upon this thread from Google. I haven't posted in years... BEAUTIFUL work. It's so much fun to see top-notch artists carry our fleet forward! Ever since I was a kid I loved seeing those big fleets moving together in special episodes. I loved the differences in the sizes of the various ships. And it seems like a lot of artists are finally tackling and doing justice to Drexler's NX-01 refit! It looks beautiful in 3D. A true improvement on the love-it-or-hate-it Akiraprise design. So... want to tackle the Aventine or the Typhon or the Valkyrie class fighter? I'd love to see a squadron of Valkyries flying around the fleet.
If it were up to me, I'd remove that and just "solidify" the hull edge along there. But the (production crew) guys who came up with the upgraded NX-01 didn't do that, so you're obviously doing the right thing. That said, I'm thinking of buying the model kit mod for the 1:1000 Polar Lights NX-01... and in that case, I'd alter the hull leading edge as I just described. But... I'd put three small (maybe the size of the hull height there) CIRCULAR dishes up there, just not inset in a blue-glowy-region
Tai, thanks very much for the kind words. As for those other ships, I did love Star Trek: Invasion as a kid, and although I have an already full plate of stuff to do for other people and no plans to do much of anything in 3D at the moment, I will probably get around to making a Valkyrie class fighter at least. Probably not the Aventine though, as I think that ship is a bit....naff looking. Cary, that's all well and good, but I just wanted to make something that's close as can be to what Doug intended. I really dig the original NX-01 but the refit did improve it imo. Folks can and have argued the necessity of that rim deflector dish and every other thing to do with every other ship, but quite frankly I don't care much for that. I think it makes sense to keep the original, proven deflector in case the new literally bolted on one doesn't work.