Looks like the on-set lighting was overwhelming whatever colors the model was painted with. By-the-by, I recall having a Star Trek: The Magazine issue sitting around somewhere where Jeffries talks about the D7 design and construction, and I recall he mentions it being painted in two tones of greeny-gray, inspired by sharkskin. Anybody else remember that?
I'm probably overstepping my mark here about about a mile, and I've also probably butchered REL's *amazing* design, but I absolutely love it and I want to see it in motion. But first I have to build it. This is after a few hours work. I really hope its cool to post it here, as I absolutely love this design and just wanna do stuff to it. Err, do stuff with it.
Not only do I remember it, I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to perfectly match that color combination. I was very pleased with my final paint job on my modified AMT kit... it looked identical, under various different lighting conditions, to what was seen on-screen, as far I'm concerned. One color was grey with a hint of a dark bluish-purple, and the other was grey with a hint of slight pale green. But both were still very much grey. I'm convinced that the reason for the two colors was for the same reason that the 1701 model got the p-hull "undercut." To trick the eye into seeing something besides just a big blobby shape. The TMP Klingon was also painted with a grey that had definite hints of olive drab in it... but when seen on-screen, it resembled bare metal, and I'm convinced it was supposed to. Of course, if you simply take RGB values from pixels, this tells you nothing... especially when you consider that the ship was supposed to be seen in the bizarre light of V'Ger's cloud formation, wasn't it? The TMP Enterprise, on-screen was mainly greys, with only slight visible color in the hull paneling. The real paint job had quite a bit more color in it than was seen on-screen. The green got washed out during optical compositing, and the result was mostly whites and greys. Of course, the shots which were inside of V'Ger were shot with different lighting... so I suppose this means that the ship was nearly white when it left Earth but got REALLY DIRTY going through the wormhole???
I DID say that the ship appeared green on the viewer, just that I don't recall it ever appearing gray.
REL, I love this design. Awesome! It's definately one of my favourite Klingon designs alongside the D7 and the K'tinga-class.
Well, I do admit to having a little fun with your comment about the RGB values, but, honestly, with the exception of the viewscreen shot that just looks weird (like it was colorized), I think the D7 has always looked grayish to me. Now maybe my perception is influenced by childhood recollections of the AMT kit (which was produced in gray plastic), but it's not exactly a colorful ship. Even if the cobra head is coated in chromatophores.
It's possible that was an unusual pigment run. The one I had back around that period was gray, as was another I saw a kid playing with on the playground in third grade. The unbuilt one I currently have in the basement is also molded in gray. And this one being sold on E-Bay shows gray parts still on the sprue and in their bag. By the way, I found an interesting article on the original model that confirms it was painted in purple and green. I guess you really can't argue with RGB values.
If I'm not mistaken even the original box art for the kit wasn't in grey. And it's long been known that the original filming miniature wasn't grey.
The picture used in the original cover showing the D7 exchanging fire with the Enterprise gave the ship a blue-gray appearance (and the Enterprise looked white). The plastic kit parts within were molded in neutral-gray with a few transparent green pieces. The Johnny Lightning version I have also looks neutral-gray.
Those colors are not "green" and "purple" though. They're "grey with a hint of green" or "grey with a hint of purple." When I mixed my own version of those colors, it was primarily a standard grey color, but I added a small amount of forest green to one and a a small amount of blue and red (equal amounts) in the other. The base grey color was the same in both cases. I recall using light ghost grey. I then darkened the topside color slightly using battleship grey (which has quite a bit of green in it naturally). The end result was something I was, and still am, very happy with. Most folks who look at it don't immediately notice the different shades of color, and assume it's just a trick of the light (which, I'm convinced, is the whole point of why it was painted that way in the first place).
The first Klingon AMT kit I got in the mid 70s was molded in BLACK with some chrome parts for the torpedo tube, the little pipes for the sides of the neck, etc. To be clear, the article cited says the original model built for the show, "was actually a striking purple-blue and light green." And then, "[Round 2's] approach was to paint the ship a more overall grey while maintaining a hint of original purple and green. That way, everyone should be able to relate to it. I also weathered it to make the model more appealing, even though the originals were not weathered."
Yep! That's exactly the same one I got - and that was around the same time I got mine. Still have it too, but I did paint it, yes, neutral gray. Interestingly, during the early 80's, a friend of mine got one and the base unpainted plastic was PINK! I remember him opening up the box after we got it at the local hobby store and we both said WTF?!? I suspect AMT had exhausted their black and white pigments and started to throw damn near any other color they could find just to finish that run. Another friend got a blue TMP K'T'inga, also during the 80's. AMT must have had real problems keeping normal colors in stock around that time. Back then, it hadn't occurred to us (from a collector's standpoint), but we later thought (in the 90's) that he should have probably kept it in the box, with the parts still wrapped up and just gotten another one to build. Ol' pinky would probably be worth something now.
[chuckles] So let me see if I have this straight: We can't trust the RGB values shown on screen We can't trust the AMT kit's molded colors We have written eye-witness reports of the ship being "striking purple-blue and light green" that don't do anything to establish the actual colors in any sort of reliable metric. Folks, this isn't worth anyone getting irate about. We're all right, and we're all wrong. I submit that the colors of the original were likely approved knowing that they'd be muted by the compositing process. I'm sticking with shades of gray for any Klingon ships I build. Excellent model, Rel! Don't let any of us here in the peanut gallery tell you how to paint your ship, 'cause we don't really know, either!
Well, again, "striking" means very little. I think we can all agree that the model wasn't painted in flourescent colors, can't we? Yet to me, that would be "striking." To someone who expected to see a model which was purely monochromatic, and if they saw that there was a clear hint of color there which they'd never expected to see, that would be "striking," wouldn't it be? This is like people saying that Kirk's tunic in TOS was "green." Well, it had a hint of green in it. Other people say that it was "yellow" and there some element of yellow in it as well. The reality is that it's a unique color, neither green nor yellow, more along the lines of "tan" than anything else. When you say "light green" this infers something like this: And when you say "purple" this is what that means: Well, I'll grant you... if the ship really had been painted in those colors, that WOULD be "striking," wouldn't it be? But to Psion's point: Tie-Dye! Tie-Dye! That's the real appearance! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tie-dye
Psion, no one's "irate". We're just discussing and maybe disagreeing. As to the topic gray, by definition, is relatively achromatic. If it looks gray with a hint of something, it's a gray. If it appears to be a color, even a very light color it's chromatic, ergo not gray. There's no hard and fast line as to were that boundary is.
No, no, I agree, we're getting along fine ... "irate" was a bit of hyperbole counseling against taking the whole issue too seriously. This is a wonderful discussion exploring the minutia of Star Trek that the subject a whole lot of fun to geeks like us. Even if Cary thinks I need a Wiki link explaining what tie-dying is. Hmmm ... thinking back on my childhood and how cubes came to me for tips on how to be square, he might be right. Y'know, the other side of this is that this show was one of the heralds of color television, with plenty of directives from NBC to make the sets and all more colorful. Maybe Roddenberry really did want the D7 to have 'striking' colors ... and maybe, given stories about the color corrections done to a certain green Orion slave girl, someone in film processing thought the D7 looked silly and made it more gray.
OMG REL: http://sovereignreplicas.com/wpsr/2011/06/08/moebius-mkii-viper/ That's fantastic too! What other models have you built?