I just saw on ebay the actual model of this for sale for 19K search : "Star Trek Prototype" to see it
You're quite welcome. And if/when you do get anything else done, I'll be quite eager to look at them. Well, if Perpetual already had John Eaves and/or Ryan Denning on the design team at the time, then they probably felt that they qualified as being enough to get the job done well enough (though I can imagine that Eaves, Denning, and Sternbach would make a design dream team), and looking at the designs they were coming up with (and more importantly, the amount of work and detail that were going into them), they were probably right (though I'm still glad that Excalibur class didn't become the Enterprise-F; it would have made a fine alternate fleet command vessel/heavy cruiser/battleship, but not a fine Enterprise, though in the end, that is an opinion). But Cryptic on the other hand is a completely different story. Now, before I go into how their first generation of designs were really quite badly designed, I should first say that I will say that without a doubt, their designs have drastically improved. But Cryptic could have really used someone like you, especially to get them started with the first generation of designs. Many of the early designs were too chunky or had too many blocky design elements, which isn't really a good way to design a Starfleet vessel (this goes for many of the early variants and the Zephyr class and her blocky deflector module in particular), as opposed to being sleek looking like I expected, so I don't know what the designers were thinking when they went with those elements, and I wonder how long the conceptual process was, considering that I've only managed to find concept sketches for two Starfleet vessels, not counting the Enterprise-F/Odyssey class.
I'd be very skeptical about buying that without some kind of proof that it is in fact the original mock-up created for the show. There are a lot of talented scratch-build modelers out there.
Yeah, it's the one I built for Voyager back in 1994. Left it behind in the art department like a dummy. The guy who must have grabbed it initially and put it up on ebay ages ago was connected with the Trek DVD productions, particularly the cast and crew interviews. Rick
Thanks Rick, it's always nice to have a bit of background info and you can't get a better stamp of authenticity than that!
This is my latest pic featuring the prototype intrepid. I call this 'The Bad Landing...' First off, I must say that I didn't do the background. This was obtained from fabuloussavers.com wallpapers. I just wanted to re-create the famous USS Voyager crash landing with the Intrepid Class prototype that I have recently completed in Sketchup. I had to get the lighting and angle just right to match the scene. It's not perfect, but I'm happy with it. On a side note; this little project actually made me wonder if this incarnation of Voyager would have fared a little better in crashing into an ice planet? Would those long warp nacelles have provided a nice 'sled' for her to skid along on? We shall never know...
Either that, or they would have been crushed and/or sheared away as she skidded, leaving a trail of leaking drive plasma.
The Good Landing I know this is a bit of an unusual angle but I wanted to get a good shot of the legs. I think from this angle it reminds me of a crouching sumo wrestler, or a frog, hence why I like it. As the ship would undoubtedly have to rest on it's warp sled-like nacelles, I thought that their ventral sections could extend out to cushion the landing (which you can just see here).
Funny how I read it as saying "His looks better" the first time around, and I was thinking, no, Calamity_Si's version looks better so far. Upon re-reading it, it turns out Polaris 004's version is fatter, and I couldn't agree less. In the concept sketch, the prototype's primary hull appears wider and shorter (from top to bottom), proportionally, like a sports car, or perhaps a sports wagon (you'll see my reason for choosing this as an analogy in due time), which has enough of a width to add to the vehicle's traction, while having a small, short, aerodynamic profile. Overall, it looks leaner and sleeker overall. The primary hull of the mock-up on the other hand appears to be either taller, thinner, or both. Like a cross-over, it isn't quite as aerodynamic, or especially as low to the ground, or in other words as sleek as a sports wagon typically can be. It looked unrefined, and perhaps had the proportions had come out differently for the mock-up, perhaps the concept might not have been completely abandoned.