Star Trek: TITAN: Animated Series

[Christopher]

backstept wrote:

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would such a species even wear a uniform? would they wear a sash or band with a communicator/rank/color etc?

Cethente wouldn't need clothing for protection, but I suppose it could wear some kind of harness or wide belt around the lower trunk, maybe similar to what Geoff drew.

would they have specialized equipment for use by non-humanoid hands?

I think its tentacle appendages are probably dextrous enough to handle a tricorder or work a console's buttons.

[Geoff Thorne]

I took some minor liberties. yes. it's not exact.

The primary change is where the legs are positioned and that is just due to me making an error. I can come back and fix it later, no prob.

I never knew there was a sketch of the character. Never thought to ask. I was going for "lamp."

The lower "diamond shape" is there. it's just rougher, a more "organic" feel.

I think everybody wears a uni. Even if it's painted on.

And dammit, I always misspell that. Fixed now

[Christopher]

Geoff Thorne wrote:

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I never knew there was a sketch of the character. Never thought to ask.

Well, the sketch Marco drew exists only on my 3x5-inch pocket notepad (as far as I know; maybe he had another in his notes somewhere). He drew it for me at Shore Leave last year after I showed him my concept sketch for Cethente (a few pages earlier in the same notepad) and asked "Is this right?" And he basically just sketched the body shape and a couple of jagged lines to represent the shape and placement of the legs.

And for what it's worth, Marco was annoyed by the "lamp" analogy. When Zurin Dakal thought that Cethente resembled a lamp in a relative's home, the reference was to a lamp that was a rather exotic objet d'art, not something that looked much like an ordinary lamp. Or so he told me when the lamp issue came up.

[RikerLover]

Both versions of Cethente are awesome. Actually, all the drawings, Geoff's and everyone else's are great. I wish I could draw.

[Kirk1701]

In the early years of Starfleet, as seen in Star Trek: Enterprise, Starfleet's mission is purely exploration and is not military in any sense except for weapons designed for defensive capabilities until the retrofitting of the Enterprise (NX-01) and the incorporation of MACOs after the Xindi attack on Earth. It is assumed this trend continues as Starfleet adopts a more traditional military role and assumes its regular place as the exploratory and defensive arm of the United Federation

[Kirk1701]

Geoff Thorne wrote:

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Melora Pazlar

In the early years of Starfleet, as seen in Star Trek: Enterprise, Starfleet's mission is purely exploration and is not military in any sense except for weapons designed for defensive capabilities until the retrofitting of the Enterprise (NX-01) and the incorporation of MACOs after the Xindi attack on Earth. It is assumed this trend continues as Starfleet adopts a more traditional military role and assumes its regular place as the exploratory and defensive arm of the United Federation

[Arpy]

It's great seeing this stuff even if my own interpretation is different.

Geoff, what's the "glass bulb" thing, and is he wearing a universal translator (gray thing above arrowhead) and round beige socks?

Come to think of it, it'd be cool of they are socks: why should humans/oids be the only creatures that have parts that need covering?

Christopher, what's he made of? Silicon-based? He looks crystalline. Are those eyes at the bottom?

Aren't the "ports" the tentacles recede into a little too mechanical? I keep expecting irises to close up behind them once fully retracted.

[Geoff Thorne]

There's a high dome on the top that protects the primary nerve cluster. it's meant to taper down to the "diamond shape" at the bottom; the secondary nerve cluster. When I read "nerve cluster" I think "soft" and "delicate."

Marco's drawing is illuminating as it is so far from ANYTHING that crossed my mind for this character's look.

I didn't take the Cardassia symbol as a literal or exact description but rather something the Cethenthe's form put Dakal in mind of. Ditto the "lamp" description. The whole crystalline thing is news to me. it's possible I missed or forgot that but I don't recall its body as being described that specifically.

I put the legs at the bottom because they just "felt" like that's where they should go.

I tend to shy away from hard straight lines because nature tends not to make organisms with hard straight lines.

Regardless of what's written in the books, every character I draw will have some version of the fleet uni on. The idea here is to create designs for a fictional animated series so, under those specs, simplicity of design and a certain uniformity of style from character to character have to remain in play.

The small, single figure illos take about 15 or 20 minutes to complete so there will be divergences or "mistakes" because they are all sort of fast and dirty impressions.

It took me longer to decide how tall the good doctor should be than to draw the illustration.

[Christopher]

Arpy wrote:

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Christopher, what's he made of? Silicon-based? He looks crystalline. Are those eyes at the bottom?

Cethente's anatomy is "semicrystalline." To quote Over a Torrent Sea, "Syrath anatomy was... based upon piezoelectric crystal 'cells' in a liquid silicate solvent, with genetic information encoded structurally in chains of dislocation loops and electrically in stored potentials, rather than chemically in nucleic acids" (p. 216). So kind of a "slushy" interior -- crystals in fluid -- encased in a hard exoskeleton.

Those aren't eyes exactly, but sensory nodes like those at the top. To quote Taking Wing, they're "bioluminescent bulges, glowing with the telltale light of its senses at work" (p. 142). So forget what I said above about them being dark. They should actually glow a soft green.

Also, Cethente is an "it," not a "he." Syrath are neuter.

Aren't the "ports" the tentacles recede into a little too mechanical? I keep expecting irises to close up behind them once fully retracted.

I was just thinking maybe I should've made them more slitlike than circular. TW says the tentacles "emerged at need from equidistant apertures just under the dome" (same page).

Geoff Thorne wrote:

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There's a high dome on the top that protects the primary nerve cluster. it's meant to taper down to the "diamond shape" at the bottom; the secondary nerve cluster. When I read "nerve cluster" I think "soft" and "delicate."

I can find no instances of the phrase "nerve cluster" being used in describing Cethente. On TW p. 141, there are references to the dome and the lower diamond being "sense clusters," but then, the human head could be called a sense cluster.

I didn't take the Cardassia symbol as a literal or exact description but rather something the Cethenthe's form put Dakal in mind of. Ditto the "lamp" description.

Again from TW p. 141, from Dakal's POV: "The astrophysicist was shaped, in fact, a great deal like a three-dimensional sculpture of the symbol of the Union."

The whole crystalline thing is news to me. it's possible I missed or forgot that but I don't recall its body as being described that specifically.

That's because it wasn't decided on until after you wrote your book. Andy & Mike didn't specify what Syrath anatomy was based on, merely describing Cethente as "exoskeletal." But they did suggest that Cethente didn't consume nourishment by normal means, and it did have those glowing sensory node thingies, and just in general it seemed to be the most alien member of the crew. And for OaTS I needed a crewperson with a very alien and very robust anatomy to be able to survive extreme pressures. Somehow the idea of a semicrystalline anatomy occurred to me. I was probably influenced by all the references in The Red King to the "crystalline" sound of Cethente's voice, though of course that was metaphorical. I liked the idea of Cethente being the most durable member of the crew despite appearing to be the most fragile. Although I can't quite remember whether that was my idea or something I got from Marco.


By the way, I just found a comment from Marco in my old e-mails about Cethente's tentacles: "[T]he underside of Cethente's tentacles are studded with opposable musclular knobs that it uses for finer manipulation of its environment." So my idea to trifurcate them apparently wasn't what Marco had in mind. I still think it makes more sense, though. Maybe both are the case.

[Thrawn]

I think between the two Christopher's looks more like I had imagined the character, but for the record, from a structural perspective, it seems like a really stupid design, like it would just tip over all the time with the top so heavy and the legs so close together at their anchor points. Unless it carries a lot of wait in the lower cluster, I guess.

I mean, I can imagine looking at humans and thinking "only two legs? How do they stand up?", I suppose it's all in how you look at it, but it did strike me as odd.

[Christopher]

[QUOTE=Thrawn;3172826]I think between the two Christopher's looks more like I had imagined the character, but for the record, from a structural perspective, it seems like a really stupid design, like it would just tip over all the time with the top so heavy and the legs so close together at their anchor points. Unless it carries a lot of wait in the lower cluster, I guess.

But the feet are spread out rather wide, and that's what counts, isn't it? Where the points of support are relative to the center of mass? And the legs are stronger than they look.

I mean, I can imagine looking at humans and thinking "only two legs? How do they stand up?", I suppose it's all in how you look at it, but it did strike me as odd.

Exactly. Lots of designs are statically unstable but are kept functional by constant dynamic correction, such as the human body or a jet with forward-swept variable-geometry wings.

[Saquist]

Geoff Thorne wrote:

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Dr. Ra-Havreii

Titan Designer wrote:

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Now lets see more Animated Titan images!!!

Geoff Thorne wrote:

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Series Two begins.

Since everybody digs the Troi uni so much, here's another.

Titan Designer wrote:

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Almost a little too cute. Nice though.

Geoff Thorne wrote:

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Hsuuri

Great work here.
Meow.

[Deranged Nasat]

Titan Designer wrote:

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Almost a little too cute. Nice though.

S'ti'ach hate being seen as cute. They're proud, dominant predators. We see them as teddy bears. They see themselves as lions.

[nx1701g]

Deranged Nasat wrote:

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S'ti'ach hate being seen as cute. They're proud, dominant predators. We see them as teddy bears. They see themselves as lions.

Yet the Galaxy just finds them so damned cute.

Except for as depicted in Losing the Peace. There they're sad.

[Deranged Nasat]

nx1701g wrote:

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Yet the Galaxy just finds them so damned cute.

Except for as depicted in Losing the Peace. There they're sad.

All also true!