Star Trek: Starships Model/Magazine Subscription

[pst]

news that will surprise precisely no one: the UK site has pushed the pre-order date for the XL thunderchild from june 24 to august 4.

in the meantime, they've got the XL excelsior up as a waitlist item with a pre-order date of june 27, with the following image:

and a description that calls it the NX-2000 from "search for spock", when it's clearly the NCC-2000 from voyager's episode "flashback" (not the NCC-2000 from "the undiscovered country"). drag.

still prolly gonna buy it.

 

[mswood]

Yeah, if they have a CGI model to work from that’s what reference they are going to work with, regardless of other used versions of various ships.

I would rather have either version of the ILM model, but I’ll still get this as it looks better then some of the XL’s.

 

[David cgc]

Huh. I never noticed the Jein model had the nameplate on the upper saucer straight across instead of curved like it was usually.

 

[saddestmoon]

Hi peeps!

Recently ordered my third EM diecast: the 1701-C - Probert Concept!

Looking very forward to it!

 

[137th Gebirg]

^^^ It’s a nice model but, oddly, it’s missing the window details on the top-front area of the secondary hull at the neck.

 

[saddestmoon]

^^^ It’s a nice model but, oddly, it’s missing the window details on the top-front area of the secondary hull at the neck.

Yeah, when mine arrives, I’m going to send it on a date with my fine permanent marker...

 

[DimesDan]

Just picked up the Excelsior concept in town, seems like a nice enough model, haven't opened it mind.

 

[mswood]

^^^ It’s a nice model but, oddly, it’s missing the window details on the top-front area of the secondary hull at the neck.

its a great example of a really solid model, with a glaring area lacking detail.

 

[Rahul]

it's yet another one of these discovery ships that look better as john eaves drew them than they do as final models.

apparently there were supposed to be fighters during the battle of the binary stars, the hoover class was designed to carry those fighters.

Great images!
I'm still of the opinion that the majority of the "Battle of the binary stars"-fleets (both Klingon AND Federation) was a massive waste of resources for the show.

The story wouldn't have been affected at all if it was, like, 6 ships on each side, with only 3 models or so each. I know designers LOVE to churn out new Starfleet vessels - because fans crave them, and models sell more than of any alien ships or anything.

But from a narrative standpoint - that money would have been much better invested if they could have used it to build whatever they needed for each individual episode.

hero collector has a little preview of the thunderchild XL up, these are the images we haven't seen before:

looks like it could give the NX-01 a run for its money on being the best XL.

That one looks really nice!
Though I still don't get what's up with the windows on the lower side of the saucer? Why are they stretched to such looong, thin stripes? Was that an error on the original CGI model?

In retrospect, I regret not getting the small Akira. It's really my favourite non-hero-ship design after the Nova class.

 

[David cgc]

Though I still don't get what's up with the windows on the lower side of the saucer? Why are they stretched to such looong, thin stripes? Was that an error on the original CGI model?

It looks like a planar-mapping artifact, yeah. The windows (and the pennant, yikes) would've been "painted on" in the side view of the model, but since that part of the ship isn't close to straight up-and-down, it ends up distorted from any other angle. Something similar happened on the Titan model, where the windows on the catamarans are projected from the top, so from the side, they have a weird hump. It should've happened on Voyager, where on the physical model, the windows, ridges, and phaser strips on the rear part of the saucer were horizontally aligned, but the CG model had them placed by eye from a top view (I assume), so they're all wavy.

 

[mindx2]

The Planet Killer is up for pre-order on the US shop.

 

[Rahul]

It looks like a planar-mapping artifact, yeah. The windows (and the pennant, yikes) would've been "painted on" in the side view of the model, but since that part of the ship isn't close to straight up-and-down, it ends up distorted from any other angle. Something similar happened on the Titan model, where the windows on the catamarans are projected from the top, so from the side, they have a weird hump. It should've happened on Voyager, where on the physical model, the windows, ridges, and phaser strips on the rear part of the saucer were horizontally aligned, but the CG model had them placed by eye from a top view (I assume), so they're all wavy.

This should be, like, one of the first things to correct on the first protoype! That was actually one of the reasons I didn't bought the regular sized models.
I just can't understand how that kept coming up on the XL-model as well?

 

[David cgc]

This should be, like, one of the first things to correct on the first protoype! That was actually one of the reasons I didn't bought the regular sized models.
I just can't understand how that kept coming up on the XL-model as well?

I mean, that's the way it is on the original ILM model used in FC, DS9, and VOY (you can see the stretching in the hull-paneling along the bottom and that the windows and pennants look perfect on the side-view, confirming my guess), so it's more defensible than, say, the Phase II bridge on the XL-Enterprise-A. Oddly enough, the new model built by Fabio Passaro for the magazine renders doesn't have that error. It feels weird that they commission this brand-new idealized high-res model for the advertising, and then are slavishly accurate to the low-detail 1996 model on the actual miniature. It's not the first time it's happened, but it certainly feels that sometimes Eaglemoss's left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

 

[pst]

new preview shot of the scimitar:

kinda neat.

and the festoon, which is a big pass for me:

 

[F. King Daniel]

A starship with a hood ornament. I know it's meant to be the USS Trump Plaza but still... *cringe*

 

[137th Gebirg]

It is glorious in its hideousness!

 

[Richard Baker]

Where is the Festoon from?, I don't recognize it

 

[pst]

Where is the Festoon from?, I don't recognize it

discovery season 1 "magic to make the sanest man go mad", it's the baron's ship at the end of the episode:

 

[mswood]

I mean, that's the way it is on the original ILM model used in FC, DS9, and VOY (you can see the stretching in the hull-paneling along the bottom and that the windows and pennants look perfect on the side-view, confirming my guess), so it's more defensible than, say, the Phase II bridge on the XL-Enterprise-A. Oddly enough, the new model built by Fabio Passaro for the magazine renders doesn't have that error. It feels weird that they commission this brand-new idealized high-res model for the advertising, and then are slavishly accurate to the low-detail 1996 model on the actual miniature. It's not the first time it's happened, but it certainly feels that sometimes Eaglemoss's left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

Pretty sure that they start the ship work before they farm out the CGI image work, but it would sure be nice to get some corrections for ships that have errors or are only partially detailed due what parts are going to be shown, even if they wouldn’t be screen accurate.

 

[mswood]

Boy how I hated the Scimitar design (really hate ships that transform) but that model looks pretty solid.