^^ So why is the dish absent on the TOS shuttlecraft (both original concept and series version). the Aurora cruiser, the Romulan BoP and many other Trek designs? And on the Reverend schematic I saw he did not discard the dish. And I did not discard the dish either, but just modified it—the dish is basically reversed. And as I mentioned upthread MJ’s original concept for a deflector was a dome rather than a dish.
Dishes are TOS design on-screen; radar-type domes were discarded early on even by MJ. Missing dishes: now that's another discussion...
The essential point, though, is that I never claimed to be doing an exact line duplication of TAS designs. This work is an interpretation of those designs to capture the essence of those designs, but exploring how it could look in live-action. And why should I be constrained by an arbitrary notion when the TAS animators did not follow exactly what TOS firmly established in many aspects? If you don’t like the work here then thats fine. But there is no rule set in stone about how one can go about this. Dishes are a familiar design element on Federation starships of the Constitution-class, but we never saw them on anything else in TOS. The next thing we saw them was on fan made designs and FJ designs, but those are not official.
^Always the optimum approach. As anyone can see, the two views of this thing are so at odds with each other the only approach that makes any sense is to just pick an interpretation that you think looks good and/or makes the most sense and go with it. It's been an age since I made that image so I'd struggle to remember my thought process at the time, but it seems as though I chose to outright ignore the weird forward slant the thing has and just wright it off as a poorly executed attempt at perspective. Everything about the aft section is just weird, with seemingly several sets of overlapping fins pointing in all kinds of weird directions, so I just simplified is as much as possible. I think at one point I started sketching up a much more scaled up version that looks less like a little shuttle and more like a two deck yacht, but I don't think I got all that far with it. I think I kept getting stuck on that pointy belly, which make less practical sense the more it's scaled up, assuming one intends it to be able to land on a level surface.
^^ I saw your solution to the landing struts and I may do something very similar, there looks to be a lot of mass/weight in the rear so I might have to really think about this.
On the contrary, I'm a great fan of your work! I apology for getting so fixated on one issue, and I missed the concept of "made real" vs. "made exact to the cartoon". Thanks for digging into the TAS world of ships.
Yeah the thing is definitely back-heavy and by rights ought to tip back if you tried to land it like that. But I find it's best not to overthink such things since you can always fudge it by saying it has antigrav stabilisers, maglocked landing gear pads, or that the forward deflector is dense enough that it counterbalances the nacelles.
One idea I will consider is whether landing struts could be lowered from the large fins on the side of the craft. Those are not really thin wings so it might be possible. If the struts can extend as well as lower then it might solve the balance issue.
It looks like my idea of having the aft landing struts extend down from the big side fins could be made to work. I can’t work on this any further this evening because my mouse batteries just conked out and I don’t have another pair so I’ll leave them to charge overnight. TOS filming miniatures. TOS actually had some nicely detailed miniatures for their use. The best of them was, of course, the 11 footer Enterprise even if one side was unfinished. But other good miniatures were the Galileo, the Klingon battle cruiser, the Romulan BoP and the Botany Bay. None of those was quite as detailed or lighted as the Enterprise, but they were quite good for their purpose and could work even when seen reasonably close. The Galileo fullsize exterior was even more detailed than the filming miniature and I have always taken that as the “real” representation of the shuttlecraft. Sadly other TOS miniatures were not as detailed, but managed to work for the long shots they were used for such as the Tholian webspinners and Kara’s ship from “Spock’s Brain.” It would have been nice of other miniatures had gotten the same attention as thhe Enterprise, Galileo and Klingon ship, but that would have required more time and money than could be spared. Those other less important miniatures were really little better than many of the TAS designs in similarly lacking detail yet being more consistent in terms of shape in varying views. Indeed a few TAS designs were actually more detailed than some on TOS which was a welcome surprise. In trying to create TOS versions of TAS designs I hope to flesh them out with sufficient detail to be on par with TOS’ better miniatures as if they would be used for filming reasonably closeup shots.
This is not exactly true. He was fashioning a forward “radome” dish behind a “nose” in the same way they are mounted on jets. https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8422/7567456068_84166d5f69_z.jpg I say this despite not being able to find the sketch that indicates it. Somewhere in my infinite pile of Trekkish accumulations...
I want to be careful with any added detail. I don’t want to drastically change the overall look, but more detail is needed to make a live-action version seem somewhat more real. To that end I am using the fullsize Galileo exterior as something of a guide for detail on a small ship. Mind you even the Galileo is lacking in certain details such as exterior lights which even a small aircraft today has. For the registration of Jones’ ship I think I’m going with EC-19673. The vague idea is EC means Earth Civilian registry. 19673 alludes to 1967 and 1973, the two years Cyrano Jones appeared in Trek.
Some of the added detail is rather subtle, but if uou look closely you can see the outlines of access panels although I haven't yet added the access hatch/gangway. I have added the landing stut hatches to the underside of the "wings" as well as the bottom of the forward section, but you can't see them the way this is lighted. I could make them more noticeable by darkening their colour from the rest of the hull. I have also worked out a preliminary scale to this. L.OA = 61.127 ft. WOA = 29.4 ft. HOA = 22.009 ft.
A bit more progress. There are some subtle changes as well as a bit more added detail. - I enlargened the top and bottom running lights double their original size. - I added a bit more colour to the top centre of the ship. - I added the access hatch/gangway underneath along with landing lights (currently unlit while in flight). - I tweaked the colour of the nacelle domes. - I added the registration number. - I reshaped and modified the engine support pylons to look just a bit more like the impression given on the TAS onscreen version. The pylons attach a bit lower and a bit more steeply to the main hull. I also turned the pylons slightly about 8.5 degrees to get them to line up a bit more like they appear to onscreen. Of course, this isn’t yet complete. I might add a touch more detail such as tweaking the overall finish of the craft. But the main thing remaining is to make the landing struts in the deployed position to render shots of the craft landed.
I just remembered I want to add an escape hatch on top just in case the ship crashes relatively intact, but exit out the lower gangway isn’t possible.
Love the ship. It's dimensions are appropriate to be housed in a K7 Space Station hangar, or even in a ship hangar such as the Enterprise's hangar if needed. Nice.
Rarely is anyone more critical than the creator. I have quibbles about this design, but I'm loath to start again from scratch so I will likely leave it as is. I really wish I had left the main hull cylindrical rather than ovoid, but I cannot fix that without starting from scratch. Not going to do it at this stage. However, I think I will remake the impulse exhaust. I think I have a better idea that wouldn't look so generic and perhaps a bit more TOS like. But presently I am working out the landing struts in deployed position.