Hey Donny I remember you saying that you can't see the bottom area of the storage area in the examination room, but I found you can see it very briefly in the bar scene in TSFS, its right underneath the NCO's arm. It appears to curve down from under the greebly panel into the floor:
That display the two people in the background are looking at (where the backlit storage cabinets were), is that supposed to be a game, or is it some sort of futuristic wine rack? It's kind of hard to tell.
I think it’s a game, given that one of the “wine bottles” is lit up, and there are lit numbers to the side. The style of the setup reminds me of the stylings of mid-20th century pinball machines.
I've just discovered that those hex panels were probably recycled from an earlier production! I spotted them in the Logan's Run episode "The Innocent" (co-written by D.C. Fontana), which aired October 10, 1977. I recognized them right off because we've been discussing them here. They're oriented vertically as door panels in the bedroom of the episode's main guest character, and can be seen in the below video initially at about 16:30 and more clearly from 22:48-23:18: https://archive.org/details/LogansRunSeries/Logan's+Run+04+The+Innocent.avi According to Phase II: The Lost Years, the Enterprise sets were under construction from about August-October '77. It doesn't specify when sickbay was built, but I assume it would've come later in the process than the bridge and engine room -- assuming the exam room set wasn't built later during TMP. And a Logan episode that aired in early October was probably filmed before August anyway. So it seems highly probable that the hex panels were used in "The Innocent" first. Can anyone confirm the timing? And hey, both the Logan's Run series and TMP had the same set decorator, Linda DeScenna! I guess that explains how the panels got from an MGM production to a Paramount one.
Weird, since that hex pattern shows up in the Phase II concept art of the Captain's Quarters, which was well before either date. Perhaps the concept was created to include this particular hex grating which the studio had a supply of already? Or perhaps they generated quite a few of these for the Enterprise sets, and one was borrowed for the Logan's run episode? Quite a mystery, but good find, @Christopher!
^Interesting. That concept illustration shows them as some kind of wood paneling rather than storage compartments or viewscreens, so I suspect they were a pre-existing decorative element that Probert (I assume?) intended to use, like the honeycomb pattern in the divider by the bed. No doubt set designers would be aware of available resources and patterns and incorporate them into their concepts.
I believe that's Mike Minor's artwork; Probert wasn't involved until the project had become The Motion Picture.
They do appear to be the very same panels. That's a great catch Christopher and yes, it's strange that these same shapes appear in Mike Minor's crew quarter sketch. I suspect that Christopher is correct that these were decorative elements that Paramount had on hand. The alternative is that they were manufactured by Paramount's scenic shop for Phase II but found their way into the Logan's Run set considering that the show was produced in 1977 when the Phase II sets were being designed and built.
Except the Logan's Run series, like the film, was from MGM. Linda DeScenna seems to be the only connection, production-wise. (Aside from Matthew Yuricich doing matte paintings for both, but that doesn't apply to set decoration.)
Then they must have been something made by an outside source that she bought from both times, and told Mike Minor about.
Maybe. They might have been more widely available/known. Might be worth keeping an eye out for them in other period productions, although I was lucky to stumble across this usage. In any case, it's just intriguing that the shapes we're used to thinking of as either storage compartments (TMP) or viewscreens (TWOK) started out as just decorative moldings. I guess that answers pfontaine2's earlier question about why there's no clear way to open the compartments -- because the shapes weren't originally meant to be compartments at all.
I apologize for the lack of updates. I've been finding myself rather unmotivated lately to do any modeling outside of my day job. I want to do some fun, extra curricular modeling, but when I sit down with the aim to do so, I just find I don't have the energy. Waiting for inspiration to come roaring back as it always does, however I just can't seem to pick a project (or sub-project) that really excites me like it has earlier this year. I want to finish sickbay, but I just can't seem to let the excitement of the work carry me like it normally does. I want to do a rendition of the Regula-1 hallways, but again, the energy isn't there. Motivation, but no energy. Ack. Maybe writing it out helps. Or maybe I need to watch some Star Trek, which I haven't done in a while. That usually gets the juices flowing.
Don't worry about it Donny! If it's not fun, take a break. There's nothing worse than when a hobby starts to feel like an obligation or a job. Take as much time as you need until you feel that itch again.
If I may? Find something well outside of the work you usually do. I assume you do a ton of SF-related stuff for your job, right? Fine, go somewhere else. Make a valley, put a creek into it and a log cabin near the creek. Put snow on the mountains and procedural trees. Back in the old days, phosphor-dot CRTs were prone to a phenomenon called "burn-in" and images that didn't change much often left behind 'ghost' images that were a pain to get rid of. The phosphors were actually physically damaged, and the only way to alleviate the problem was to craft a negative version of the causal image and then leave it on the display constantly for a few weeks until they balanced out. Similarly, I think the brain gets a similar kind of "burn-in" which we usually just call "burn-out", and you're starting to go through that process. It hit me back in the mid-2000s, and my work's been crud since. Give your brain a rest. Watch some Bob Ross videos and try to redo his work in your environment with your tools. Or try your hand at making cartoons, instead. Do something radically different. And it might not be Trek-related, but I'd love to see the results should you find sense in my advice and watch you work through your ennui. Good luck! We'll miss you if you have to give up recreational SciFi modeling, but ... we know what you're going through. Thank you for the thousands of fascinating, detailed work you've done!
That's why they invented "screen saver" animations. I think these days computers just have them out of tradition, or because people like having them. But yeah, it's good to take a break from your routine to clear your mind. I've often found that changing my work location -- e.g. taking my laptop over to a library on campus -- made it easier to focus on my writing. Being stuck inside with the COVID lockdown has made it harder to make progress on my work.
Screen savers were specifically designed to prevent burn-in of CRT monitors due to a static picture staying on the screen for hours at a time. LCD flatscreens don’t have that design flaw, so yeah, they’re pretty much just for show these days. I remember back in the days of the SETI-at-Home screen saver that used hundreds of thousands of PC’s around the world to help crunch their data. Cool idea, but a complete failure as an actual screen saver, as it had far too many static elements on it and it actually permanently burned-in my monitor.
I 'liked' that, but -- just to be clear -- I'm not celebrating your troubles. You're my favorite of the current crop of Trek authors. On the subject of screen savers, do you remember Buck Rogers in the 25th Century? Who am I kidding? I'm sure you do! Do you remember how all the 'computer' screens flashed random blocks of color? I used to think that was so cheap and crappy, yet a few years later, screen savers became a thing, and suddenly computers all over the place looked like a Buck Rogers prop! Only with toasters.
I have to admit, its hard sometimes to do 3D at home when youve been doing 3D at work all day... And especially on a project of this magnitude This is amazing work Donny, full stop. Sometimes a complete break from 3D is what I need... I can get sick of my own projects after while and I just need time away to get refreshed.