I would love to see the ship go into warp speed, something as awesome as Into Darkness or escaping a shockwave like in Star Trek VII: Generations. It's what I love about it. When I look at the design through my eyes it's the Enterprise, something I don't recognize with that horrible design that was claiming to be Pike's Enterprise from DISCO.
Well, here we go again, officially starting the next version. It's already so much easier modeling based off the concept model I did:
I can't decide what orientation to use for the 4 clamp things at the front of the nacelle here. Any thoughts?
Apologies if this has been covered: why 4 clamps? Yes, it's like the new Eaves version, but TOS was rocking 3. Not that I object, just wondering what your reasoning was, though of course general preference is completely valid. I'm always intrigued by how different artists make (or don't make) decisions like these. For what it's worth, I think of those two orientation options for the 4 clamps, you chose well. Both in terms of looks with your particular design choices, and also in terms of standing apart from the Eavesterprise.
You can see what I mean by it flows better here: The lines just match up better in my opinion. Here is some progress on the bussards, drawing some ideas from the previous version:
I'm quite happy with it, it took several tries to get the clear material right but it was worth it. Here's what it looks like on the inside: I had to stop myself from adding more detail, since you wouldn't be able to see it. Also, a preliminary animation test: Bussard Test
I finally got to work on this a bit more. Some more progress on the nacelle: Chiller grills: I managed to fuse them with the main nacelle body and give it a nice bevel Warp grills (tentative):
Not much today, just added some detail on the bottom of the nacelles and started blocking out the rest of the ship: