I drew this port side view of the refit Enterprise in Adobe Illustrator. I attempted to recreate the Strongback and general Aztec paint scheme from the TMP era as best I could (prior to ILM dulling down the finish and repainting areas of the model). Feedback welcome on how I could possibly improve from here. Thanks!
Indeed! How does your work compare with Kimble’s? Yotsuya has the nacelles riding a tad lower I believe…more accurate to the shooting model: https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/enterprise-evolution-from-tos-to-tmp.300617/page-7 I can’t easily tell…
You have a good eye! I actually used a black and white photo of the studio model as a reference in proportion with the saucer/engineering section for the nacelle sizing. My rationale behind that decision was that since I was trying to make it look like a 'real' depiction (not blueprint schematic), I'd use proportions as though you were looking at the profile of the actual model. Originally I had the other nacelle smaller behind it and shaded somewhat differently to make it look a bit further away but it just looked kinda funny to me so I ended up just removing the second one altogether.
You know, I uploaded a much higher resolution image to flickr than what it's allowing you to zoom into but I guess with a free account, there are restrictions on size resolution. Bummer because I put a lot of time and effort into even the smallest of details on the aztec design, the little panels I never even realized were on the studio model, the strongback design from the original paint job from TMP, etc. Oh well, it looks pretty good from a distance too, I guess.
I'm not sure about Imgur. On flickr, where the file is now, the original image is 12675 x 4101 (pretty huge) while when I open it from my devices, it only displays at 1920 x 1080 and I can't zoom further. The image on flickr says it's the original size so I can only assume it won't let you zoom in that far on a free account or it just has that restriction in general.
If you choose to download the image, you can download the original 12675x4101 and zoom in to your heart's content. Nice trees you put in there!
Ha, I'd love to. However, I'm knee-deep into trying to make the entire 3D interior of the refit Enterprise from TMP, documented in this forum in another thread. I'm not sure how much it translated into the final product of this port side view illustration but I got a bit obsessive in trying to reproduce the aztec paint job from the studio model. It took a lot of time and effort to do it to some degree of accuracy. If I were to create other views in this style, I'd like to ideally reproduce the aztec design similarly and with all the work I'm doing on the 3D interior, I'm not sure when I'd be able to get back to this project.
One thing I found very interesting when doing this project was that on nearly every port/starboard profile illustration or blueprint of the refit Enterprise that's produced, the taper on the nacelle of the flux chiller is a more graceful or gradual curve than the more severe curve from the actual studio model per the pic comparison below. I think this ultimately stems from David Kimble's original blueprints. However, it seems that most or all of the folks who author their own versions follow this convention for whatever reason as do most styrene models. I don't think I necessarily nailed the look in mine but I attempted to replicate the more severe curve from the studio model.
Oh yes - old issue stemming from the actual shape of the nacelle itself. It's basically a semi-tapering cylinder shape. When you make that cut for the flux chillers, that's going to have a compound curve - not a simple elliptical one. You are much closer to the proper shape.