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The Night Crew

Originality is overrated and comes second to a good aesthetic sense. Your Bozeman, while ironically taking the same approach that I am here vilifying, displays that. :)

Aww, shucks. :adore:

I would be interested to know if Church made impressionistic paintings of the new ship--I'd love to get my hands on one and take a shot at making it in 3D myself. I do love trying to sort out other people's sketchy messes. :lol:
 
:lol:

You can check out The Art of Star Wars Episode II and III to see a bunch of his work. As far as I know, and remember, he only does paintings. But you might know that already.

Honestly, that's what I'm looking forward to most about this movie. I'm going to be really pissed if they don't put out an art book. It's already looking kind of bad on that front. :(
 
You can check out The Art of Star Wars Episode II and III to see a bunch of his work. As far as I know, and remember, he only does paintings.

I have seen--and been unimpressed by--his Star Wars work. Church is technically fabulous, but he never really got the "boilerplate" look of Star Wars down, IMHO. Bsed on what I've seen of Trek XI and his work in War of the Worlds, he actually does much better with very organic designs.
 
Absolutely, I agree. I was never a big fan of Doug Chiang's, either, but at least he was a better fit for Star Wars than Church. That said, even though Church appears to be much better suited for Star Trek, I still think that he should stay away from the hardware side of things, unless it's something alien.
 
I was never a big fan of Doug Chiang's, either, but at least he was a better fit for Star Wars than Church.

See, now Chaing I thought was fabulous. Some of his early design work from TPM, before Lucas started pushing the designs in a more "polished" direction, were spot on to the original trilogy look. I wish he had stayed on for ROTS; that film's look suffered dramatically from Church taking over the senior design position. Especially since, out of all the films, the third needed to look the most like the OT.

Well, except for the ARC-170 clonetrooper fightr, but that just reinforces my point that Church is great with organic designs. :lol:
 
Okay, I should have specified his finished work, because you're right, his early stuff was pretty damn good. There's a specific early concept he did for the Naboo Fighter that I've always really loved. It kind of looks like one of those old antique clothes irons. A lot of his environment designs for Naboo, Coruscant, and Tatooine were also pretty spectacular.

Everything else, I agree with you completely. Didn't Chiang leave about halfway through pre-production of Ep II? I felt that film suffered for his loss as well. You know who's someone from the prequel art staff that I really like, but gets overlooked? Ian McCaig. His costume designs were just brilliant for the most part. I think he also tackled a little bit of hardware stuff too that I thought was quite nice as well. I may be misremembering though. It's been awhile since I've looked at those books.

Now that I think about, there's another concept designer whose website I used to follow religiously. I was really happy when he got the gig for ROTS, but then the finished product bore little to none of his influence. I can't remember his name for the life of me, though. I'll try and find it.

In the end, the prequels really did have some talented artists working on them. I blame Lucas for their overall design failures. The same way I'll blame J.J. ;)

J.J. Abrams reminds me of this story from the second year of SNL. Chevy Chase came back to host the show and got into a fight with Bill Murray. Witnesses were said to have heard Bill yell out, "Fucking Chevy! Medium talent!!"

That's how I feel about J.J. :p
 
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Okay, I should have specified his finished work, because you're right, his early stuff was pretty damn good. There's a specific early concept he did for the Naboo Fighter that I've always really loved. It kind of looks like one of those old antique clothes irons. A lot of his environment designs for Naboo, Coruscant, and Tatooine were also pretty spectacular.

I know exactly the one you're talking about--I made a digital model of it many, many years ago.


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Jeez, these are old. I need to do some new renders of this guy! :lol:

Everything else, I agree with you completely. Didn't Chiang leave about halfway through pre-production of Ep II? I felt that film suffered for his loss as well.

I'm unsure, but, yeah, by the time Church got his hands on the Separatist driods, they all started sprouting glowing red scowling eyes. Blech.

You know who's someone from the prequel art staff that I really like, but gets overlooked? Ian McCaig.

I like his stuff, too. Loved his original, white-robed concept for Sidious. I made a Halloween costume out of that design some years back.
 
I know exactly the one you're talking about--I made a digital model of it many, many years ago.


click to enlarge

Oh hey, that's fucking awesome! Nice work. :techman:

Didn't Chiang leave about halfway through pre-production of Ep II? I felt that film suffered for his loss as well.
I'm unsure, but, yeah, by the time Church got his hands on the Separatist droids, they all started sprouting glowing red scowling eyes. Blech.
:lol: Yeah, pretty much. Mind you, I wasn't a fan of either Chiang's battledroid or superbattledroid.

You know who's someone from the prequel art staff that I really like, but gets overlooked? Ian McCaig.
I like his stuff, too. Loved his original, white-robed concept for Sidious. I made a Halloween costume out of that design some years back.
Yeah, that was a great one. I was always a little disappointed that Trisha Biggar didn't really seem to do his stuff justice.

I think I may remember seeing pics of your costume here too.

BTW, I remembered the name of that artist I was talking about before. It's Feng Zhu, and you can check out his website here. I'm not a big fan of some of the fantasy stuff on there (because I'm just not a big fan of the fantasy look in general), but check out his hardware. To me, that's what the prequels should have looked like. It's got that "boilerplate" look while still looking kind of antiquey and regal in a way that evokes that "more civilized age" while still being a logical predecessor to the OT.

Apologies for the clunkiness of that last sentence. ;)
 
Whoa! I'd never seen that Naboo fighter design, before. That's pretty awesome. Way better than the final product, though the main fuselage is a little too large...
 
^ I'm sorry. Why's that?

Whoa! I'd never seen that Naboo fighter design, before. That's pretty awesome. Way better than the final product, though the main fuselage is a little too large...

I like that about it, though. I do think the design could have used another pass. I don't like the wing coming down off the front, and I think the body could have maybe used an undercut in the back with some junk in it.

I'm criticizing Chiang here though, not Gep. His model is an incredibly faithful rendering of the original sketch. I love how Chiang's stuff (and Zhu's too, actually) usually looked like it was made out of rock or something. :lol:
 
there's 2 reasons I'm going to see the new Trek movie:

Simon Pegg

Rachel Nichols as an Orion :drool:

since that fugly ship pic came out, my interest has dropped like a leadweight through a sheet of paper.

i'm more looking forward to this guy
<------

GI Joe, Transformers 2 and T4...
 
I know this is a bit of schadenfreude on my part, but I'm kind of hoping the movie will be an entertaining trainwreck. Otherwise, I fear it'll just be generic and forgettable.
 
I'm sorry to hear that. I wish I had some better, more genuine sounding platitudes to offer you, but good luck with it! :)
 
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