Enterprise B

[trekriffic]

Here's my Enterprise B from the 1/1000 scale AMT kit. I spent about 6 months accurizing this one and underpainting the aztec pattern with a brush before overspraying with insignia white. All the windows were added by hand using a pinvise and jeweller's file. The hardest part of all was painting the 3 thin stripes around the slanted circumference of the saucer.

Clickable Thumbnails:

 

[Kaiser]

Nice....

 

[SonicRanger]

Excellent work!

 

[Professor Moriarty]

Wow, are you building the whole fleet, trekriffic?! This looks marvelous.

I always liked the Excelsior... she got a bum rap in Star Trek III.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Wow, are you building the whole fleet, trekriffic?! This looks marvelous.

I always liked the Excelsior... she got a bum rap in Star Trek III.

Agreed...

Out of all of the Trek ships in the TMP or TNG era, the Excelsior-class looks most like a "real ship," I think. That design always gave me the feel of an aircraft carrier (by contrast, the 1701 gave me the feel of a "tall ship," and the 1701-D gave me the feel of an ocean-liner).

It has its flaws and defects, of course, but overall... I think it did get a "bum rap." I suppose part of my appreciation for it comes from having read the DC comics where, for several years after the loss of the 1701, Kirk and crew had the Excelsior... it grew on me.

 

[Skywalker]

I like the Excelsior, too. My only major gripe with it is the neck. It looks like rubber, or the middle of an accordion. I'm not really sure why they went with that, instead of just making it look like the rest of the hull.

 

[Patrickivan]

I like the Excelsior, too. My only major gripe with it is the neck. It looks like rubber, or the middle of an accordion. I'm not really sure why they went with that, instead of just making it look like the rest of the hull.

But certainly strong looking! I prefer the Excelsior over the gribbled out E-B version though. I don't know what was going through their collective skulls when they pimped out the very clean looking Excelsior design...


Good looking model trekriffic! Nice attention to detail!

 

[JayTheTrekkie]

That is really cool, I like it

 

[Professor Moriarty]

I don't know what was going through their collective skulls when they pimped out the very clean looking Excelsior design...

I presume you're talking about the Enterprise-B modifications first seen in Star Trek: Generations? If so, they were thinking "let's find a way to show damage to the Enterprise-B without permanently marring an extremely expensive studio model."

 

[Patrickivan]

CGI could have taken care of that... Plus that doesn't explain the goofy warp nacelle changes, and the addition of those ridiculous impluse engines that were inserted into the saucer on either side of the, well, impulse engines.

Besides, I was being facetious when I said I didn't know... They wanted a ship that was visually different from the Excelsior. Not a bad idea, just poorly executed.

 

[trekriffic]

Thanks for everyone's comments. The Excelsior class is a design that grew on me; at first, I thought it was hideous. It's one of my favorites now, second only to the Constitution class for me. Once I got a better look at it, I had to admire the great look of speed it has even standing still. Still, the B has it's detractors, with those weird projections on the secondary hull and hugely redundant impulse engines. It lost some of the sleekness of the original IMO.

 

[xman]

Very nice job trekriffic!

I gotta say though, Enterprise-B was my least favourite of all the Enterprise designs and I'm glad they destroyed her on her maiden voyage, I'm glad Kirk died with her and I'm glad the movie was so forgettable.

X

 

[Birdog]

Very nice job trekriffic!

I gotta say though, Enterprise-B was my least favourite of all the Enterprise designs and I'm glad they destroyed her on her maiden voyage, I'm glad Kirk died with her and I'm glad the movie was so forgettable.

X

She wasn't destroyed on her maiden voyage. She went on to a long career and appears to have been retired rather than suffer the Enterprise curse and be destroyed.

 

[Professor Moriarty]

CGI could have taken care of that

Not in 1994... CGI was still in its infancy back then. There were only a handful of shots of the Enterprise-D done with CGI in Generations, and those were limited to the D going to warp. Several years ago I saw a picture of the CGI model of the Enterprise-D that was used in the movie, and there's a reason it was only shown when the D was blurry and whooshing by the camera--it was completely unconvincing standing still. That incredible shot of Scotty and Chekov looking out into space from the gash in the Enterprise-B's hull was shot with the camera right up against the studio model... there's no way they could have convincingly done that with CGI fifteen years ago.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

CGI could have taken care of that

Not in 1994... CGI was still in its infancy back then. There were only a handful of shots of the Enterprise-D done with CGI in Generations, and those were limited to the D going to warp. Several years ago I saw a picture of the CGI model of the Enterprise-D that was used in the movie, and there's a reason it was only shown when the D was blurry and whooshing by the camera--it was completely unconvincing standing still. That incredible shot of Scotty and Chekov looking out into space from the gash in the Enterprise-B's hull was shot with the camera right up against the studio model... there's no way they could have convincingly done that with CGI fifteen years ago.

Agreed. Hell, it's difficult to make that sort of shot believable even today, with our more developed toolkit. After all, it's only half "the tools" with the rest still being talent and vision. But 15 years back, the vision may have been there but the tools certainly weren't up to the job yet.

I'm not 100% convinced they're up to it today, really. I mean, we're so used to seeing CGI SFX in flicks today that we compare every bit of CGI to other CGI we've seen, and sort of expect things to look like that "familiar CGI." But if you really look at it with an unbiased eye, most CGI is very easily distinguished from reality. It may be "really good CGI" but if you see a CGI car, with CGI drivers, in a CGI car-chase sequence, you can always tell it's CGI, no matter how well-executed it is. That's because it's something we know should look a certain way, so we can identify the subtle "wrong" factors, even if only subconsciously.

In "space CGI effects," we're so accustomed to the "space CGI look" tgat we expect real "space" to look very much the same. I suspect, though, that reality looks a LOT different than what we see in the movies. Don't you?

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

I'm a pretty big advocate of hybrid VFX. Digital compositing looks a lot cleaner than analog, but CGI looks hecka fake up close.

Lord of The Rings had some rather nice environmental extensions via CGI and made good use of models for stuff like towns, fortresses, etc, and basically integrated it with the landscape seamlessly with computers.

CGI can look pretty convincing as long as its not in-your-face and the dominant visual medium.

Yeah, space effects look a lot different than in reality. Things are lit more dramatically, and explosions and lasers and engine exhausts are all flashier than they'd actually be.

 

[trekriffic]

I took some more pics of this model awhile back and wanted to share them with everyone. Hope you enjoy them!





































Beauty shot:

 

[Kaiser]

Very very awesome pictures

also if you read the new Haynes Enterprise ship book the Enterprise Disappeared in 2329 after the crew got some Plague Onboard and the ship was never seen since.

 

[BlackFire3]

...words fail me to express my awe of your model, skills, and patience.
a month ago i got my hand on the B model. and rather than taking my time putting it together piece by piece and painting said pieces when it's easiest, i assemble the whole thing in one go paint it the next day then decal it the next. i only painted it a little so far and haven't touched it since but i can easily say my work is a thousand fold more sloppy compared to yours.

and i think all the extras in the refit design is to make it seem like the ship is more powerful then the original design. which is also an excuse they use in why the D's nacelle's are shorter then most other ships in the federation. technology advancing far enough that the engines didn't need to be as long as half the ship for high warp speeds

 

[Patrickivan]

CGI could have taken care of that

Not in 1994... CGI was still in its infancy back then. There were only a handful of shots of the Enterprise-D done with CGI in Generations, and those were limited to the D going to warp. Several years ago I saw a picture of the CGI model of the Enterprise-D that was used in the movie, and there's a reason it was only shown when the D was blurry and whooshing by the camera--it was completely unconvincing standing still. That incredible shot of Scotty and Chekov looking out into space from the gash in the Enterprise-B's hull was shot with the camera right up against the studio model... there's no way they could have convincingly done that with CGI fifteen years ago.

Agreed. Hell, it's difficult to make that sort of shot believable even today, with our more developed toolkit. After all, it's only half "the tools" with the rest still being talent and vision. But 15 years back, the vision may have been there but the tools certainly weren't up to the job yet.

I'm not 100% convinced they're up to it today, really. I mean, we're so used to seeing CGI SFX in flicks today that we compare every bit of CGI to other CGI we've seen, and sort of expect things to look like that "familiar CGI." But if you really look at it with an unbiased eye, most CGI is very easily distinguished from reality. It may be "really good CGI" but if you see a CGI car, with CGI drivers, in a CGI car-chase sequence, you can always tell it's CGI, no matter how well-executed it is. That's because it's something we know should look a certain way, so we can identify the subtle "wrong" factors, even if only subconsciously.

In "space CGI effects," we're so accustomed to the "space CGI look" tgat we expect real "space" to look very much the same. I suspect, though, that reality looks a LOT different than what we see in the movies. Don't you?

I'm a pretty big advocate of hybrid VFX. Digital compositing looks a lot cleaner than analog, but CGI looks hecka fake up close.

Lord of The Rings had some rather nice environmental extensions via CGI and made good use of models for stuff like towns, fortresses, etc, and basically integrated it with the landscape seamlessly with computers.

CGI can look pretty convincing as long as its not in-your-face and the dominant visual medium.

Yeah, space effects look a lot different than in reality. Things are lit more dramatically, and explosions and lasers and engine exhausts are all flashier than they'd actually be.

Just in response regarding dates and CGI possibilities--- From Memory Alpha... Though for the record, as far as a lot of scenes go, I am in favour of the physical model because of the thought that has to go into them. It's an art that requires skill, massive labour, some love, sometimes teams. Not that CGI isn't without it's merit. CGI can be freakin' fantastic- but it's also too easy to change and manipulate letting people change things on a whim- like say the scale of a ship... Anyway.

"A December 1993 Christmas party, thrown by NewTek (the company that owns and markets the LightWave 3D software), provided a key moment for overcoming the Star Trek producers' resistance to CGI, when Stipes met the animators of Amblin Imaging. Amblin's John Gross recalled, "David was always interested in getting 3-D incorporated into Star Trek. He saw the benefits of that probably before many of the other producers over there did. And so we invited him over here and showed him the facility and when Voyager came up he saw the opportunity to get this stuff involved. He and Dan Curry came by and we talked about what we can do and showed them some examples and eventually we gave them a bid to build a virtual Voyager." To prove their skills, Gross and Grant Bouchet took some stock footage of a Maquis raider with the accompanying motion control data, provided by the studio, and added some CG ships. They matched flight movements so perfectly that DS9 producers were unable to distinguish between the physical models and CG models. Vice-president John Parenteau related further, "That meant a lot to Dan Curry, because Dan was weary. I think he had some bad experiences with CGI in the past and didn't feel it was quite there yet. But when we turned out their flight tests and people couldn't tell the difference, Dan started to realize that maybe we have finally conquered whatever barrier there had been before." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 27, No. 4/5, p. 80)
The cost of CGI production dropped dramatically after LightWave 3D became commercially available, off-the-shelf, in 1994. Although both Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager had already implemented CGI in their title sequences (created in 1992 and 1994, respectively), they both started their runs predominantly using traditional visual effects methods but transitioned to regular use of CGI in the late 1990s. The transition to CGI was completed in 1997..."

I took some more pics of this model awhile back and wanted to share them with everyone. Hope you enjoy them!





































Beauty shot:

I was looking at some of the photos more closely and really like how you didn't overdo the panelling. At this scale too much could have made it look too "unreal" and messed the scale. Just an overall well painted ship!