Making the Intepid Class Prototype (Sternbach)
- Thread starter calamity_si
- Start date
Hi all. Couldn't resist any longer! Here's a couple of shots of my progress so far... Most of the detailing is now done. The primary hull is pretty much complete. Just need to add some Starfleet pendants, maybe some running lights and she'll be all done!
I've seen a bunch that I thought looked very cool; can't point to specific ones right now, but they cross my field of vision every so often. A lot of fan efforts make use of established design elements, and that's okay, though I seem to see a lot of ships that look like Ent-E or NX-01 in basic hull plating and shading, etc. It's tricky to evolve a design just enough to look advanced without looking like it's left the lineage altogether; folks who understand the hardware and can play with it usually get a thumbs up if I stumble across their work.
Rick
Yeah, in my opinion, it's more difficult to design Federation ships than any other Scifi craft because the elements are so pre-defined. Even with shows like Star Wars, you can get away with a variety of different and unusual designs and they'll just fit in the universe. You can in Star Trek but only with unestablished alien designs. If it's something 'known' i.e. a Fed or Klingon or Romulan ship, than it has a lot of 'design baggage' that goes with it and has to look a certain way. That's why I especially loved the Klingon designs of the Vor'cha and Negh'Var classes. They had such an awesome continuity and yet were a definate evolution from one another. I think that's why I was never much of a fan of the new movie Enterprise. She has all the elements there but you can tell they just hadn't read the manual! LOL!
Well, there is that.
BTW, loved your Hayne's Klingon BoP book. Any chance you're going to be any more along that line? Voyager or NX-01 getting similar treatment perhaps?
Finally finished. I'll light her etc later but for now, here's the model.
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=54356e3cb57720ca3c698cc470a9fb31
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=54356e3cb57720ca3c698cc470a9fb31
Hey, I just saw the Stingray mouth! You were looking at the middle picture when you saw that, right?
One thing I don't like about this design is the nacelles. The way they are oriented/shaped makes them look too like they are part of a sled, so in my mind it has the effect of "grounding" the overall design too much. Downward oriented nacelles in general are less dynamic looking so care has to be taken to avoid making it look too stodgy/slow.
Yeah that's fair enough. I might play around with the design in a while. I just wanted to stay faithful to the original sketch as much as possible to begin with.
I agree too, and that's probably why it wasn't used - not...doesn't look like a ship to carry a series...more like a background ship. But I still like it.
And it *does* look like it would be much more stable on landing than the final Voyager design did! Voyager looked like it would need some kind of field technology to keep it up and balanced....and if those fail, not so good. But this ship looks like it would sit fine on the ground all on it's own! (Which was probably the original intent!)
You know, Voyage had those moving nacelles...they were supposed to be some kind of adjustable "variable geometry warp drive". I was thinking, you could make the nacelles on THIS design maybe swing up and above the saucer for warp flight - and swing down like they are now for landing!
What do ya think?
Some people have wondered what this ship would look like with the engines raised up. Well this is for you guys.
I don't mind the look of it myself, but it does remind me a lot of the USS Equinox like this. For me, this confirms that I much prefer Sternbach's original underslung arrangement.
I don't mind the look of it myself, but it does remind me a lot of the USS Equinox like this. For me, this confirms that I much prefer Sternbach's original underslung arrangement.
Some people have wondered what this ship would look like with the engines raised up. Well this is for you guys.
I don't mind the look of it myself, but it does remind me a lot of the USS Equinox like this. For me, this confirms that I much prefer Sternbach's original underslung arrangement.
Could you try rolling both nacelles 180 degrees and reattaching to the pylons? I like the upward bend on the pylons, but I think the nacelles turned over would give a little crisper look to the whole ship. It's one of those undefinable stylistic somethings that speaks to me.
Rick
No problem Rick. As I thought of perhaps having the 'raised nacelles' version as a refit of this class, I added some extra impulse engines too. Kinda like the Excelsior, I thought the original impulse engines looked a bit weak on the original version. Anyways, here it is: What do you think? I think I still prefer the original...
Not really, especially not startrek related thats for sure. He did a bang up job.
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