25th Century Starfleet Uniforms, For The Helluvit...

[GMSkarka]

Spent lunchtime today coming up with a new set of Starfleet uniforms, for a non-canonical, post-Next-Gen-era RPG campaign that I'm not even 100% sure I'm going to run. Y'know, like ya do.

For clarity, the design envisions a divisional breakdown as follows:

Command and Control: Command Staff, Pilots (Helm/Nav, Shuttles, etc.)
Sciences: All sciences, minus Medical.
Medical: Doctors, Nurses, Counselors.
Engineering: Self-explanatory.
Operations: Communications, Internal Operations, Sensors.
Security: Ships' Defenses (Tactical) and Internal Security.

 

[Jedman67]

Nothing wrong with a plain colored tunic, it's been done a number of times. The structure is nice, but it doesn't really "identify" me as starfleet.
Perhaps put the rank stripes on epaulets for a more "military" feel, and open the collar to a TNG miranda collar?

Great job mate!

 

[sojourner]

Looks like the Beyond uniforms.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I like the division breakdowns.

A little while back and as an experiment, I did a similar breakdown of divisions back for TNG, with callbacks to TOS (in fact, the colors aligning with TOS colors were sampled from TOS screnshots).

 

[Arpy]

Shouldn't Worf be in red, and Beverly and Deanna in blue?

If you're going to fiddle with it again, I don't think there's enough of a difference between TOS movie-era medical green and TOS era command green to make the color scheme gel right.

It might be interesting to give Medical and Counseling branches different colors too. But then you could also leave Deanna's dress untouched as she's in a civie dress, not a uniform.

Picard doesn't look to great in green. Maybe it's just his complexion in the photo against it. But remember that Kirk's wrap-around was an informal uniform and had that unique cut and gold piping making it pop. If you want to make the captain stand out, maybe introduce another color here as well - purple or white? Put Beverly in green and Deanna in orange or brown or silver?

...some thoughts. I'm impressed with how close you got TOS shades to match. Kinda sweet.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Shouldn't Worf be in red, and Beverly and Deanna in blue?

No. Similarly to the OP's scheme, here security is separate from engineering and medical is separate from (the rest of) science. (Note that Troi and Crusher have the same color, also in line with the OP's scheme.)

If you're going to fiddle with it again, I don't think there's enough of a difference between TOS movie-era medical green and TOS era command green to make the color scheme gel right.

It might be interesting to give Medical and Counseling branches different colors too. But then you could also leave Deanna's dress untouched as she's in a civie dress, not a uniform.

I forgot now which way I ended up. I think I changed Crusher's color to match Troi's dress, but if not it was the other way around (I tried it both ways). The colors were close enough to begin with, and not changing *those* colors much governed what I did for the medical. By the way, keeping Worf's color close to gold is why I gave security brown. Really, security should be camouflage, but that's another story. Gray went to the "cadet," because it was neutral; plus, Wes had been in gray before.

As a general remark, there's an argument to be made for using white as medical, frankly, because blood and other stains show up most clearly on white. That's one thing that TMP got right, I think (as far as McCoy's uniform color was while he was in sickbay; TMP used olive green on the insignia though). TWOK kept the white uniform for McCoy when he was in surgery, at least.

There were some limitations here, simply because I wanted to retain the TNG style that has a lot of black. I tried white for the color, but the black and white together looked awful.

(Just as an aside, there's a gray shirt that's used for outpost personnel in both TOS "Balance of Terror" and "Arena".)

Picard doesn't look to great in green. Maybe it's just his complexion in the photo against it. But remember that Kirk's wrap-around was an informal uniform and had that unique cut and gold piping making it pop. If you want to make the captain stand out, maybe introduce another color here as well - purple or white? Put Beverly in green and Deanna in orange or brown or silver?

...some thoughts. I'm impressed with how close you got TOS shades to match. Kinda sweet.

Yeah, I agree about Picard. I think I actually might have tweaked the color a tad so he looked best, while keeping it in the space of Kirk's wraparound. One quibble with your phrasing is that I wouldn't refer to the wraparound as an informal uniform, as that's basically self-contradictory. I'd refer to it as an alternate uniform, that the captain may wear at his or her own discretion.

You're right about the gold piping. I made everyone's piping match their color, but perhaps that was a mistake.

But yeah, I was struck with the TOS feel gotten simply by basing it on screen-capped colors from TOS.

Thanks for the feedback!

(I didn't intend to hijack the OP's thread, but I did want to remark on the similarity of my divisions in this experiment with the OP's.)

 

[Arpy]

GMSkarka, I think have issues with balance in your designs. You've gotten rid of the sharp angles of the shoulder yoke, opting for a plainer smoother design, but you kept the sharp angles of the boot openings. The boots stand out especially as they remain black even though the pants are dark gray. I feel like you can keep any of these elements so long as they're, even if not echoed, dealt with in some way elsewhere in the design as well.

I feel like material and cut would be very important in the realization of this design. Because the overall look is so plain (the waist especially), you're either going to need good tailoring to give it its formality.

I don't feel there's enough color difference between the indigo and teal of science and medical. They're not as far apart on the color spectrum as red and yellow and gray are in the row below. Maybe make them green and purple and blue to set them further apart, or make the row below red and orange and yellow to set them closer together?

CorporalCaptain, re "informal" uniform, Kirk looked like he was walking around in his evening loungewear in the wrap-arounds. It was the 60's and leisure suits and leisure wear were in. Maybe in the future they're ok with more casual designs on duty; I doubt what we wear today would look appropriately festooned to some Baroque Era Musketeer.

Green is a difficult color to make command. I feel Kirk was able to wear a softer green in his casual command wear. But again, it required some gold accents. I kind of like it though as a challenge (what shade-of-green and cut-of-uniform to make green feel right as the main color?), and I like what it suggests about being less splashy than gold or red, less playful than blue, closer to "life" and "calm" and "go," and being in the exact center of the color spectrum.

Also, I feel the TNG uniforms, with their greater use of black, would need deeper shades of colors than TOS ones to make the black not seem like its edging in trying to devour the color. It's interesting seeing the TNG crew in TOS colors, but I like the original shades better for their uniforms.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

CorporalCaptain, re "informal" uniform, Kirk looked like he was walking around in his evening loungewear in the wrap-arounds. It was the 60's and leisure suits and leisure wear were in. Maybe in the future they're ok with more casual designs on duty; I doubt what we wear today would look appropriately festooned to some Baroque Era Musketeer.

Minidresses were in in the 1960s, too.