Design the Next Enterprise
- Thread starter Shikarnov
- Start date
AAAAUUUGGGGGGGGGGH! My brain cells! My wonderful brain cells, they're mel-l-lting! MELTINGGG! SeaQuest Season 2, it's so horrible, I can't take it anymore! My God, Irishman, I'm so sorry, if I had only known...
Okay, deep breaths. In. . . out. . . I am an officer! Two, four, six! Six! Six times. . . (uncontrollable weeping)
Anyway. Capt. April, hi there. I didn't mean to talk you out of submitting altogether. Maybe in my altered state, when I was confusing you with Irishman, I said too much. What I really wanted was to to get you out of the math and geometry side of your head, where you take a shape and divide it into a greater number of strips rather than a lesser number, and move you into the aesthetic side of your head. If I'm building a starship 3,000 feet long, for example, why am I doing it? What am I carrying that needs to be that big besides 30 times the extras, who are all getting paid union scale on the Paramount lot? If the Enterprise really is that big, maybe there's a reason for it (jumping between quadrants comes to mind); and if that's so, maybe there's something that can be incorporated into the design that we haven't seen before, that not only justifies the ship's new size but emboldens the mission proportionately.
I mean, let's face it, there's got to be more reasons to keep building Enterprises other than there being lots of remaining letters in the alphabet.
DF "Poor, Poor Roy Scheider. . . How Did You STAND It?" Scott
Man, that contest site is annoying. Why didn't they just make it so you could browse everything instead of limiting it to the top 45 in each category? And why didn't they attach your number of votes and star rating to the share links?
Yeah, I admit it, I'd be curious to know how I'm doing in the rankings, but as of now I'm not even on the map.
Hope the stuff about the judges reviewing all entries regardless of voting results is for real.
Yeah, I admit it, I'd be curious to know how I'm doing in the rankings, but as of now I'm not even on the map.
Hope the stuff about the judges reviewing all entries regardless of voting results is for real.
I am SO pleased that you posted a link to the BIG pics, because frankly, the small pics don't do it justice at all. It looked... well, chunky & clunky.
But NOW, it clearly DOES have the grace an Enterprise requires. In my opinion, it's in the top 2 for the contest.
Deanna Troi keeps crash-landing them into planets.
YARN
Fleet Captain
That would've been a great design for Voyager. Very nice.
Okay, let's see if I can respond to Vektor's now without screwing up and having to sit through SeaQuest season 3 as pennance...
What typically puts Vektor's work in a class alongside Doug Drexler, John Eaves, and Rick Sternbach, in my opinion, is that it tells a story nearly as rich as the words and actions of the show's characters. There are visual cues everywhere that make you wonder what things mean, and why they happened the way they did. John Eaves' Enterprise-E is so different a ship from Enterprise-D, but the measurement of those differences tells the story of how the TNG characters matured from then to now. Capt. Picard's transformation from then to now is the same one as from 1701-D to 1701-E.
You stick the Starship Grandeur next to the 1701-E, and you feel the very different story this other ship tells, with surprisingly similar geometry. Grandeur isn't naturally aggressive like 1701-E, but there's evidence that she could defend herself handily if backed into a corner. Otherwise, she can truly be a diplomatic vessel, one that represents the state of the Federation rather than its arsenal. It tells the story of a country that has won the peace and is happy to flaunt that fact.
In a perfect world, we'd dress up the Grandeur with a new license plate and submit that as the Next Enterprise, because it's clearly a successor, it's a very refined design, and it would have every chance of winning. But Vektor designed her for someone else, and doing this wouldn't be honorable.
That said, I'm looking for the backstory in Vektor's 1701-F, the visual cues that make me say, ooh, I want to know more about why this is here -- reasons other than, "I didn't want to copy the Grandeur." Clearly Vektor is taking some new and distinct directions here, especially with what I can only describe as "Polaris-ish" nacelles.
And. . . well, I can only say it by saying it. The waddle stops me cold. I can't look at this design in the context of a starship in space; it wants instead to be Sidney Greenstreet or Charles Laughton. There's this drooping bag that I can't get over that suggests an old man; it's the type of thing when I see it in the mirror myself, I think, what the hell's that?
There are two things I disliked about Ryan Church's remodeling, which I call 1701-XI to distinguish it from the others. One is the waddles that droop below the Bussard domes, which don't seem to have purposes. I thought the domes were supposed to be the particle scoops, so why are there scoops below them? Second is how Church threw the deflector dome forward and weighted the new engineering fuselage in the forward direction, giving the ship a pronounced overbite. Unfortunately, I can't look at a design element on a different vessel that manages to accomplish both things at once, and say I like it any more.
Looking at the concept sketches, I do see what Vektor was trying to accomplish: taking a design direction that Eaves began with the 1701-E (blending the fuselage with the saucer hull) and evolving it one step further. I genuinely adore this design from the top, including extending the fuselage into the saucer a full four stories and placing the bridge at the peak.
However... What Matt Jefferies understood about design was that the viewer's mind has an innate sense of balance. For a design to appear buoyant and aerodynamic (even in space where those qualities are arguably irrelevant) the mass needs to appear capable of holding its position if it were sitting (in gravity) on a stick positioned at the very center of the vessel. 1701 accomplishes this, as does 1701-A. But 1701-XI wants to fall forward instead of go forward, and that's where that design loses me.
Vektor, looking on your Web site, I'd say the profile from your test sketches that is closest to a more balanced look is C, though your final rendering more resembles B. I think if you had swept the tail further back to balance the forward mass, and trimmed off the "tonsils" inside the deflector array where it appears you've installed torpedo launchers, you'd have a design that's as mature and perfected as Grandeur and Vanguard.
And I know what you're thinking. All right, all right. . . SeaQuest seasons 3 and 4 for me.
DF "Can I Trade Up and Watch 'Manimal' Instead?" Scott
What typically puts Vektor's work in a class alongside Doug Drexler, John Eaves, and Rick Sternbach, in my opinion, is that it tells a story nearly as rich as the words and actions of the show's characters. There are visual cues everywhere that make you wonder what things mean, and why they happened the way they did. John Eaves' Enterprise-E is so different a ship from Enterprise-D, but the measurement of those differences tells the story of how the TNG characters matured from then to now. Capt. Picard's transformation from then to now is the same one as from 1701-D to 1701-E.
You stick the Starship Grandeur next to the 1701-E, and you feel the very different story this other ship tells, with surprisingly similar geometry. Grandeur isn't naturally aggressive like 1701-E, but there's evidence that she could defend herself handily if backed into a corner. Otherwise, she can truly be a diplomatic vessel, one that represents the state of the Federation rather than its arsenal. It tells the story of a country that has won the peace and is happy to flaunt that fact.
In a perfect world, we'd dress up the Grandeur with a new license plate and submit that as the Next Enterprise, because it's clearly a successor, it's a very refined design, and it would have every chance of winning. But Vektor designed her for someone else, and doing this wouldn't be honorable.
That said, I'm looking for the backstory in Vektor's 1701-F, the visual cues that make me say, ooh, I want to know more about why this is here -- reasons other than, "I didn't want to copy the Grandeur." Clearly Vektor is taking some new and distinct directions here, especially with what I can only describe as "Polaris-ish" nacelles.
And. . . well, I can only say it by saying it. The waddle stops me cold. I can't look at this design in the context of a starship in space; it wants instead to be Sidney Greenstreet or Charles Laughton. There's this drooping bag that I can't get over that suggests an old man; it's the type of thing when I see it in the mirror myself, I think, what the hell's that?
There are two things I disliked about Ryan Church's remodeling, which I call 1701-XI to distinguish it from the others. One is the waddles that droop below the Bussard domes, which don't seem to have purposes. I thought the domes were supposed to be the particle scoops, so why are there scoops below them? Second is how Church threw the deflector dome forward and weighted the new engineering fuselage in the forward direction, giving the ship a pronounced overbite. Unfortunately, I can't look at a design element on a different vessel that manages to accomplish both things at once, and say I like it any more.
Looking at the concept sketches, I do see what Vektor was trying to accomplish: taking a design direction that Eaves began with the 1701-E (blending the fuselage with the saucer hull) and evolving it one step further. I genuinely adore this design from the top, including extending the fuselage into the saucer a full four stories and placing the bridge at the peak.
However... What Matt Jefferies understood about design was that the viewer's mind has an innate sense of balance. For a design to appear buoyant and aerodynamic (even in space where those qualities are arguably irrelevant) the mass needs to appear capable of holding its position if it were sitting (in gravity) on a stick positioned at the very center of the vessel. 1701 accomplishes this, as does 1701-A. But 1701-XI wants to fall forward instead of go forward, and that's where that design loses me.
Vektor, looking on your Web site, I'd say the profile from your test sketches that is closest to a more balanced look is C, though your final rendering more resembles B. I think if you had swept the tail further back to balance the forward mass, and trimmed off the "tonsils" inside the deflector array where it appears you've installed torpedo launchers, you'd have a design that's as mature and perfected as Grandeur and Vanguard.
And I know what you're thinking. All right, all right. . . SeaQuest seasons 3 and 4 for me.
DF "Can I Trade Up and Watch 'Manimal' Instead?" Scott
No, actually, I can see your points, and I always respect your very erudite take on things. The truth is, if I had it do over again, I would probably go with option C rather than B. I think I realized that somewhere near the end of the below-front 3/4 view, but I was pretty much comitted at that point. I was trying to do some things differently than had been done before, namely the front-loaded secondary hull, the quad nacelles and the downward-angled support struts. Some of it worked and some of it didn't. Maybe, on the off-chance I manage to win this thing, there would be an opportunity to make a few minor adjustments.
I have to disagree with you about the "waddle,"though. I'm just not seeing it that way. The deflector is actually one of my favorite things about this design. I might consider "tightening it up" a little, making it a little less deep, but otherwise I'm pretty satisfied with it. If I were going to change anything at this point, I would probably extend the underside of the secondary hull a ways further back beyond the rear edge of the saucer, more like option C.
Whether the design wins or not, I'll probably go back and do a few of those things, as well as building my own 3D model of it. Really gotta finish the Grandeur and the Polaris first, though.
I have to disagree with you about the "waddle,"though. I'm just not seeing it that way. The deflector is actually one of my favorite things about this design. I might consider "tightening it up" a little, making it a little less deep, but otherwise I'm pretty satisfied with it. If I were going to change anything at this point, I would probably extend the underside of the secondary hull a ways further back beyond the rear edge of the saucer, more like option C.
Whether the design wins or not, I'll probably go back and do a few of those things, as well as building my own 3D model of it. Really gotta finish the Grandeur and the Polaris first, though.
Yeah, Vektor I love your ship, but the deflector looks way too much like its got its jaw dropped drooling at the sides. Bringing it up a bit to a Nova class-ish deflector shape could work, but just making the deflector smaller and keeping the current shape by adding more details around it would probably accomplish the same thing.
As it is, it reminds me of a basking shark :P
As it is, it reminds me of a basking shark :P
I'd just like to say that if I were heading up a new Star Trek series set post TNG with a new Enterprise then Vektor's design pretty much nails it for me. You can see it's evolution from MJ's design and the TMP refit yet it also looks its own thing and manages to surpass every major ship design in Trek after the TMP Enterprise and Reliant. Vektor's has a wonderful balance to it as well as a helluva coolness factor! I think it's light years better than any suffixed 1701 after TMP or any other design since. I look at it and it says ENTERPRISE.
Top flight work!
Top flight work!
Have you looked at Google Sketchup? It's easy to use and free!
Saquist
Commodore
No, actually, I can see your points, and I always respect your very erudite take on things. The truth is, if I had it do over again, I would probably go with option C rather than B. I think I realized that somewhere near the end of the below-front 3/4 view, but I was pretty much comitted at that point. I was trying to do some things differently than had been done before, namely the front-loaded secondary hull, the quad nacelles and the downward-angled support struts. Some of it worked and some of it didn't. Maybe, on the off-chance I manage to win this thing, there would be an opportunity to make a few minor adjustments.
I have to disagree with you about the "waddle,"though. I'm just not seeing it that way. The deflector is actually one of my favorite things about this design. I might consider "tightening it up" a little, making it a little less deep, but otherwise I'm pretty satisfied with it. If I were going to change anything at this point, I would probably extend the underside of the secondary hull a ways further back beyond the rear edge of the saucer, more like option C.
Whether the design wins or not, I'll probably go back and do a few of those things, as well as building my own 3D model of it. Really gotta finish the Grandeur and the Polaris first, though.
The deflector is the most unique feature. It makes the design and for som reason works with the uber nacelle look.
They are splines, lines and ellipses and they were cloned from the 3D model precisely. The detail however is my own yet to be applied to the model.
If you need any help just let me know.
I can walk you through the troublesome opperations and give you tiips on better operations to use as well as ACAD's more annoying errors and hicups.
Others have said the Engines are too large so a bit of reflection. That may be the case.
Saquist
Commodore
Yeah but I was going for snake like.
Well back to work.
I wonder how soon we'll find out Vecktor is the winner?
Yeah but I was going for snake like.
Well back to work.
I wonder how soon we'll find out Vecktor is the winner?
Wow. The 3D views look great. Very sleek.
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