Well, at least until @Donny has a go...
Donny's Late TNG Era Interiors
- Thread starter Donny
- Start date
There were previous examples, from the Excelsior or Ent-B with deltas on them.
But I think Donny might have changed this because some references for auctioned chairs appear to show the Hag name/logo here, but it's hard to tell.
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No, these specific chairs did not have a delta logo on them, but I decided to place one there instead of the "HAG Signet" logo that appeared on the commercially available chairs.
It was purely a creative choice, and I think the end result looks pretty sharp. I am, however, against slapping a delta on everything like in modern Trek. I aim to be restrained in my usage. It should be noted, however, that the bridge crew chairs have delta's embroidered on their backs:
So it wouldn't be a stretch to see a small logo on the backs of the conference chairs.
The briefing room at Starfleet HQ has a big delta behind the podium, a big delta on the podium, and three of them painted on the light wall behind Kirk. (1, 2)
And of course there's all those plates and saucers, but those make sense in Nick Meyer's more militaristic view of Starfleet, since emblems like the Navy anchor and the U.S. national eagle adorned dinnerware in the U.S. Navy for many years (there seems to be a lot of WWII vintage or replica stuff floating around on eBay). And even in TOS, the "United Earth" emblem they used would show up on foam coffee cups and stuff, so it's not a completely foreign concept that some kind of emblem, whether it be for Starfleet or the Federation, would adorn everyday items.
Is this more complicated than simply shrinking a standard model of the ship and making it metalic gold? (Since the E models aren't stylized the way the D was.)
Technically if you were striving for 100% accuracy you'd have to model the idiosyncrasies of the various AMT or Playmates models that were used as the basis for the display!
But frankly I don't think that would be worth Donny's time - standard models would be my vote.
But frankly I don't think that would be worth Donny's time - standard models would be my vote.
Heh, I’m going to standardize all the models to be smooth and featureless. According to @Rekkert, the B was actually the Playmates toy painted gold (he owned one and can pick it out of an Excelsior lineup 
and the D I believe was an AMT kit (correct me if I’m wrong). Those were the only two that had hull grids and windows. But they stand out like a sore thumb to me, and honestly, I don’t want to spend the time to add detailed bump maps to the models. So they’ll all be uniformly smooth and gridless.
And yes, it’s more than just painting my existing models gold. At the scale they’ll be, there’s no need to have as many polygons as the full-sized models, and I want them to look like stylized display models. So I’ll be building lower-poly models over some of my existing high poly models, and adding chamfers and bevels appropriate for their size.
and the D I believe was an AMT kit (correct me if I’m wrong). Those were the only two that had hull grids and windows. But they stand out like a sore thumb to me, and honestly, I don’t want to spend the time to add detailed bump maps to the models. So they’ll all be uniformly smooth and gridless. And yes, it’s more than just painting my existing models gold. At the scale they’ll be, there’s no need to have as many polygons as the full-sized models, and I want them to look like stylized display models. So I’ll be building lower-poly models over some of my existing high poly models, and adding chamfers and bevels appropriate for their size.
John Eaves went over the provenance in detail on his old blog. For First Contact, the TOS Enterprise, -A, and -D were AMT models (the TOS one was the big cutaway kit, not the normal one from back when they were actually making TOS). The -B was the Playmates toy, the -C was a garage kit (naughty, naughty, that'd get them dinged on the fan-film guidelines, nowadays), and the -E, of course, was scratch-built. For Insurrection (the Observation Lounge scenes were removed after the models were built but before filming), Eaves was asked to make three duplicates of each model (he doesn't say why, maybe there was going to be an action scene or explosion in the lounge, and they were worried the models would be damaged and wanted spares?), and this time, since there were official model kits available, used those for the -B, -C, and -E. Those models are the ones that were used for Nemesis, though Eaves made a gold Intrepid, Excelsior, Oberth, Miranda, Space Shuttle, and CVN-65 model to fill out the second display case, but the set had already been finished by the time he got them done and it was deemed not worth the trouble to swap out the models, so there were just two sets of the six Federation Enterprises. Personally, if I were going to model the Nemesis version of the lounge, I'd keep the six starships on the starboard side (though I'd rearrange them to be in chronological order) and put the brig, two of the aircraft carriers (probably -6 and -65, -80 would screw up the chronological order), the shuttle, the ring ship, and the NX-01 in the port case.
Thanks for that info; I'd forgotten to check Eaves's blog with the actual info (as I'd just nabbed the pics without reading previously
). That will at least help me nail down the scale of each model!Also good to know that he intended to sand and smooth the B and the D to match the rest but ran out of time, giving me yet another incentive to do less work
Nah, I'm just going to stick with the models that were on the FC set.
It's interesting that with Enterprise in production by the time Nemesis was made that they didn't want to add the NX-01 as one of the ships. You'd think they'd be eager to put that reference in even if it was a background element.
I’ll be honest here, and maybe share an unpopular opinion, but I remember even when they announced the new show/ship was gonna be called Enterprise, I hated the idea. Because it retconned all the “Enterprise Lineage” displays that had come before it. And, like, they could’ve named the ship anything else. Not every featured ship has to be linked to the E, which was proven by Voyager. I get that “Enterprise” makes a good show title, but name the ship something similar that doesn’t break canon.
I wonder if Eaves just didn't have the time. God only knows where that Oberth came from, but everything else from the second batch of models he made would've been an easily-available kit; the Art Asylum NX-01 didn't come out until well after filming was finished, and the Polar Lights model was another year after that (and might've been too big for the case). ENT fans had to be satisfied with the U.S.S. Archer being part of the teased fleet battle.
"Wait, didn't 'Hope & Fear' establish the NX-01 was named Dauntless?" was my take at the time.
But we're stuck with it now.
I expected to see the XCV-330 back then and was very confused when I saw it's an old Akira XD
