Firebird's Sketch of the Week Series

[Firebird]

Drawing 554 / 2024 Artwork 87: The Doctor is in... Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. Continuing my annual tradition of the SDCC Star Trek Hall H panel inspiring me to create an illustration based on new announcements.

Drawing 555 / 2024 Artwork 88: Captain Carol Freeman of the USS Cerritos. I realized she was the last major Star Trek: Lower Decks main character I hadn't drawn yet.

Elsewhere this weekend, the EVA-Trek writers room re-broke the story for episode 203, followed by episode 204. Those two episodes mark the series first two-part story (versus the feature-length first season finale) and follows in the tradition of Star Trek commenting on the human condition and social issues. We're a good amount of the way along with episode 205, which is a little bit of an homage to Forbidden Planet and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

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Circling back to the Star Trek SDCC illustrations, here's the prior years...

2022:

Drawing #259 / 2022 Artwork #122: Within 30 seconds of seeing the Star Trek: Picard season 3 trailer yesterday, I just had to draw Captain Worf.

Drawing #260 / 2022 Artwork #123: Likewise, once I heard about the Strange New Worlds / Lower Decks crossover... well, I knew what I had to do.

2023:

Drawing 407 / 2023 Artwork 80: Ensign Boimler discovers time-traveling and meeting your heroes isn't all it's cracked up to be on the latest Star Trek: Lower Decks.

 

[Santaman]

Nice work.

 

[Firebird]

This week's batch of drawings are all EVA-Trek focused! The series has been a bit on my mind lately, to the surprise of no one, I'm sure. I've gotten the story for episode six broken earlier this weekend. It's based on an unmade TNG episode premise by Ron Moore, and it turned into one of the fastest story breaks I've ever done - only took me two hours to lock in the episode's structure!

Drawing 556 / 2024 Artwork 89: Shuttlecraft Mankiewicz, assigned to the USS Nerv from EVA-Trek. Nerv's shuttles are all named for my favorite writers. In this case, it's writer/director/producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz (A Letter to Three Wives, All About Eve, Cleopatra).

Drawing 557 / 2024 Artwork 90: EVA-Trek season 2 preview. Captain Misato Katsuragi and Chief Engineer Ryoji Kaji work to save the USS Nerv in the ship's Main Engineering. This one took me nearly four hours to finish, owing to all of the background details and the extensive use of a ruler to ensure I got the two-point perspective to come out correctly.

I think I'm gonna use this as my submission for August's "Toon Trek" art contest theme... unless I decide to draw another EVA-Trek scene that I like better.

 

[Sgt_G]

Pretty cool, but I do think the shuttle is a little stubby. I think it might look better if it were 1/3 to 1/2 longer.

 

[Firebird]

Pretty cool, but I do think the shuttle is a little stubby. I think it might look better if it were 1/3 to 1/2 longer.

I think I scaled up the nacelle a little too much and that's what's throwing it off.

 

[Cyfa]

Drawing 557 / 2024 Artwork 90: EVA-Trek season 2 preview. Captain Misato Katsuragi and Chief Engineer Ryoji Kaji work to save the USS Nerv in the ship's Main Engineering. This one took me nearly four hours to finish, owing to all of the background details and the extensive use of a ruler to ensure I got the two-point perspective to come out correctly.

~ Time well spent - the background and perspective look great! As do Captain Katsuragi and Commander Kaji, for that matter. But has the Captain seen some reading or display on the pool table that she doesn't like? Is that why she's sticking her fingers up at it?

Pretty cool, but I do think the shuttle is a little stubby. I think it might look better if it were 1/3 to 1/2 longer.

~ The shuttle may appear stubby because of that oversized nacelle, but it looks cute!

 

[Firebird]

But has the Captain seen some reading or display on the pool table that she doesn't like? Is that why she's sticking her fingers up at it?

I'll tell you once I've written that scene or that episode... because right now, I don't have a clue!

 

[Santaman]

Nice work.

 

[Firebird]

Doing a special post for today in tribute of Lora Johnson's passing. [NOTE: this'll be an image intensive post!]

Her work on Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise, the Star Trek: TNG Technical Journal, and Worlds of the Federation was hugely important to me when I discovered them as a little kid. MSGTTE practically got me interested in technical drawing by the time I was 10, which put me onto the path to become the artist I am today. A sad, sad day.

Anyways, I was reminded of a little project I attempted 20+ years ago where I decided I was going to illustrate an update to Mr. Scott's Guide featuring the sets from The Final Frontier and The Undiscovered Country, plus versions of the sets from the original DC Comics run from the early 80's. All of the illustrations were going ot be in Johnson's style. It was way too ambitious for a kid of 13 or 14 to attempt, but I had a ton of fun in the process. What follows are the diagrams I still have left from that project...

1) The preliminary version of the refit Enterprise under Robert Abel:

2) The DC Comics version of the refit:

3) The Main Bridge from Star Trek: The Motion Picture:

4) The Main Bridge from TFF and TUC:

5) Main Bridge, DC Comics version:

6) Ship's Galley, from The Undiscovered Country.

7) Crew Quarters from The Undiscovered Country:

8) Kirk's Quarters from DC Comics:

9) DC Comics Quarters, with notes:

10) Other Crew Quarters from DC Comics:

11) Transporter Room, Wrath of Khan version:

12) Sickbay, DC Comics Version:

13) Torpedo Launch Bay, Star Trek VI edition:

14) Jefferies' Tube, Star Trek V version:

15) Brig:

16/17) Assault Phaser:

 

[Santaman]

Nicely done, so even back then you were really good at that.
Sad to know that Lora Johnson has passed away, of course I have a copy of Mr Scott's guide to the Enterprise.

 

[publiusr]

There was some other book on equipment—with what appeared to be a Planet of the Titans like ship on the cover obscured by text—the secondary hull like a flipped D-7 manta—remember that?

I seem to remember seeing the original somewhere…

 

[Bernard Guignard]

Very nice work and a fitting Tribute to a very talented individual who will be missed in treknology circles

 

[Firebird]

Drawing 558 / 2024 Artwork 91: Balok's Puppet from "The Corbomite Maneuver," one of my top favorite episodes of Star Trek.

Drawing 559 / 2024 Artwork 92: Alya Kujou from Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings in Russian.

​

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Also dipped back into my archives to find some of my old set blueprint sketches I did way back in high school because I was still in a bit of a nostalgic mood after yesterday's tech post.

1) The Masaki house, level 1, from the Tenchi Muyo OVA series:

2) Masaki house, level 2:

3) Masaki house sections and elevations:

4) The exterior M*A*S*H 4077 set at Malibu Creek State Park:

5) The Conner household from Roseanne:

6) The Taylor household from Home Improvement:

 

[Sgt_G]

Can't believe you drew those house plans by hand. I use FloorPlan Plus v2 for my drafting. Sadly, it will not work in Win-10/11, so I have Win-Xp installed in a VM just for FPP.

 

[Firebird]

Can't believe you drew those house plans by hand. I use FloorPlan Plus v2 for my drafting. Sadly, it will not work in Win-10/11, so I have Win-Xp installed in a VM just for FPP.

It was the days long before I knew of or even used AutoCAD.

To be honest, I still prefer hand-drafting when it comes to figuring out set blueprints. My eye is better tuned for understanding proportions on the page like that.

 

[Firebird]

Drawing 560 / 2024 Artwork 93: Saki Tomogara from The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You. Girlfriend #30, she's also known as the "Shadow Banchou of Ohananomitsu High School.

Drawing 561 / 2024 Artwork 94: Peak Stupid returns! Wolverine Does Not Dream of Bunny-Pool Senpai. The idea came to me in a vision and I just had to put this idiotic thing on paper.

 

[Sgt_G]

Saki looks like a real B-A-B.

 

[Cyfa]

More Peak Stupid, please!

 

[Santaman]

Well done, don't hold back the "stupid"

 

[Firebird]

Drawing 562 / 2024 Artwork 95: "Believe," from Ted Lasso, soon to get a fourth season!

Drawing 563 / 2024 Artwork 96: Next season on EVA-Trek, if there's nothing wrong with Dr. Ritsuko Akagi, then something must be wrong with the universe.