Okay, I'm jumping the gun a bit here, but what the hell. Please bear with me. Hopefully within the next few days (maybe a week) I'll begin posting images of my take on the TOS shuttlecraft. I've been greatly inspired by the work of FourMadMen and Phil Broad in their efforts to reconcile the three different shuttlecraft we saw onscreen: the filming minature, the fullsize exterior mock-up and the fullsize interior mock-up. It is indeed a challenge because the exterior was definitely a vehicle intended not to have standing room inside whille the interior mock-up obviously did (most likely to faciliate filming). Today that wouldn't be a problem and an appropriately sized interior could be built as MJ originally intended and filmied with ease. Strangely, though, I find the standing interior makes more sense conceptually for an auxiliary vehicle that is meant to operate independently from the parent ship for extended duration. The interior is also consistent aesthetically with what we saw onboard the Enterprise. One thing I've certainly noticed while studying Phil Broad's plans of the fullsize exterior mock-up is that MJ designed a vehicle with many intriguing details that I somehow missed all these years. The design certainly bears little resemblance to the shuttlecraft depicted in FJ's Technical Manual as well as numerous depictions of the vehicle over the years. For example the "nose down" stance of the craft as well as the hull flaring outward from bow to stern. And that the craft's elevation centerline is not parallel with the engine nacelles. Very interesting. It certainly isn't a simple box design. One issue I intended to tackle differently is that of alligning the forward "windows" as shown from the inside and out. It's quite apparent that the windows as seen on the interior mock-up are useless for piloting since one cannot see directly forward through them while seated. And if you lower the position of the windows on the exterior then it blatantly changes the face of the vehicle and it doesn't look right anymore. I know they were intended to be windows in the conventional sense, but they just don't work in practice or even conceptually. A forward window for piloting on such a vehicle would serve very little practical purpose anyway. Better, I think, to utilize the existing technology already evident aboard the Enterprise. The three "windows" on the forward hull of the interior are not windows at all in the conventional sense but rather they're overhead monitors or viewing screens. And they work quite well that way angled downward towards to the pilot and navigator. Those monitors function much the same as the overhead screens on the Enterprise bridge as well as the main viewscreen. And as seen from the outside I see those three rectangular panels on the forward hull demarking where the shuttlecraft's space and planetary sensor arrays are situated. Anyway that's my take on it. And, yes, it can be considered a bit revisionist. But it just seems to work better in my view. Lastly, I apologize that my images will not be done in up-to-date cgi or CAD simply because I don't have any of those programs and I also don't know how to use them. *Sigh* Someday perhaps. Instead I'll be using oldfashioned hand drafting for my little project. Comments?
I like your idea. The trick to "reimagining" something like this, IMHO, is that the final design should be something you could drop into the old show without anyone picking up, at first or even second glance, that it's not the same thing. So the idea of having three sensors, and three interior viewpanels, just makes sense. This makes the front "wall" a bit thicker, but I have no beef with doing that. The way I look at it is this... what we saw in the original show is a "representation" of what the "reality" of the shuttlecraft is. The best approximation of the "reality" of the design. The "real" shuttlecraft can be different, but only in ways that the original presentation (model, full-size interior, full-size exterior) could have been attempts at "faking." I think this is what you're getting at... and I really like that approach.
^^ Thanks. My idea is partly inspired by what we saw--or rather what we often didn't see--on the bridge. Those overhead station screens were supposed to be interactive monitors constantly in use, but they sadly didn't have the time and money to regularly do that. And so we usually had images simply hung up on the wall where those screens were meant to be. If I had my druthers than I'd have the entire foward bulkhead of the shuttlecraft as a viewing and large scale interactive monitot much as our desktop computers are today.
Exactly. If were were to do a "Trek Reboot" (ie, representing the original show in 2006 terms) I'd have the bridge look exactly like the original at first-glance. But those big overhead screens would be large flat-panel displays... think about a 72" plasma screen, maybe? They'd be fully-configurable, too... the images we would see would simply be WINDOWS on the "desktop" made up by that big display. So, while we say one-image displays up there, two-image ones, and even (in the pilots) one large and two small images up there... it would all be configured on the fly. It wouldn't be jarring... it wouldn't be "different" in any real way. But it would be interesting to watch as a new "window" popped up on one of those screens, just to drive the interactive effect home. Well, I'm not so sure I agree with that. Remember that the human eye has a limited "cone of awareness" that is much smaller than the entire field of view. If you sit in the very front row of a theater, you actually miss things on -screen that you might see if you're sitting halfway back, even though you can, technically, see the whole screen. I like the three screens for that reason. The left one would be the "full eye cone of awareness" for the pilot, the right one would be the same for the copilot/navigator, and the one in the middle would be for the passengers... sort of like the "in-flight-movie" screens in modern airliners. You could certainly make the middle "passengers" screen larger if you like, and maybe make the pilot and copilot ones lower and the middle one higher... but then you have something that no longer agrees with what's been seen on-screen in a way that could be jarring. Just my 2cents...
last nite my shuttlecraft docked repeatedly in my girlfriends shuttlebay. hanger doors may have been damaged. repair crews are on the scene.
That already exists. The control room I work in has about 80 monitors, 9inch, 13 inch & 20 inch JVC's and Sonys (Professional grade) The CBC has 2 control rooms which each have 3 6x6foot SCREENs that are completely programable projection units. One problem, if a bulb blows you lose 1/3 your monitor wall
Aegis... That's interesting. What kind of work do you do? I'm not 100% sure what "CBC" means in this context... (I HATE undefined acronyms!) Canadian Broadcasting Company? Crusty Bread Consumers? Confrontational Bikers Club? Who can say? So the screens you're using are projection, though, it sounds like... right? (I take that from the term "bulb"). The concept works... but if these were actual flat panel self-contained displays.. it'd be complete "classic trek."
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.....government owned national TV news network. I don't work for the 'CORPSE', I work for the Number 1 TV news network in Canada myself. Not the best equipment, but we still rock!
I've got a render around here somewhere where I made the interior window panels into vid screens. Some people call the TOS shuttle a butterdish but it's not as simple a design as some immediately think. I look forward to seeing your progress on this.
^^ Lets just say that the more I've studied MJ's design the more I appreciate the challenges you and Phil Broad and David Winfrey before you went through to reconsile three different versions of the vehicle.
The first challenge is to reconcile the fullsize exterior mock-up and the filming miniature which are distinct from each other. The fullsize exterior has a "nose down" attitude to its design while the miniature apparently doesn't. The landing pads are also different.
Well, my take... typically speaking, the "full size mockups" of anything take shortcuts and the miniatures typically are more representative of the original design intent (since it's a lot cheaper to make an accurate miniature of something than an accurate full-sized version of the same thing). I'd weight HEAVILY towards the miniture, fit the interior (perhaps scaled down slightly but kept pretty much consistent with what we saw) and disregard the alleged "full-sized" exterior one as much as possible. That's just me though.
I agree with a lot of what Cary's saying here. Aegis can we see pics of your CBC "bridge"? Lookin' forward to seeing the pics.
In some respects the miniature is closer to all the depictions of the shuttlecraft we've seen over the years. But for me the fullsize exterior mock-up seems more "real" even if it is inconsistent with the standing room interior mock-up we saw onscreen. At this point I'm more inclined to use the fullsize exterior as the main guide and modifying it to some degree to incorporate some of the features of the miniature. By this I mostly mean that my version will not be guite as obviously "nose down" as the construction plans show. However, I see no reason why the TOS production staff couldn't have constructed their fullsize exterior with the craft's centerline exactly parallel with the engine nacelles. The fact that they didn't strongly suggests that that is what they waned the vehicle to look like. And it does make for a more intriguing looking vehicle and far less plain and simple as many of us have long assumed. I've come to realize that all these years I've envisioned the shuttlecraft quite differently than the one that was actually designed and built. I admit to some extent it can be a little disturbing to reevaluate long held perceptions. This isn't without precedent because there have been many things I've learned about TOS over the years that I hadn't realized or even suspected before. Upon studying more faithful drawings of the Enterprise than FJ's for example I've learned of details that I somehow missed even with seeing the ship on tv for God knows how many times. Some of the detail was lost due to poor picture resolution on those old tv sets and went unnoticed until the better televisions of today and the digital remastering of the episodes as well as dvd.
"However, I see no reason why the TOS production staff couldn't have constructed their fullsize exterior with the craft's centerline exactly parallel with the engine nacelles. The fact that they didn't strongly suggests that that is what they waned the vehicle to look like." Both the miniature and the larger mockup were made by AMT. I doubt they had much direct feedback from any of the show's writers as to the intent of the look. If they diverged from the construction drawings, I doubt it was because of a conscious decision on the part of the TOS production people. "At this point I'm more inclined to use the fullsize exterior as the main guide and modifying it to some degree to incorporate some of the features of the miniature. By this I mostly mean that my version will not be guite as obviously "nose down" as the construction plans show." If you have access to construction plans please share! No one has ever been able to locate them to my knowledge before now. "However, I see no reason why the TOS production staff couldn't have constructed their fullsize exterior with the craft's centerline exactly parallel with the engine nacelles. The fact that they didn't strongly suggests that that is what they waned the vehicle to look like." That's a problematic assumption. Some pictures of the shuttlecraft show her with widely varying side profiles. The most nose-down shot I know of was the hangerbay shot. The main body of the ship almost looks twisted unnaturally. That probably has a lot to do with the fact that the prop never rested on the same points every time it was set up. They used jacks underneath the body to hold her up, keeping the weight off the nacelle and rear pads. I totally agree that the centerline wasn't parallel to the nacelles, question is how much it diverged, just a little as seen in some shots or quite a bit as seen in that hangerbay shot. Personally I think it makes a ton of sense to ignore the divergence. The reason being is that if you don't, the interior set can not either be drawn level or have a consistent centerline if you do draw it as level. "Anyway that's my take on it. And, yes, it can be considered a bit revisionist. But it just seems to work better in my view. Comments?" Lots of revisionism is needed to make the interior vs. the exterior agree in an even semi-logical way, such as the windows. No need to apologize. On the not having blender issue and your only doing 2D drawings, I've got a few dozen 2D drawings that I have done that FourMadMen and I worked on and he turned into 3D files. If it's okay with FourMadMen I'd be happy to share them with you.
^^ If possible I'd like to see those renderings. By "construction plans" I'm refering to the drawings found on Phil Broad's cloudster.com. One thing to remember: since the shuttlecraft has its own artificial gravity then there really is nothing to say that the floor absolutely has to be parallel to the hangar bay deck or the planetary ground outside the craft when landed. Also upon studying photos of the miniature it at least appears that pretty much all the dimension of the craft were maintained only the main hull was oriented so that the hull's centerline was parallel with the engine nacelles.