Original non-Trek starship....

[Warped9]

I've decided to take a break from Trek models and work on something of my own for a bit.

This is a wholly original design albeit inspired by different influences. While it retains a bit of Matt Jefferies influence it is more heavily inspired by the works of SF artists such as John C. Berkey, Vincent Di Fate, Bob Eggleton, Ralph McQuarrie and Syd Mead. I was also mindful of some of the print SF I've read and enjoyed over the years as well as ideas I read in books and articles dealing with speculative science and technology.

The forward section and main hull of this ship was initially inspired by a motorcycle fairing. In tandem with that I went back and started with the classic SF rocketship idea laid on its side and played with its shape.

(While designing and modeling this I find myself humming the music of Christopher Franke from his soundtracks for Babylon 5 and Perry Rhodan.)

Still lots of detailing to go, but now all the major components are in place.




Obviously this design did not spring into form overnight. It went through stages as my thinking evolved. Indeed this final design was still largely conceptual until now as I am fleshing out the details. But what follows are the major steps that led me to where we are today.





Some more detail and a possible shuttlecraft concept. At this point I was calling my idea Farspace (and this was years before anyone heard of the TV series Farsape). Even at the time I could recognize that my idea was a thinly redressed take on Star Trek as I hadn't yet become sufficiently confident of my own ideas. As such one doesn't stray too far from the familiar that one likes.







What follows is how things went when I decided to change my FTL starship Auriga to the fast relativistic starship Eagle. First came the more refind concept idea.



Then came some line drawings to get a feel for shapes and where things went.



I then decided the whole thing needed to be sleeker and more evolved. I still rather like this version as it looks rather alien and aquatic, but it also still looks a little...chubby. By this time my universe was now called The Starkind instead of Farspace and I was learning to be more confident in my own ideas and trying to push them ever further from the ore familiar Trek.





The concept sketch (done one afternoon on a napkin in a Tim Horton's coffee shop) to get an overall sense of the "final" design.



Aiming for more clarity and definition with some line work.





An early shuttlecraft concept for the Eagle.




While working my way through this my thoughts have been drifting to some other things tangental to the project at hand.

Firstly I still have to come up with a font style for the ship's markings. For the ship's registry I'm tempted to use the same or simialr font as that I used for my 29th century Enterprise design.

I've also been giving some thought to the ship's lineage or more precisely magor designs that came before this one over the previous 900 years of space travel. I'm got about two or three major design concepts for ship classes preceding this one and I'm thinking of perhaps trying to model them as well.

Hmm...


I'm looking forward to when I can start making images with this model. I'd like to try for some photorealistic images as well as ones that look painted similar to cover illustrations found on many SF novels over the years.

 

[Albertese]

Didn't you show us this a long time ago? Not that I'm complaining, it's a slick design. It seems awfully familiar.

It reminds me of some of the cover of a c. 1980 National Geographic book called Our Universe.

My dad had this book (now I have it, it smells moldy). Anyhow, this book was a major factor in me learning to love science and space art. I really like your design here as it reminds me so much of this stuff.

Great job!

--Alex

 

[Warped9]

^^ Yes, that is one of my favourite pieces of John Berkey art and a big inspiration for my design although Berkey wasn't the only one to use that general shape.

Yes, I did share sketches and linework sometime ago and at one time a former coworker (who knew how to 3D model with Maya) began working on a model. But life intervened and the model went unfinished.

But when I started to teach myself SketchUp in the back of my mind I always hoped to finally model my own design(s). All those Trek models were something of a training exercise to get me to this point.


Currently I'm working on the asymmetrical detailing that fits into the recessed area at the top of the ship.

 

[Sarvek]

Truly impressive work!!!!!

 

[Patrickivan]

Didn't you show us this a long time ago? Not that I'm complaining, it's a slick design. It seems awfully familiar.

It reminds me of some of the cover of a c. 1980 National Geographic book called Our Universe.

My dad had this book (now I have it, it smells moldy). Anyhow, this book was a major factor in me learning to love science and space art. I really like your design here as it reminds me so much of this stuff.

Great job!

--Alex

That's the book I was trying to recall when I saw this thread. I have this sitting in my garage. I've had it for a very long time.

 

[Warped9]

That painting is reprinted in an art book dedicated to John Berkey called Painted Space. I have two books on the art of John Berkey as well as books covering a number of other artists.

I'd love to have a wall sized reproduction of that painting.

 

[MadMan1701A]

Looks awesome.

 

[Warped9]

I have reached the point where the only things remaining are the ship's signage and the windows. Unless I think of something else all the major detailing is done. But for me to proceed with windows I need a scale and before I do that I need to know how large the shuttlecraft will be and from that I'll know how large the hangar access needs to be, and from there I can size the rest of the ship and know how to space out the decks and windows.




What we see here is my present concept for the shuttlecraft. This is definitely somewhat more aircraft like than what we often see in SF and it is definitely larger than a Trek type shuttlecraft. Because there is no transporter in my fictional universe the shuttlecraft need to be bigger in order to transport equipment as well as personnel when making planetfall simply because you can call up for something to be sent down on demand. There are no obvious propulsion units in the conventional sense because the craft utilizes antigrav tech in similar fashion as the starship.




Based on some quite rough estimates at this point the shuttlecraft would be about 40-50 ft. in length and extrapolating from that the starship would come in somewhere between 2300 t0 2900 ft. in length. Of course I also have the option on enlargening the hangar access a bit (which I've done) that would help keep the ship's size down, but we're still talking about something distinctly larger than Trek's Starfleet ships. Then again a large ship allows for spacious interiors which are nice to have aboard a deep space starship intended for voyages that are years in duration.


So my next step is to work out a rough model of the shuttlecraft to get more exact dimensions. At this point it won't be necessary to work out exact interior details just as it isn't necessary for me to plan out exactly the starship's interior layout. Given its eventual size there is plenty of room for whatever I could imagine putting in it.

 

[Warped9]

It's been awhile, but I finally have something more solid on the shuttlecraft. I ended up going back to one of my early concepts and played with it some. Until or unless I come up with something I like much better this is it.



It's hard to get a sense of scale from this as I'm still fleshing it out with more detail in mind, but this is meant to be at least 40 ft. in length and reasonably spacious inside given it needs to carry equipment as well as personnel.

 

[Albertese]

Looks like something Probert might have drawn. Which I mean as a high compliment.

--Alex

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

Very cool design!

 

[Warped9]

The initial concept for this design had a rounded nose and plainer sides. I wanted to try evolving it into something a bit more complex. I also wanted to impart something of a bit of UFO-ness to it.

 

[Warped9]

With a bit more fleshed out design I'm looking at a shuttlecraft about 51 ft. long. That should give me plenty of space inside for personnel and equipment.

Based on that and the hangar opening I added to my ship design that will give me a starship somewhere around 1200-1500 ft. in length.

 

[BK613]

Definitely Berkey meets Mead.

I would watermark every version of this one, 'cause it is poachable.

 

[Warped9]

A little more detail including an aft access hatch. And that hatch is (at present scale) 8 ft. x 8 ft.

 

[Warped9]

Using some convenient figures to give this 51 ft. shuttlecraft some sense of scale.



This shuttlecraft is obviously not Trek sized. Trek shuttlecraft tend to be more like large vans often used as an alternative to the transporter when it isn't available or suitable to the purpose required. But in a universe with no transporter then a large delivery truck size shuttlecraft could be useful in transporting large numbers of personnel and equipment.

That said I'm considering making another design similar in overall concept but smaller. Thus the starship would have two classes of shuttlecraft: a transport type and a smaller reconnaissance type.

 

[Warped9]

Getting in some added details and beginning to add some signage.



Possible shuttlecraft names:
Mead
Jefferies
Berkey
Di Fate

 

[Warped9]

Some shuttlecraft dimensions.

Length = 51.6731 ft. (51' - 8") or 15.749961 m.
Width = 30.032 ft. (30' - 3/8") or 9.1537536 m
Height = 14.7542 fy. (14' - 9") or 4.497082 m

Consequently some starship dimensions.

Length = 1253.98369 ft. (1253' - 11 3/4") or 382.21483 m.
Width = 833.15829 ft. (823' - 1 7/8") or 253.94665 m.
Height = 581.47305 ft. (581' - 5 5/8") or 117.23299 m.


With these dimensions I can now get a better sense of scale for plotting decks and window placement. My general thinking here is that average deck ceilings are 8.5 ft. and windows will be somewhat larger than usually seen in ship designs to convey something of the idea of spacious interiors.

 

[MadMan1701A]

Man, the shape of that shuttle is awesome. Definitely looks Trek, but separate at the same time.

-Ricky

 

[Warped9]

T

Man, the shape of that shuttle is awesome. Definitely looks Trek, but separate at the same time.

-Ricky

Thanks.

There are some general similarities between this and my 29th century shuttlecraft design. Most notably is that cutout on the top which was influenced by the roof design of the TOS shuttlecraft.

But overall it is meant as something of a lifting body type of shape. The intial concept had wings, but as I played with it I ended up discarding the wings and adding those bits on the side (the shuttlecraft design from TFF has something similar).

With the idea of using a perfected antigrav system for flight and propulsion you definitely adopt UFO like characteristics. All supposedly sighted UFOs are not discs. Some have been ovoids, triangular and cigar shaped as well as other forms. So there is something remotely UFO like about this shape in tandem with what it would look like in operation.

To build the shape was a matter of drawing the forward outline of the craft in elevation. That shape was then extruded into a circle resulting in a disk. I then cut away about three quarters of that disk and compressed the remaining part to a certain size and this formed the sides of the design. Then I extruded the outline of the shape again only in a straight line to a certain length. The final part was to cut and shape the aft end and create the cutout on the roof. I now had one half of the ship's design.

The rest was a matter of adding on detail until I had everything symmetrical I could think of. Once that was complete I simply have to make a mirror copy of the finished half of the model to have two halves to make one whole shuttlecraft.

Scale came into play when I had to decide how large the aft access port would be. This was part of the symmetrical detailing before making a mirror copy.