The Art of Star Trek: Reanimated - The Sequel

[doctorwho 03]

Wow! That Gorn looks like he has worse man-boobs than the test Kirk image posted earlier. Otherwise, it's definately coming close to the Gorn we all know and love. Perhaps if you shrink down the muscles a bit, that might do the trick.

 

[Wingsley]

Is that Gorn wearing a communicator in a little pouch, or is he just very happy to see us?

 

[Wingsley]

Griffworks said:
Those are awesome, Ptrope. I especially like the Trollorian Security Officer. His shear presence alone would be intimidating.

Can you do Ensign Naraht (Ensign "Rock") from the Diane Duane novels?

Awwww, now that would ROCK!!!

 

[Ptrope]

Wingsley said:
Is that Gorn wearing a communicator in a little pouch, or is he just very happy to see us?

Let's just say that the Gorn interpret "personal communications device" a bit more literally than their human counterparts .

As for the Gorn having moobs ... how do you know that's a male Gorn ... ? (I may try with a less-developed base character, puffed up, since it's going to be difficult to put the Freak on a diet ...)

Glad you guys like it; it's really something of a diversion, since no scene like this appears in "The Time Trap." But, since the Gorn does show up in the council chamber, and prominently, it's yet one more classic Trek species that deserves a makeover (and a better one that it already got, IMHO ). I may try to do a bit with additional morphs to the head to bring it even closer to the original. And gloves (and, looking at photos of the Gorn, I see now that he really did have ten fingers! They were just grouped to look something like 6! I confess I thought this was actually the case - should've looked at TOS-R a bit more closely, I guess!))

BTW, way back in 1977, at about the same time as Star Wars first appeared, there was a black-and-white comic magazine that featured a character named Star-Lord in a story written by Chris Claremont and drawn by John Byrne, which arguably was better both visually (thanks to inks by Terry Austin, in addition to John's draughtsmanship) and story-wise than that Fox blockbuster that hit theaters in May. Long story short, there was a brief appearance in the story by a reptilian character that looked very much like I'm sure the Two Genes would've preferred the Gorn to look in "Arena": Rruothk'ar. This has since been my mental picture of a Gorn (without a tail, of course)

 

[USS Intrepid]

Love the Gorn. And the rest for that matter.

 

[Ptrope]

Well, the new year brought a catastrophic hard drive failure with it, on the largest of my drives, which just happened to have all of my files for STR on it! Every Lightwave and Poser model, every piece of artwork I've done for the project . Thankfully, I've got a piece of software that seems to be doing a great job of recovering a large percentage of my files, but we're talking about a 250Gb drive that was full, and at the rate things are going, it's going to take literally weeks to get back even half of it. I'm concentrating on those things that most directly relate to my art and to this project in particular, and I've decided that, as a means of insurance, I'm going to also work at making all of the models built for the production available as freebies, hosted on remote sites, so at least the final works may be accessible even if another failure happens.

In the meantime, I've been working on some of the recovered models, the briefing room and crew quarters in particular (even though the quarters don't appear in "The Time Trap," I wanted a model of them! ); the quarters are already available online at ShareCG for free, and I intend to post the briefing room tomorrow. As I've been working on them (modeling in Lightwave for Poser), I've also been doing several renders:

 

[Cephas]

Sorry to hear about the hard drive. The models are looking great. Is that Uhura's dresser from Tholian Web? (I guess we may have seen it elsewhere, but that's the episode that comes to mind).

 

[doctorwho 03]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(que Apocaliptic music while I go on a psychotic rampage.)



OK, now that I got that out of my system, let's hope that whatever you can salvage is enough to keep this project going. The breifing room and crew quarters are looking wonderful. Hopefully you'll get a chance to use the latter in a future episode if you decide to go beyond Time Trap.

 

[doubleohfive]

That sucks, Ptrope. Good luck in retrieving the files.

I had a similar problem/catastrophe a few years ago, so I'm wondering --- what software/program are you using to rescue your data?

 

[Ptrope]

I'm using Stellar Phoenix Data Recovery - it appears to be basically checking every cluster for files/fragments, and ignoring the FAT, which means it's taking a lot of time, but Windows can't seem to locate the files any other way, so it's time well spent .

 

[USS Jack Riley]

P'Trope - I was camping with my son's Boy Scoutt troop over the weekend and I thought I heard the anguished wail of a guy who had lost his hard drive.

Sorry to hear about it. I was looking forward to seeing some progress on this porject. I enjoyed the cartoons when I was a kid, although I wasn't thrilled with the animation itself. Hope you can get everything back to some semblance of order and finish this thing off.

BTW, I read in an earlier thread on this topic that the original scripts were designed for a 1 hour time slot (which today is about 45 minutes of actual show, the rest taken up with commercials). Have you considered adding in period commercials for various Star Trek related toys (you can find some on YouTube) and other nostalgic touches? What about some non-period commercials, but humorous (the Turbo-Shatner 2000 hair piece, for insatce)?

Just some thoughts. I shall burn a candle in hopes that you can recover a great bit of the data (if you can't get it all back, that is). I have heard of this program and it has a good rep, so hopefully it won't be a complete loss.

 

[B.J.]

*SMACKS Ptrope upside the head*
I guess you'll remember to backup your data now, huh?

 

[Ptrope]

Yes, B.J., I'm definitely going to be much more conscientious about backing up my files - this is an experience I don't wish to repeat, nor wish upon anyone else.

USS Jack Riley, the episodes may have been written with an hour in mind, but as produced, they fit into a half-hour time slot, minus commercials, so one would have to add about 40 minutes of commercials to one to fill out an hour. Great for people who really enjoy commercials, but a bit tedious for those who want to get back to the story . I have toyed, hypothetically, with the idea of carefully including scenes from other episodes whose dialogue could fit the main story, in order to make it a "special extended-length episode"; however, that would only be done if it could be done well, and only once the entire episode was completed as it had originally been edited. I can't imagine, at the moment, how much work it would take to find dialogue in the many hours of TAS - or maybe even TOS - that could support the story without seeming like nothing more than a stunt. I don't know if the inspiration for such an effort is more akin to Forrest Gump or Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid .

In the meantime, just because it's been itching at me, I've been trying to 'fix' the wardrobe so it's more accurate:

Cephas, we saw the wardrobe in "The Tholian Web," as well as "Charlie X" and several others where we were in either Kirk's or a crewmember's quarters - I believe it was also visible in "The Enemy Within." I know the mirror here is not accurate, but I figure there must be some variation from one cabin to another, and this one, to me, makes as much sense as any other.

 

[USS Jack Riley]

P'trope - A choice between Forrest Gump and Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid? First off, you are dating yourself by mentioning that Steve Martin classic (but then again, so am I by understanding the reference).

Just a thought on the commercials. I can just see the scene from Goodfellas where the wig seller jumps into the pool and claims that it will never come off and then having "Shatner Turbo-2000 Hair Piece - Available in Stores Everywhere!!" plastered over the front.

I applaud your efforts at recovering the information and hope that you can get back on this project soon.

BTW, had you done any animation for the 3-legged guy (I can't remember his name - Arex maybe)? YOu had talked about how you wanted his gait to more closely reflect the fact that he has 3 legs and not 2. Just a question. No hurry. You obviously have more important things going on (like recovering the data).

 

[Ptrope]

No animation yet on Arex - heck, we don't even have a figure, yet! Given that Arex has no dialog in the episode, he may not have any animation below the waist, at all, though I would like to see him with some life above it - responses to the dialogue of other characters, reactions to the events on the bridge, use of all three arms as he works the controls. As I've said since the beginning, I'm not, myself, much of an animator, but I may try my hand at some basic Arex animation, just to get my feet wet. I may also try out Silo for modeling him - I've never modeled anything organic.

In the meantime, I'm just about done tweaking the crew cabin; I finished up the desk and computer tonight:

I might just have to add an "extended scene" just to use this set ... .

 

[Ziz]

Ptrope said:
...I may also try out Silo for modeling him - I've never modeled anything organic.

*cough*

You forgot about this?

Ptrope said:

 

[Redfern]

Ah, Ziz, I see your point, but that is actually a "pre-made" figure called Victoria 3 available for download at the www.daz3d.com on-line store. However, I'm sure Ptrope customized it, adjusting feature controls and "injecting" morphs to help rid "her" of the "out of the box" look. But there is no "off the shelf" figure that remotely resembles Arex, so "he" will have to modeled from scratch.

Sincerely,

Bill

 

[Ziz]

Ok. I just sit back and admire all this 3D stuff, while only possessing a basic working knowledge of it. All my modeling & sculpting skills are in the physical world rather than the virtual one.

 

[Griffworks]

Sorry to hear that, Ptrope. It at least reminds me that I've not backed up a lot of my files since July, so will do so today....

Don't guess we'll see a Horta as part of the crew in your STR 'verse, will we...?

 

[Ptrope]

Ziz said:
Ok. I just sit back and admire all this 3D stuff, while only possessing a basic working knowledge of it. All my modeling & sculpting skills are in the physical world rather than the virtual one.

Yeah, Redfern said it pretty well - I'm a shameless user of other people's products when it comes to characters; I have no inclination to reinvent the wheel needlessly, in the same way that if I wanted to photograph a beautiful woman, I wouldn't go get married and have a daughter and then wait to see how she turned out .

I can model mechanical, inorganic shapes - not as well as many of our members here can, but well enough to do what I need, as with things like ship interiors and Endeavour. I'm also a real-world sculptor, though, so apps lke Silo and Z-Brush are where I'm going to be looking for organic modeling, since they allow one to treat models like virtual clay, and that's where I'll be expanding my skillset, hopefully. We'll see!