Makes sense that they would try everything.
The Motion Picture Phasers
- Thread starter Shane
- Start date
As to the blue/purple warp grills, I asked Richard Taylor—the original art director for the original VFX team on TMP—about that issue when I interviewed him back in 2017:
Gore: Getting back to the whole “warp glow” color issue, it was reveled in an interview with you, or maybe it was Jim Dow, that the actual color of the glowing warp grille side of the nacelles was produced by utilizing Dykem marking fluid. Was that just applied to the overall grille piece, including whatever sort of clear plexiglass or plastic gel that was in there? Or was that just applied to the inside of the thing?
Because at the Christie’s Auction house photos, one of which is image 21 on page 07 in the reference material I sent you, you can clearly see that the non-lit portions of it have a purple, or a purple-violet, cast to it.
Is that just an artifact of the Dykem marking fluid on top of a dark metal?
Or was that outside piece re-painted by ILM at a later date (when they took on the effects for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan)…?
Basically how did all that color application work?
I ask because that has lead to the whole controversy in modeling circles about whether the warp grilles light up blue, or if they light up violet. It seems depending on the PR shot, or what was in the film, or the various color-correcting and white balancing used in all of those different images, it can give you radically different results.
Taylor: Yes. Well the color of the metallic… what are you calling them, grilles?
Gore: Yeah I just call them a grille.
Taylor: Well in my mind I was trying to represent them as large magnets.
Gore: Yeah, got ya.
Taylor: And so it is the Dykem that was applied to the polished aluminum to give them that bluish color. And you know what Dykem looks like on metal. You’ve seen it before, so that’s how they were built into the model. So that bluish color was on the actual metal.
Gore: Getting back to the whole “warp glow” color issue, it was reveled in an interview with you, or maybe it was Jim Dow, that the actual color of the glowing warp grille side of the nacelles was produced by utilizing Dykem marking fluid. Was that just applied to the overall grille piece, including whatever sort of clear plexiglass or plastic gel that was in there? Or was that just applied to the inside of the thing?
Because at the Christie’s Auction house photos, one of which is image 21 on page 07 in the reference material I sent you, you can clearly see that the non-lit portions of it have a purple, or a purple-violet, cast to it.
Is that just an artifact of the Dykem marking fluid on top of a dark metal?
Or was that outside piece re-painted by ILM at a later date (when they took on the effects for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan)…?
Basically how did all that color application work?
I ask because that has lead to the whole controversy in modeling circles about whether the warp grilles light up blue, or if they light up violet. It seems depending on the PR shot, or what was in the film, or the various color-correcting and white balancing used in all of those different images, it can give you radically different results.
Taylor: Yes. Well the color of the metallic… what are you calling them, grilles?
Gore: Yeah I just call them a grille.
Taylor: Well in my mind I was trying to represent them as large magnets.
Gore: Yeah, got ya.
Taylor: And so it is the Dykem that was applied to the polished aluminum to give them that bluish color. And you know what Dykem looks like on metal. You’ve seen it before, so that’s how they were built into the model. So that bluish color was on the actual metal.
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