Animation test of deadly Xindi insectoid specie.
Gotcha!
Not only is Sean Scott one of the best character animators in the business, but he is also one of the nicest men in this or any other quadrant. Sean and I first met at Foundation Image while working on the Voyager VFX team. You’ve seen his work in numerous television shows and movies such as, 24, Pushing Daisies, Ghost Whisperer, Hellboy,Surface, and Alias, to name a few. While working to sharpen his character animation skills, Sean had himself a good time loosening up this ordnarily evil alien insect bug.
Forgive the artifacting on the image once the disco and colored lights fire up. I think it has something to do with how Youtube compresses the file. The animation below is fine.
(Below) Voice borrowed from John Billingsley.
I think you freakrolled us, Mr. D.
I’d pay money to see an interview with a Xindi insectoid telling on-set work stories about the other Xindi species.
Hah, awesome. I liked the Xindi designs, especially the first proper aquatic and insectoid aliens we saw on screen.
I’ll abuse this post for a request
I think you were responsible for the TOS Enterprise’s cutaway view that appeared on the Captain’s Chair CD-ROM. Very similar, but more detailed (and animated, I think) diagrams appeared in “In a Mirror, Darkly”. Seeing as the internal arrangement of the original E is one of those ongoing debates, maybe you could share some insights on creating what are essentially the ‘canon’ interior schematics.
Doug that was too much!! lol I loved the “Bug Hump” in the first video. lol
Thanks for the post!
Oh my, just when you thought you had seen everything! Thanks for the funky Xindi!
That Xindi can dance the light Travolta very well.
Wow! We finally get to see John Billingsley out of costume. No wonder he doesn’t get recognized everywhere he goes.
Stayin’ a-HIVE? lol
Harry: well, not only is that diagram canonically supposed to represent the Defiant, not the Enterprise, but there’ve been enough issues on even the best of MSDs to throw into doubt their full accuracy. That’s because much of the time they’re not drawn off the final miniature blueprints or the miniature itself, but rather off an intermediate cutaway or sketches, which is why you’ll find (for example) that the torpedo launchers on the Sovereign and Nova classes are not where they’re supposed to be. It’s also been noted that they do not accurately represent the ship’s outline all the time, again for the same reason. After-the-fact MSDs tend to fare worse, since they have to be made consistent with all the already established data, and it’s hard to do this on a deadline.
Obviously, they’re canon and serve as an excellent starting point for interior analysis, so we should try to interpret them as best as possible, but it has to be done in concert with all the other evidence. Anyway, you may already know all this, sorry if I’m talking in a vacuum.
I’d also like to know what kind of research went into the 1701 MSD, and especially if there’s a fully labeled version of it.
Everyone: please continue with your regularly-scheduled Xindi programming.
Looks like I forgot to close the italics after the “Nova”, sorry for the formatting.
Howdy guys! I drew that as the Enterprise, well before “Mirror”. It’s my interpretation of the layout of the TOS ship. I used Gary Kerr’s blueprints, accurate to the miniature, to form the ship’s profile. I have the diagram on my computer. Just saw it this morning. Let me think about how to make that an entry. It’s detaled, detailed, detailed. Do you know that the engine room with it’s cathedral-like conduits, were slid into the ship like a drawer thru the hangar bay? – Doug
Douglas! Flattery will get you everywhere! Thanks for the kind words. These tests were done over the summer hiatus to stretch our character animation reel a bit further. They were great fun to animate, and got plenty of laughs. It would have been fun to see how the Xindi actually lived at home! There must have been a Brady Bunch of the bug planet. Great website!
Ladies and gentleman… Character Animator Rex! Sean Scott!
I think you should simply focus on the hard questions you ran into and any innovations you may have introduced, as well as your reasoning for them. If something’s the same as in Franz Joseph’s works or The Making of Star Trek, there’s no need to get into it in detail.
Boris! Give me some firewood! – Doug
Unfortunately, I can’t really see much since the best picture I could find is this: http://www.strekschematics.utvinternet.com/cutaways/orginalcut/orgentcutaway.jpg
However, the following would be interesting:
1) What was your motivation for doing the cutaway? Only Captain’s Chair at first?
2) Did you have access to any exclusive sources at Paramount, such as old interior sketches or blueprints that haven’t been published?
3) How did you decide on putting Engineering in the engineering section as opposed to the saucer section?
4) How did you figure warp drive was laid out in TOS?
5) How close is the layout to that of Franz Joseph and The Making of Star Trek and what are the major differences? Did you use any other sources?
6) Did you make any modifications for the Defiant?
Anybody else, feel free to add more questions.
BTW, for those not following the research into the TOS Enterprise (the two of you), this is one of the most amazing finds I’ve seen in recent years — Matt Jefferies’ ideas on how to really refit the Enterprise for Phase II: http://www.cloudster.com/Sets&Vehicles/STEnterprise/Phase2Drawings.htm. As you can see, he followed his original cutaway very closely.
(Andrew Probert’s final version was originally supposed to be a redesign, not a refit, which is why the old Enterprise-class designation made more sense.)
1) What was your motivation for doing the cutaway? Only Captain’s Chair at first?
Yes, The Captain’s Chair.
2) Did you have access to any exclusive sources at Paramount, such as old interior sketches or blueprints that haven’t been published?
There aren’t any. Zip, zero, zilch, nada.
3) How did you decide on putting Engineering in the engineering section as opposed to the saucer section?
Matt and I talked about this. He thought having engineering in the primary hull defeated the whole idea. You wanted to be able to get rid of it if you had to. Besides, why put engineering any place else other than the engineering section? There was an Impulse deck in the Primary Hull.
4) How did you figure warp drive was laid out in TOS?
You mean why is it horizontal?
5) How close is the layout to that of Franz Joseph and The Making of Star Trek and what are the major differences? Did you use any other sources?
Only in the things actually mentioned in the show, like where sickbay was, and living quarters. Franz Joseph was no fan of the ship, I know, because he told me. Thought it was poorly designed.
6) Did you make any modifications for the Defiant?
Negative.
- Doug
Did we just get our first confimation of Matt Jefferies’ views on the placement of Engineering within the original Enterprise?
I think we all agree that you may want to seriously elaborate on your conversations with Matt Jefferies, since that’s the kind of exclusive source I asked about in 2). Warp drive, for instance — a lot of people think it was supposed to be totally self-contained within the nacelles, along with matter/antimatter reactions, since the whole idea was that the nacelles were dangerous and had to be kept far away from the rest of the ship (according to Jefferies). Did Matt Jefferies provide any insight into this, and yes, why is the warp drive horizontal?
>>Warp drive, for instance — a lot of people think it was supposed to be totally self-contained within the nacelles, along with matter/antimatter reactions, since the whole idea was that the nacelles were dangerous and had to be kept far away from the rest of the ship (according to Jefferies).<<
We didn’t speak specifically about that. But obviously a huge exchange of energy was taking place behind that hex grill in Engineering, within the ship. We also know that the Dilithium crystals came up out of the floor in the main engineering room (that tells me the warp core is horizontal and lives under there. In my mind, it extends all the way back under the amazing cathedral manifiold). We know that all the ships power is being pulled through these crystals, and we know they aren’t in the nacelles. So the engineering hull is designed to split from the primary hull. Something nasty is happening in the warp nacelles as well, and they are designed to jettison.
Perhaps only until 26th-century engineering figures out a way to make them less nasty, and allows ship design to integrate them more organically into a whole. I’d like to think the Enterprise-J is only one of several configurations of a ship that changes shape as needed. I’m a Larry Niven fan, after all.
The learning. THE LEARNING!
Haha! I had to watch those a couple times over! What program was used to animate the characters?
The Brady Bunch Xindi edition…that would be entertaining!
Hi Matt! It was done in Light Wave, the native VFX program of TV Trek and BSG. – Doug
Holy crap!!! Still rolling on the floor and laughing!
That really saved the day, after doing all that testing on luminaires for yer film-guys!
Very funny and clever.
Showed my 9 and 4 year-old daughters this post earlier today, they loved the “dancing grass-hopper!”
See Mr. Drexler, you even have fans in the pre-school age range. I can see the show now….”Star Kindy”
Cheers Mark
Very nice work, and a hoot to boot.
Thanks Doug!
LLP,
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