Mark Rademaker’s conceptual art visualizing a scientific scoutship. Mark’s well loved 2010 calendar image was the original starship “Aventine”. It was designed for the Pocket novel series of the same name. Click for a better look.
Mark returns for the 2011 SOTL with something rather special. More on that later.
SOTL 2010 – On Sale Now – From Simon & Schuster.
Mike Minor and the painting he created for a San Fernando theatre production of “The Martian Chronicles”.
In an upcoming article we’ll shine a light on the late Mike Minor, science fiction artist and frequent contributor to Star Trek. From TOS to The Wrath of Khan, Mike’s distinctive style played an important part in the look of Trek. Best buddy, Bob Burn’s recalls Mike’s “magic pencils” with awe and nostalgia. “Mike was the heart and soul of so many projects I hold near and dear to my heart,” remembers Bob. “He literally built the structure that houses my collection with his own two hands. There will never be another like Mike.”
Bob is gathering together a selection of images of Mike and his work for the drex files. Watch for it!
(Below) Minor’s iconic concept painting of the TMP Enterprise bridge, many of it’s ideas fully realized, serving the TOS movie era long after he had passed on.
(Below) Mike’s pivotal storyboards from “The Wrath of Khan” ( Thanks Bob, via Mike Okuda).
(Above) You say Mugato, and I say Gumato! Let’s call the whole thing off! I call him Bingo! Undoubtedly the Talosian Keeper had a horned monkey in his collection, as no self respecting, not-meaning-to-be-evil space guy\gal would be caught beyond the rim of starlight without one!
Holy mackeral! I did a freighter full of illustrations for Mike and Denise’s Star Trek Encyclopedia! I also had more fun than oughta’ be legal doing them! Many of my illustrations for the Encylclopedia appeared teeny-tiny, often no more than an inch high. I just realized that here was my opportunity to show them to you guys at a decent size! Over the coming weeks I’ll reproduce a few of my favorites.
(Below) Existance! Survival! Must over-ride programming! Ted Cassidy as a not so nervous Ruk. One of the all time great Trek characters! You Rang?
As reported last weekend, Pierre Drolet and I will be refitting the NX-01 to a Fifth Season configuration for the 2011 SOTL calendar. I took advantage of the long holiday weekend to get the plans together for Pierre, and we are both excited at the prospect of carrying on the ships evolution toward the 1701.
Bulletin! John Eaves joins the 2011 SOTL staff.
Undoubtedly an all time Trek classic, the erstwhile workbee.
If my memory serves me, the workbee was only used once on DS9, and that was in the title sequence. That was all the provocation I needed to slip it into the Ds9 Tech Manual. Sleek and sexy, this Probert design caught everone’s attention in the spectacular drydock sequence in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Like many of Star Trek’s spaceship designs, it never seems to go out of style.
(Below) Cutaway view. The miniature interior was outfitted complete with a G.I. Joe doll.
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I had often read about this unseen pilot starring a pre-Trek Shatner as Alexander the Great, but never thought it would ever turn up. That’s the miracle of YouTube! Behold!
Having appeared several times on Trek, and seen up close for the first time today, another pirated pirate ship.
This is the smaller pirate ship from the “Enterprise” episode “Horizon”. The ECS Horizon is attacked by two small vessels of this type. They attach a marker beacon to the hull so a larger accomplice ship (a re-use of the Akritirian patrol ship – http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/akritirian.htm) can later find and properly attack the cargo vessel. This modification appeared as the Ankari in “Equinox II”, and also appeared as a vessel participating in the Antarian Trans-stellar rally in “Drive”.
Further background :
http://drexfiles.wordpress.com/2009/10/11/yo-ho-enterprises-pirated-pirate-ship/
http://drexfiles.wordpress.com/2009/05/24/ecs-horizon/
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Margaret Clark is back to work with the gang and I on 2011, and oh boy we have some interesting stuff in store…
Bulletin! We’ve piped Tobias Richter aboard to render an original and soulful image of the new E. Yes, that’s me talking…
Bulletin! Pierre Drolet and I will team on a page refitting the NX-01 to a fifth season projection… picture a secondary hull and a TOS porcelin finish.
Bulletin! Andrew Probert will unveil a TNG era Romulan uber cruiser you’ve never seen. Can you say monster? I knew that you could.
Bulletin! deg will dazzle with his stunning TOS.5.2 E!
I’ll keep you up to date as the lineup develops.
(Below) Where this ship has never gone before. Tobias Richter wows…
(Above) The intriguing DS9 defense sails. Magazine, conveyors, massive rotary gatling phasers, and torp launchers. Note the fire control center.
If I told you that I did not have a good time doing these diagrams I would be a big fat liar. I think you can pretty much tell by looking at them. One of my favorites is the cutaway of the DS9 defense sail. So much of the station was left unexplained, and I pretty much had a field day filling it out. The idea was that starfleet fully refitted the station’s defensive capabilities, which had been stripped by the Cardassian’s when they abandoned it. This should not have come as any surprise to the Cardassians, but to say that they were unprepared by the newly acquired fire power was an understatement.
(Below) The rotary, gatling style phaser emplacement was something we hadn’t seen before, it was as big a surprise to viewers as it was to the Cardassians. The nifty pop up phaser bar.
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(Above) The Quantum Torpedo. A Ds9 bit of ordinance often utilized but never seen. I had great fun streamlining the erstwhile Pho-Torp that had been around for decades. Sort of the sport coup of photon torpedos.
(Below) The standard photon torpedo, basically unchanged since “The Wrath of Khan”. We all have a lot of nostalgia for this one, as it was used as Spock’s casket. I detailed a few of these during my time as a scenic artist, and I’m here to tell you that they would have had to chop our favorite science officers legs off to make him fit.
(Above) Dammit Jim! I’m a writer, not an artist! Norman Spinrad’s off the cuff doodle of his take on the Doomsday Machine. Lovely nevertheless.
Another goody by way of John Ellis, who ran into brilliant “Doomsday Machine” author Norman Spinrad in NYC in the 70s. I too had run into Spinrad while managing The Federation Trading Post back in the day. We had a spirited discussion about Trek, and he related to me his overall dissatisfaction for the design of the iconic planet killer. Last week when John told me of his encounter with Spinrad, and that Norman had actually dashed off a rough sketch for him, I was beside myself. “Don’t get too excited, Doug. It’s rather on the primitive side.” John, it’s a fantastic artifact! Thank you for sharing it!
(Left) “Doomsday Machine” Author, and science fiction icon Norman Spinrad.
You might think that a new space shuttle would make the mainstream news, but the U.S Air Force has kept tight wraps on the X-37, a junior sized spaceplane that will take on some of the functions of the space shuttle.
In April 2010, the Air Force is scheduled to launch an Atlas V booster from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying the newest U.S. Spacecraft, the unmanned X-37, to orbit. The X-37 embodies the Air Force’s desire for an operational spaceplane, a wish that dates back to the 1950s, the era of the rocket powered X-15 and X-20.
“The space shuttle has performed it’s job very well, but you don’t need to launch a Mac truck into space when a Toyota Celica will do,” explains Mark Lewis, a University of Maryland hypersonics expert who recently completed a four year appointment as a chief scientist for the Air Force. It’s possible the spaceplane could have a role in national security, but when Lewis is asked about anything more than the X-37′s aerodynamics he clams up. The X-37 has taken a winding and perplexing path among NASA, DARPA, and the Air Force. Today, call up any of these organizations and say “X-37″ and it’s like spraying a garden hose at housecats.
For the full story, read the Michael Kieslus article at Air & Space Magazine - http://www.airspacemag.com/space-exploration/Space-Shuttle-Jr.html?utm_source=newsletter20091118&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ASMNovember
(Below) Scaled Composites “White Knight” launched the X-37A on three test glides in 2006.
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Gouda nuff – Basically a space going wedge, the Bajoran assault vessel recalls an almost “star destroyer” design ethic.
Drex Files follows up last weeks Bajoran Transport ship with this freighter from that spiritual race. Nothing graceful about it, it is the antithesis of last weeks elegant gull-like design. Judging by it’s straight forward basic shapes, it appears as if it’s design was driven by ease of construction for the modeler, a very real consideration in the days of physical photography, but not much of a concern in the unshackled CG era.
The Jörg report -
The physical model of the Bajoran ship first appeared in “Past prologue” as the Bajoran scout ship Tahna Los is on. The model then appeared in many episodes as a Bajoran transport ship. I have included some screenshots of the physical model from “Sons of Mogh” and “Prodigal daughter”. For the scene in “Shadows and symbols” where Kira is facing off the Romulans with a small fleet of Bajoran impulse ships, the Bajoran aussault vessel was turned into a CG ship too, like all the other Bajoran physical models. As far as I can tell, the CG model was only seen in this episode and never appeared in any other shot again.
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If you’ve run across CG fan images of the Abrahms Enterprise, please post a link here for my records! Thank you! – Doug
First Rendered Sketch – Surak Class
Click for a better look
(Above) Dick standing in front of the original George Pal’s Time Machine from the 1960 classic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine_%281960_film%29
Last weekend, Dick and I dropped in to visit Bob and Cathy Burns at their home\museum in the San Fernando Valley. I was aghast that Dick had never visited the science fiction\horror and fantasy Mecca, and delighted to be the one to introduce him to it. It goes without saying that Bob and Cathy were thrilled to have the makeup master visit them. We had a wonderful afternoon hob knobbing and reminiscing.
By the way, you may remember an early entry where I recount Mike Okuda’s 40th birthday bash held at Bob and Cathy’s house. If not, check it out – http://drexfiles.wordpress.com/2009/03/13/mikes-40th-b-day-spectacular/
Story behind The Time Machine – In the early 1970′s, MGM had an auction of their props. Bob attended with $1000 he’s scraped together, with every intention of going home with the Holy Grail, the Time Machine. The price shot up to $4000, way out of his league. Bob was heartsick, and left before the final bid. He later heard it was sold to a traveling show for between 8-10 thousand dollars. In 1975, a friend of Bob’s was in an Orange County thrift shop looking for interesting items when he caught sight of the familiar big dish in the back of the store. The machine was in rough condition, and was missing the chair. Bob made an offer, and finally had the Time Machine. George Pal had given Bob a set of plans of the machine years earlier, and with the help of Dennis Muren, Tom Scherman, Mike Minor, Dorothy Fontana, TV producer Mark Richards, and Lynn Barker, the machine was restored.
(Below) Kindred spirits, Dick and Bob, smile for Doug’s drex files roving eye.
Continue reading ‘Dick Smith Update – 01- We Visit Bob and Cathy Burns’
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(Above) TNG borrowed the runabout, establishing the layout of the aft compartment of the vessel, seen in this cutaway. Note the warp core situated in the spine of the ship, and the deuterium and anti-matter pods in the aft part of the assembly.
Wow! The DS9 Tech Manual Illustrations were a real hit with everyone, so we’ll keep them coming!
Until the Defiant came along, the Danube class runabout was the only real piece of starfleet hardware we had on Deep Space Nine. It was designed by Rick Sternbach before he turned his attention back to TNG. Jim Martin’s main contribution to this design was suggesting the idea that the runabout carry detachable cargo pods under wing, like the Space: 1999 Eagle Transporter.
(Below) I put my own spin on the idea by suggesting that these containers could also be special duty modules coming in a variety of flavors… science, medical, cargo, or even crew cabins.
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(Below) “Visible V-8″ style, the Runabout’s total warp propulsion system pared down to it’s basic components.
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(Above) Dorth clipped this “Peanuts” strip out of the paper for me on Veteran’s Day. I’m a big Bill Mauldin fan, and wondered how many people reading “Peanuts” today would even know who Mauldin was. I realized it was my duty to present this tribute to Bill in today’s drex files.
When I was just a kid, I came across a book in my father’s collection called “Upfront”, one of the most famous books to emerge from the Second World War, a classic in every sense of the word. In Bill Mauldin’s drawings of the infantry dogfaces Willie and Joe, done while he himself fought in campaigns in Sicily and Italy, Mauldin created the immortal archetypes of the American fighting man. He knew, as one who had been there himself on the front line and in the slit trenches, drenched with mud and rain, that Willie and Joe – with their unshaven faces, their gallows humor, their fortitude, and their dislike of privilege and cant – exemplify something enduring and noble about Americans at war during WWII. He knew their gripes, their fears, their jokes, and their opinions, and he recorded their talk with the most pungent accuracy.
(Above)) Cartoonist Bill Mauldin in Italy during WWII.
Bill Mauldin served his country in WWII with the 45th Infantry Division and other outfits. He received the Purple Heart for wound received in Italy. After the war he became one of the most distinguished editorial cartoonists in America, first for the St Louis Post-Dispatch and later the Chicago Sun-Times. he received the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1944 and 1959, as well as numerous other awards.
The great war correspondent Ernie Pyle described Bill this way:
” Sergeant Bill Mauldin seemed to us over there to be the finest cartoonist the war had produced. And that’s not merely because his cartoons are funny, but because they are so terribly grim and real. Mauldin’s cartoons aren’t about training camp life, which is most familiar to people at home. They are about the men in the line – the tiny percentage of our vast Army who are actually doing the dying. His cartoons are about the war.”
I’m more than honored to run a cross section of some of my favorite Bill Mauldin Willie and Joe cartoons today in the drex files. If you are interested in learning more about this American original, find “Up Front” here – http://www.amazon.com/Up-Front-Bill-Mauldin/dp/0393050319/ref=pd_sim_b_1
(Above) The dramatic roll out of the Ares at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
“Metal has no DNA; machines have no genes. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have pedigrees — ancestral lines every bit as elaborate as our own. That’s surely the case with the Ares 1 rocket. The best and smartest and coolest thing built in 2009 — a machine that can launch human beings to cosmic destinations we’d never considered before — is the fruit of a very old family tree, one with branches grand, historic and even wicked.”
Here’s a Time Magazine video feature on the selection of Ares I as “Invention of the Year.”
http://www.time.com/time/video/player/0,32068,49642414001_1937778,00.html
And here’s a Time Magazine gallery of cool Ares I-X photos:
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1932999,00.html
Mike – Thanks for sharing!
(Below) NASA workers make pre-launch preparations on launch pad 39-B at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The rocket is part of a family of rockets in NASA’s Constellation program, started in 2005 to go to Mars or the moon. It will also be equipped to fill in for the current aging Space Shuttle.
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