Lord of the Rings.
One of the single most distinctive designs in the rag-tag fleet is the “Ring Ship”. This concept embodies many classic designs from over the years. The Bonnestell\Von Braun 1950’s space station, the big wheel from” 2001: A Space Odyssey”, and Matt Jefferies ring ship from the unrealized TV series “Starship!”. The first two years of BSG saw a lower rez version of the ringship being used in effects shots. Since the design begged to be seen better, our VFX supervisor Gary Hutzel asked internationally handsome 3D modeler Pierre Drolet to build a higher rez version, and to not spare the horses. Fraking amazing.
It was nice to get a better look at this one. You can get a better sense of it’s size by the windows in the fore section, too. Thanks for the closeup view of this great Drolet model!
Who designed the ship originally?
What I always wondered is, why have a rotating ring habitat as part of the ship when artificial gravity is so ubiquitous? It would be a great design for something in a more realistic universe with no AG, but in BSG it seemed a little out of place.
The ring ship is a cruise ship. It rotates for the same reason that a reataurant at the top of a building does.
Wow that is pretty dang impressive. The only downside is a great design like that getting used essentially as only eye candy. What an exciting space that would have been to dramatize.
The ring ship, Zephyr, is my favourite fleet vessel! When we started seeing more of it I got worried that it might go the way of Cloud 9… Many tense moments at the beginning of season 4!
Always wanted to see the inside of the ship. I imagined it was probably similar to Colonial One in the main section, being as it was also an Intersun/Eversun liner. Would have been really cool to have a scene set inside the ring, with the horizon curving up and away.
I’ve been wondering though: are there ‘turbolifts’ in the struts to get passengers to and from the ring habitat?
Thanks for the pics!
Great shots! any chance you can get your hands on shots of the Valkyrie Type Battlestars?
I like how it’s retro and modern at the same time. Very nice.
NICE!
LLP,
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If they ever made a BSG dart set, this is how I would like my darts shaped! ;D
Seriously though, this was one of those designs that I loved seeing in the shots of the fleet. The model that Pierre did up really is fraking awesome!
I love this design!
You know, in a way the front of the ship sort of reminds me of the rear of the Serenity (Firefly).
In a way, I can sorta see that, Scott, from that angle, but it is a bit of a stretch. Of course, it’s kinda hard to see my own rear end.
More BSG stuff is always a treat! Hate to do a bit of a hijack here, but I’m trying to locate the rest of the images of another BSG rag-tag fleet ship and was wondering if you could help.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/91372734@N00/4065829473/
It’s the other freighter design from BSG:Razor, and I don’t know where it came from and can’t find the rest of the images (note that it’s 003) on the net. Nor can I figure out who made it, since the image isn’t watermarked.
I would very much appreciate your help.
-Stefan-
Thank you so much Doug!
My favourite ship in BSG right from the Miniseries. I was devastated when in a promo trailer from season 4 I saw her take two direct hits to her ring section.
My mates laughed and hoped it would be her death but thanks to her being Ron Moore’s fav she survived and we got to see some great visuals in later episodes of her being repaired in open space.
Thanks again Doug!
Always a treat to get something from Galactica.
As Chris McKinney mentioned, the shots of the Ring Ship being repaired were really outstanding. I would love to see more of that.
Simply amazing.
My favourite fleet ship of all is the beautiful Rising Star, which I was very excited to see turn up towards the end of the show, but this comes a close second. If only there’d been an excuse to go inside the ring section at some point. Maybe one day I’ll finish all my other projects and have a go at depicting that.
wow! very nice all around.. no pun intended
I love this design !!
As Doug said, the design emotes Van Braun models, 2001, Matt Jefferies and even the Vulcans from Enterprise (plus a dash of Serenity) while similtaneously being very BSG-esque (Is that a word?) in it’s design qualities.
Douglas, you are spoiling us with such BSG goodies!!
Mark
I second all of your comments, Mark.
More BSG goodness would be nice!
Thanks for this Close Shots of the Ring-Liner, now i can rework this Details to my one.
Sorry we never got to see the insides of the Zephyr…
“Starship!” can be read about in David Gerrold’s “The World of Star Trek”. While there is nothing about the Ringship design itself, it is established that the ship (The Spinnaker?) would have had a small crew that included a robot and a telepathic female officer. Sound familiar?
Piere “the Poly God” once again worked his magic!
Lee Stringer! Now there is a guy I’d like to spotlight! Lee was Gary’s main supervisor at Zoic for the BSG mini, and had a major influence on how it turned out! Lee, are you still in Thailand?
amiga 3d..:)
Hey, where’s the mandatory “Plan” post? I thought the movie was nicely executed given the kind of fan-level timeline/continuity planning (pun intended) it must have required (though my preferred movie would’ve taken place after the series finale, retconning some of the story developments in the final acts
), and the VFX were some of the best on BSG, especially the opening sequence with the missiles and our first glimpses into many of the colonies. Would it be possible to show some pictures identifying each colony and specific design choices that went into those shots (assuming you feel comfortable discussing such a recent project, of course)?
Mandatory? You can only call it mandatory if it’s your blog, eh? Doug is the man who calls the shots, but fortunately he lets us make requests!
I’m getting ready to watch it right now (which wouldn’t have been the case without the prodding of a certain someone to watch the series in the first place), and I’ll give you a shout back in a bit, Boris!
I didn’t really know what to expect from The Plan, since it seemed to be retreading events somewhat, but I was pleasantly surprised by how good it was. They managed to weave the Cavils’ story in really well and settled doubts about the Cylons having a real plan. As the series went on, the statement “and they have a plan” seemed to have less and less credibility, but here it was explained why.
And of course the effects were fantastic. It was a real treat to see the colonies, both before and after the attacks. One even had pyramids, which was a nice nod to the original series! I hope we’ll see more of them all in Caprica (and I’m guessing we will, since it’d be silly to make such extensive cityscapes only to never use them again). Another fun little thing was seeing the raptors with a search and rescue paintjob.
The explanation of what was meant by “and they have a plan” isn’t actually what I expected. I always thought the plan was tied closely into the mythology of the series, not simply “kill all the humans”, which is what we knew from day one, so why make it a mysterious reference in the opening credits? I would’ve preferred it if the movie wasn’t called “The Plan” and if the few references to the plan were omitted, because it wasn’t really important to the story of two Cavils. That way, one could always conclude it had something to do with Cylons becoming more human or less human, the Cylon-human babies, their origins on Kobol etc.
John, you hit it right on the the head, I think.
“As the series went on, the statement ‘and they have a plan’ seemed to have less and less credibility, but here it was explained why.”
The plan lost credibility in the eyes of many of the cylons as they increased their contact and knowledge of humans. Boris, you mention the half cylon babies, but they were definitely not part of the plan that the Ones envisioned…love? With humans? (The farm the Fours had was their own and not part of the big picture.)
I now see that the plan was a rather 1 dimensional idea with only 1 direction possible, which was it’s fatal flaw. The Final Five, it seems, were sent to experience humans and learn their flaws, but instead they embraced humans, loved them and became individuals. Their presence just before the final scene really drove that point home. The revelation that the plan was that simple (and had actually failed) answered that question for me. The paths of the two Brother Cavils is so full of rich character insight, and I just loved the view of the series’ events from the eyes of the cylons…much better writing and integration than I expected! Bravo!!
The effects were worth the price of the movie themselves. I was amazed at the realistic effects of the bomb’s flight, shedding it’s layers and separating…fantastic!
Doug, I enjoyed your few seconds of air time in the VFX bonus feature! You drew the unlucky spot of following internationally handsome Pierre Drolet, though.
KUDOS to all involved, it exceeded my expectations!! The acappella vocals at the end followed the mood perfectly, then on to those great drums…wish there was more BSG! At least Caprica is coming.
Deanne: the farms being the Simons’ project was new to this movie likewise. Remember, in Season One and early Season Two we don’t actually see much dissension among the Cylons, so there is no indication that “and they have a plan” is only a one-dimensional idea by Cavil – whatever different projects were going on in parallel, the Cylons acted in unison, so my expectation was that it was all part of a mysterious plan which would be revealed later in the show. Destroying the colonies and chasing the humans would only be a portion of it, another portion being the farms and all the interest in Hera. It only looked like they wanted to exterminate all humans, but in fact they likely wanted something more subtle.
That is why it was somewhat disappointing to learn that “there are many copies…and they have a plan…to exterminate humanity…and the only interesting thing is why it failed”. The story was a nice character piece, no question about that, I just would’ve left the plan out of it. In my mind, the plan could’ve had something to do with the difference between centurions, humaniform Cylons and humans, what it was the Cylons needed to become as a race – more machine-like in some ways, more human in other ways? And of course, knowing what we now know about the original Cylons from Kobol, the Final Five could’ve tied in nicely as either an evolutionary step forward or backward. Cavil’s speech about seeing gamma rays etc. is one of the best monologues on the show, which could’ve been explored to a greater extent.
You definitely make some good points there that would have been worth exploring. I still like the way they went with keeping it simple and showing an emotional evolution and tie with humans that was based on love. As the movie showed, even death doesn’t stop love.
Sure there were other ways to go, but I’m happy with what we got.
Hi Boris! A closeup on the colonies is an interesting idea. I may just gather that together. Thanks for the kind words about “The Plan” effects. The opening was our favorite part of the show. That’s really where the VFX dept lived on that one. I have a pic of Gary shooting some elements for it which I’ll post later.
Speaking personally, I loved BSG: The Plan as it answered the big question of what the human-form Cylons were up to as they continued to infiltrate the fleet as well as how the Cylons kept finding them.
I thought that the writing was a brilliant combination of new footage combined with extracts from across the various seasons. I envy Ms. Espenson and director Edward James Olmos for being able to seamlessly intergrate the two and for me, the stand-out performance was Dean Stockwell as Brother Cavitt.
I thought the VFX on BSG worked best whenever they ended up being 100% functional, absolutely essential to the story being told. For example, in some shots I might pay close attention because the situation is highly unusual (Galactica falling like a rock toward New Caprica is one of my favorite shots), in others my eye might wander a bit because the battles are hard to follow or I already saw those kinds of space battles on the show. However, it is obvious that the artists were trying to make each element do something odd, rotate in a slightly different way, explode in a different way, which is what keeps it interesting even when Raiders and Vipers are required by the story to fight again and again.
The opening sequence in this movie stood out to me because it was both very original and essential to the story. It is one thing to show distant mushroom clouds as in the miniseries or talk about the billions of people killed, which was obviously a disturbing step forward from the original series, but not nearly as disturbing as actually seeing the basestars slowly rotate into position, point their weapons, fire the missiles, which split into more and more missiles hurtling towards unsuspecting people on the surface. If it weren’t for those shots, the movie would’ve simply restated what we’d already seen in the miniseries. And of course, actually seeing the colonies was a special treat, because many of them had only names, and now at least we got a general sense of what they looked like.
Boris, I totally agree about the effort to make the scenes new and interesting, even though we may see the same types of battles over and over again. It really paid off in quality and interest!