So ends our broadcast day! Hope you enjoyed this month’s offerings!
Have a great February, and I look forward to seeing you at the end of the month!
Archive for January, 2010
31
Jan
10
See You February 28th!
A SOTL bonus next year will be a tech manual style centerfold featuring a couple of the more unusual additions: the NX-01 refit, and Matt Jefferies revolutionary ringship, the XCV-330. Above is the rough blocking out of the page with spaceholder text. The final image will be fully rendered with tech by Mike Okuda. Mark Rademaker is doing an awesome job fleshing out Matt’s novel design, and we can’t wait to get a look at the final.
Thanks to John Ellis, who is keeps the scans of Steve Canyon coming! Continue reading ‘Steve Canyon – 40 – Grand Canyon Sunday!’
The decision to make DS9 out of the ordinary is pretty abundantly clear in these happy snaps I took while doing illustrations for the DS9 Tech Manual. It is anything but what Ira Behr used to refer to as “Star Fleet Clean”. Herman Zimmerman and the set designers broke the rules everywhere they could. The pin striping on the black plexi is the design ethic Mike Okuda called “shatterframe”. It was Mike’s solution to make standard monitors integrate with the every-which-way-but-loose Cardassian style. Enjoy these candid views of Doctor Bashir’s desk.
Continue reading ‘DS9 Infirmary – Happy Snaps – Bashir’s Desk’
31
Jan
10
Go Ahead… Make My Day!
I was delighted to read a review of the Mac iPad on the blog “Geek In The City”, and discover this:
“The iPad is impressive in its marriage of form and function. The design seems to come directly out of the lab of Herman Zimmerman or Doug Drexler, but via Cupertino and Jonathan Ive. The screen looks vibrant and crisp, and the bezel appears to be just the right size to allow one to hold onto the device without activating the touch screen. The ability to use the device at any angle certainly makes it a bit more versatile than its smaller siblings, neither of which allows you to use the screen in the upside-down mode.”
The little catalog put together by FTP founders Chuck and Sandy Weiss that ignited a couple of careers.
I had been meaning to do something on the Federation Trading Post East for some time now. I guess I’ve been waiting to see if any other pictures turn up documenting this bit of Trek fandom history. I’ve finally managed to scrape up enough for a post, so now children you must endure looking at them with me! In 1975 there was no-nuthin’! No movies, episodes, novels, DVDs, VHS… zip, zero, zilch, nada! Star Trek was a failed TV show. Then a little shop sprang up the most unlikely of places, mid-town Manhattan, and located on a chunk of pretty upscale real estate no less. 53rd and Third! The neighborhood merchants were taking bets on how long we would last. They were in for a shock.
No one suspected the militant, aggressive, creative, fandom groundswell that was building. At the time, Star Trek was in syndication and was being shown on the local station at something like eleven at night. A bunch of kids… us… raised the money to run a 30 second commercial on television during Star Trek itself. The next day there was a line down the block, and it stayed that way for a solid year! We had huge amounts of fun for the next two trips around the sun, and it was truly an important ignition point for Star Trek fandom.
(Below) 53rd and Third today. A skyscraper now stands on the spot where the Trading Post once thrived.
The Next Page – DISCLAIMER - Alright now… we’re going back in time a little bit… It’s the 1970s, ok?
31
Jan
10
Caprica City
(Above) Graystone Industries. Gary was looking for a “Microsoft campus” feel, which Davey nailed with aplomb.
A couple of days after the Caprica pilot aired, an architectural blog picked up on it and featured the shows design work. Gary Hutzel’s point man for developing these vistas is the amazing Dave Morton with an able assist from Joe Lawson. More on Davey and the rest of the crew in an upcoming entry. These caps came from the Arkinet blog. Thank you Ana for the attention! Sometime in the near future I’ll run some higher quality images. In the meantime visit Arkinet and let them know you appreciate the spotlight on our work.
http://arkinetblog.wordpress.com/2010/01/26/vancouver-as-caprica-city/
(Below) More Graystone campus.
(Below) One of many Caprica cityscapes created by Davey.
(Below) I designed and built the Graystone estate, but Dave’s environment makes it sing. There is a VTOL pad in the back.
(Below) The Atlas stadium, home of the Bucs. We decided that it’s architectural inspiration would come from renowned architect Calatrava. This ties nicely to the the Cylon Resurrection ship from BSG, also Calatrava inspired. Atlas stadium was built by modeling maestro Pierre Drolet.
31
Jan
10
DS9 Plans
Diagrams I created of the station for use in backlits as seen on screen. Give ‘er a click for a nice big view. Most of you know that I loved getting the chance to do stuff like this. Mike certainly knew it, and gave me every opportunity he could.
31
Jan
10
Cardassian Costumes
More Bob Blackman magic in the form of Cardassian wardrobe, an almost medieval feeling. You can see some design elements of the makeup in the TNG version of the uniform. I rendered these for the Trek Encyclopedia.
Didja’ miss me?
Just turned on the lights… got the coffee brewing… Beakie stretches his drumsticks and I get ready to begin the drex files broadcast day. It’s been a wild month for us getting “Caprica” ready for air, and a very different landscape with many cityscapes and robots filling our schedule. The BSG-now-Caprica in house VFX team is hard at it under the command of Gary Hutzel. Crazy, but that’s how it goes! We’ll touch on that a little bit today. So let’s get this party started!
(Above) Video courtesy of Binky-Boy, Enterprise’s lovable property master. It nicely sums up how I’m feeling this morning!
31
Jan
10
Cardassian Galor Class Warship
The Cardassian Galor class warship… keeping the late night oil burning at the Presidio.
With it’s Cobra headed-Sea Skatish personae, the Cardassian Galor class battle cruiser made for a good-looking and worthy adversary ship. All about military support, these vessels are the antithesis of the sprawling space-going communities that starfleet’s Galaxy class represents. It’s easy to imagine that Cardassian military planners saw those luxurously cushy vessels as a misguided waste of resources, while at the same time counting their blessings.
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08
Jan
10
Cag ‘N Drex Makeup Explosion!
Check out after 3:39. What a blast from the past!
Thanks to my buddy Matt Boardman!
03
Jan
10
See You On January 31!
Drex files goes monthly as of the new year. I’ll be using my weekends developing a new Internet project and I’ll keep you up to date as it develops. Have a great January!
It’s new secondary hull shrouded in darkness, the NX finally looks complete. The now full fledged starship awaits Mike Okuda’s fleet graphics. This will be the first Enterprise with graphics designed by a man who has actually flown graphics into space.
DS9 was a unique opportunity for the art department to stretch, The stations ops center was huge amounts of fun with all of it’s various levels and angular structure. DS9 was also an amazing opportunity for me, as it was the show that Herman and Mike gave that makeup guy a chance to stretch his horizons as well. I’ll always be grateful to them.
Embroiled in a conflict spanning three fronts, and resources stretched thin, the Cardassian’s developed unmanned weapons platforms. With one hundred percent of the platforms resources geared toward offense, they proved a formidable foe, inflicting major damage upon the Federation and it’s allies.
03
Jan
10
Ancient Bajoran Starchart
My Bajoran lightship starchart from the DS9 episode “Explorers”. The design carried on the Bajoran design ethic of “wheels within wheels”, inspired by the Bajoran Wormhole. I printed the final chart on a beautiful parchment gilded with gold.
UPDATE: As usual Jörg kept better track of my star maps than me . Witness -
Hi Doug! Here is what I found out about the Bajoran star map. In “Explorers”, the yellow star map is never seen, a different star map got all the screen time. The first appearance of the star map on your blog is in “Rapture”. Sisko uses it to find the location of B’hala. This version is white and not yellow, though.
The only appearance of the map as is (yellow background) that I can think of is in VOY’s “Repression” (Season 7) where it is seen in Teero Anaydis abode. I’ve attached screenshots of all three appearances of Bajoran maps.
03
Jan
10
Bajoran Wardrobe
The variety and texture of the Bajoran wardrobe for DS9 was yet another awesome triumph for the multiple Emmy winning Bob Blackman.
I’m sure you’re sick of hearing me say how much fun I had working on Trek. I was a Pakled on a ham, a kid in a candy store, Bukowski on a bender. I may hold the record for the number of job positions held by any one person in the history of Star Trek. Every bit of it was fascinating, and oh yes, I drank deep my friends. Sometimes I think it’s a shame I never made it into the wardrobe department working for Bob Blackman. What an incredible department it was. It’s treasures going on for miles… rack after rack of creativity. It seemed that the staff worked 24 hours a day, outfitting Klingons, Starfleeters, Borg and all manor of humanoid.
Today we examine the Bajoran wardrobe for Deep Space Nine. It’s one thing to lovingly draw up these designs as I did, but to have the actual costumes at my finger tips… well, what can I say?
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03
Jan
10
Monean Starship
“Star Trek: Voyager” takes the plunge with this somewhat yellow submarine, as outer space meets liquid space. Part dolphin, part sea-skate, the Monean starship makes a splash as Trek goes on a Voyage to the bottom of an alien sea.
The Jörg Report: Wow, the Monean starship! This was number two on my list of ships I wanted to see in the Fact Files. This was never to happen but now we can finally take a look at it! This is a great present for the New Year! Here is the ship’s history:
The model was first and foremost seen as the Monean ship (called a Monean research vessel in the episode) in “Thirty days”. It was seen both in space and under water. The unmodified model was re-used in “Drive” (although scaled down a lot) to appear as one of the vessels taking part in the Antarian trans-stellar rally.
Finally, the model was modified slightly (these views finally show how far the modifications went) and recoloured and appeared as a Chokuzan vessel in Q2. After that, the model was not seen again.
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