Abrahms E

If you’ve run across CG fan images of the Abrahms Enterprise, please post a link here for my records! Thank you! – Doug

Eyecandy – 29

First Rendered Sketch – Surak Class

Click for a better look

Steve Canyon 32

http://drexfiles.wordpress.com/2009/07/11/the-return-of-steve-canyon/

http://stevecanyondvd.blogspot.com/

Calling Dick Tracy! 92

Dick Smith Update – 01- We Visit Bob and Cathy Burns

(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.

DS9 Tech Manual – 02 – Runabout

(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.

(Below) “Visible V-8″ style, the Runabout’s total warp propulsion system pared down to it’s basic components.

Bill Mauldin

(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

Time Names Ares Rocket “Best Invention of 2009″!

(Above) The dramatic roll out of the Ares at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The Best Invention of the Year: NASA’s Ares Rockets

“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.”

Read more at Time Magazine:

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1934027_1934003,00.html

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.

Bajoran Interceptor\Transport

(Above) The gull-like Bajoran interceptor. This CG model was only seen in one episode, “Shadows and symbols”. As far as I know, the CG model was never seen again or modified to appear as a different vessel.

One of the more graceful designs for a Star Trek spaceship, came from my old buddy Jim Martin during his tenure on DS9. I think I had mentioned that Jimmy was our first art department production assistant, and he was determined to become an illustrator. He couldn’t have been in a better place. Being a number of years younger than the rest of us, Jim was highly influenced by Star Wars, and often that would show in his work. Nothing gave me more excess stomach acid than that, so I would carry an eleven foot G-95 cattle prod and used it in case the “Force” clouded his vision. This is one of my favorite Jim Martin spaceships. It captures the spiritual essence of the Bajoran people.

(Below) The far superior physical model of the interceptor at Image G. Read more about it here -  http://drexfiles.wordpress.com/2009/02/15/bajoran-transport/

Eyecandy – 28

“Defiant Found”

A companion image for last weeks “Mirror” set pictorial.

Click for a better look.

A study in how things evolve once they leave the art department. Above is the original dock concept that we sent to Eden Effects. This weeks “Eyecandy” uses final dock as seen in the episode. It was built by Mike Stetson.

Steve Canyon – 31

http://drexfiles.wordpress.com/2009/07/11/the-return-of-steve-canyon/

http://stevecanyondvd.blogspot.com/

Calling Dick Tracy! 91