The Amazing Dan Curry

Dan’s ”Visible Klingon” was used in the Klingon med lab on Enterprise.  It is an oil painting.

Getting to work on Star Trek was only half the fun, the other half was getting to know the amazingly talented people who could be astonishingly creative on demand… week after week, year after year, day in and day out. As you can imagine, people like that are quite the personality. You know how Forrest Gump said that life was like a box of chocolates? Well, the creative crew of Star Trek was like a Whitman Sampler on steroids. Undoubtedly one of the most unique characters on the show was VFX supervisor Dan Curry. When the door opened in the art department, and Dan walked in, you knew it was going to be interesting. Usually Dan would have some creative problem for us to tackle, but as soon as we settled that, it would be on to funny business, and some of his jaw dropping adventures. Dan was a very entertaining story teller, and had a unique perspective on everything. 

CG modeler Brandon MacDougal remembered working with Dan on Trek: “Dan was always fun to work with!  His understanding of art always had a positive impact on the show.  To be frank, some some of the Foundation Imaging supervisors where intimated, but for me it was like working with an old friend from day one. He would come by Foundation once or twice a week to check up on shots, then spend the rest of his time going over details with me…  that is when he was not telling a joke or two… and he was funny! ”

Bio-Diversity Department – The “Shroomies” With John Teska

The appearance of the Shroomies was an eerie moment on “Enterprise”. With their crab-like eye-stalks and bubble helmets, they had a wonderful 1950′s feeling that I would have like to have seen more of. Alas, we never found out what they were up to.

John Teska is known far and wide as being one of the top CG wizards in this and all known parallel dimensions. One day Dan Curry came in with a special project for him…. a departure for Star Trek… an alien-alien sporting a tad more than a bumpy forehead! You couldn’t pick a better guy for the job… in fact, John was responsible for Species 8472 and the Borg Queen assembly sequence on Voyager.

(Above) Species 8472 – Another startling Teska creation from Star Trek:Voyager.

Malon Tanker

Brandon is akin to a sci fi Santa! You never know when the sound of the sleigh is going to thump on the roof, and a shiny new toy is going to  will drop down through the chimney! For the first time ever, we get a really good luck at the Malon shuttle, hinted at about a week ago here : http://drexfiles.wordpress.com/2009/06/20/toxic-tanker-voyager/ where the rascals can be seen escorting Toxie. This ship was designed by Brandon and Dan Curry. Let’s see what B has to say about it -

I remember that I came up with the design for the Malon shuttle directly in the 3D application, and Dan Curry approved it in house.. we needed something quick.  My thinking was an industrial looking steel hull construction meant to shield the crew from toxic gasses and radiation.

Dan was always fun to work with!  His understanding of art always had a positive impact on the show.  To be frank, some some of the Foundation Imaging supervisors where intimated, but for me it was like working with a old friend from day one. He would come by Foundation once or twice a week to check up on shots, then spend the rest of his time going over details with me…  that is when he was not telling a joke or two… and he was funny! 

Hierarchy Ship – Voyager – Updated!

It’s a bird… it’s a plane… it’s… its…

Taking a break from Klingons this morning, allow me to present what is undoubtedly the strangest and most unusual spaceship to ever appear on Star Trek. This is the Hierarchy ship from “Tinker tenor Doctor Spy”, from Voyager. As offbeat and oddball as this ship is, I applaud how different it is. I sometimes felt that the ship designs looked like they came from the same factory (which in fact they did), but when you turn out hundreds of concepts on an impossible schedule, budget, and with a finite staff,  it can’t be helped.  This ship began with a couple of design sketches from Rick, but quickly became a special project between Dan Curry and Brandon MacDougall. I happen to love this strange contrivance, but I have to admit that I’m thinking sour cream, chives, and bacon bits, how about you?

Tholian Webslinger!

Renowned Tholian punctuality…! Apparently these guys are minimalists in everyway. They don’t waste a second, nor do they waste any lines on a ship.

Everyone remembers the Tholian Web, and part of it is due to the offbeat way the Tholian ships capture the Enterprise by spinning a web. The minimalist look of the vessel was mostly dictated by the minimalist budget, but Matt always seemed to get the maximalist bang for the minimalist buck!

Deadstop Station

The Enterprise episode “Deadstop” featured an alien repair station a little too good to be true, and a little too smart for it’s own good.

The parameter was a mysterious automatic drydock station. You put your coin in the meter, and it analyzes what needs to be done, and does it. I thought it was a great premise. Aside from that, the producers wanted something very unusual. This was one of the few times that John Eaves and I both worked on concepts at the same time.

Shockwave Tabletop Diorama

In the Enterprise episode Shockwave, we were treated to a dismal vista created by Syd Dutton’s Illusion Arts. Illusion arts was responsible for many impressive matte paintings over the years on nearly all the various Trek series.

(Above) Another shot from the final show. Dan Curry asked me to create an extreme closeup section at street level so that they could comp Archer and “Future Guy” in. On the following page are reference shots of the raw Illusion Arts model Dan gave me to work from.

Enterprise VFX Emblem

Dan Curry asked me design an emblem that VFX could use on crew swag. I thought that this would have made a nifty VFX crew jacket.

Minefield!

Minefield called for Enterprise to wander into a Romulan minefield and sustain substantial damage. The first thing Herman and FX supervisior Dan Curry asked me to do was to explore what that damage might look like.

Romulan Prison – Birthright (TNG)

Romulan prison on Carraya IV.

Mike Okuda brings us some background on this fascinating miniature -

That was a secret Romulan prison compound built for “Birthright, Part I” (TNG).  Dan Curry directed that episode, and he asked us to make a model based on the sets Richard James created for that episode.  I asked Alan Kobayashi to spearhead that project, and all of us in the TNG art department lent a hand in odd moments. 

 

Art Dept Fleet Yard

 

Occasionally if a miniature needed graphic retouching, VFX would arrange to have the teamsters pick the model up and bring it to the art department. That was always a big event, beacause the ships were our idea of celebrities. They, more than anything ,seemed to embody what the show was all about… symbolic of human aspiration and ingenuity.

 

Cold Station 12 – Updated!

We discover that Dr Arik Soong (Brent Spiner) is on his way to Cold Station 12 to free some 1800 Augment embryos. Herman asked me to design the incubator\stasis globe that would hold the embryos, and the room they were stored in.

Oh, By The Way!

Oh, by the way!

Those simple words create a wave of excitement and fear in me. It makes me feel really alive! I like it!

Oh, by the way,” repeats Herman grinning from ear to ear, ”They have to do reshoots for Shockwave part two. You know the set we built on stage 8… that rubble strewn section of city? They forgot to get an establisher.” No master? “Nope!” Don’t they always start with the master? “Yup! But here’s the best part… they’ve already struck the set! So, Dougie… your mission… whether you like it or not… is to digitally reconstruct it. Dan Curry will greenscreen Archer, and future guy into it.”

I like it! Hit me, Herman! Hit me!

Herman walks off grinning. “You’re a nice man.”

Time Tunnels

A concept sketch for the temporal conduit in “Storm Front”, my nod to Irwin Allen’s “Time Tunnel” series.  Although Allen’s shows were often silly, they had some kick ass production design. When Herman gave me the beat sheet for the episode and I saw “temporal conduit”, and then I saw that Manny Coto wrote it… I knew, that Manny knew, that I knew what to do.

The Kings of Kludge

A nice example of a model built from dumpster leavings.

 

When visual effects was out of dough, they knew they could count on us to kludge something together out of found objects and dumpster leavings. Dan Curry approached Mike Okuda about us bashing together a quickie model of a section of Utopia Planitia for the Voyager episode “Lifesigns”. “It’s gonna be tiny, and on the horizon,” explained Dan, “so don’t stress over it too much.” Is he kidding?  Anthony and I put this together in two days, and had a lot of fun along the way.