Flare Sci-Fi Forums: 3/03 STM Scanning Marathon Pt. 2: Designing the Enterprise-E

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You've gotta love Berman's response to THAT one:
"We don't want ANY Voyager connotations!"

LOL [Razz]

-MMoM

Posted by Guardian 2000 (Member # 743) on :

We love you, Mim. [Smile]

With pylons a little meatier (not so slender from the sides), I would have loved the swept-forward design from the bottom left of the third page.

I just wish the article had answered the question which has long plagued me . . . what nitwit put the glowy-blue part on the top of the nacelle, instead of the sides? From the look of things, it was either Berman or the model builders, which would save Eaves a beating from me. [Wink]

Posted by Futurama Guy (Member # 968) on :

I always thought that the Voyager was such a crackerjack ship in design texture anyway. The model was much less majestic than the Galaxy class and then a year later the Sovereign comes out and it looks like it is built in a completely different style and texture. Granted, its probably the differences from CGI to a study model but Voyager appeared like it was the end of the Ambassador, Nebula, Galaxy style texture which made it look 'cheap' compared to how sleek the Sovereign, and Akira looked.

Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :

quote:
Especially cool are all the sketches of the would-be Endeavour that I don't think we've seen before.

I've definatly seen those before but not as Endeavour sketches, until now it's been said that there was only one sketch made of the Endeavour before it was dropped. Reading the explanation I can see where the mix up was, that must have been the only Endeavour sketch that Eaves didn't relable as Enterprise, sneeky little git.

quote:
Was anyone else aware that the ship was originally to have variable-geometry warp nacelles?

Yep, it's shown in the old "Makeing of First Contact" book that was around when the movie came out. I'm glad they didn't use it, Voyager's pylons never made much sense.

Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :

Why the hell do we need 'sleek' in the Starships!?!?! They're not flying in air or fluidic space.

Look at this line by Eaves:

"I definately wanted to have a sleeker looking-looking ship like the Excelsior, I wanted it to look like it could go real fast. To me the shapes on the D, looked almost like they wouldn't be able to handle that kind of speed. So I thought in an architectural sense, the needed to be longer and a lot more streamlined."

I mean did this guy do ANY research into his design? Gah. Why do they keep using him?

"Even though it looks smaller than the Enterprise D, it's actually a longer ship."

'My cat's breath smells like cat food'

I like page 3's design. It has a nice balance between the E-D and the Voyager and includes it's own character. The final design is TOO alien from what has gone before

RE Surface textures: "I always thought the A was just beautiful. That's kind of how the E was done as well."

Yeah, except you failed miserably. I hate those litte off-colour squares here and there - if they are trying to recreate the E-refit look - they didn't succeed. If they were trying to creat the panelling of the E-D - they failed.

Nemesis speculation/spoilers:

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The saucer seperation was really good - and THAT is something they should have used in Nemesis. Would have given Riker a place to go and leaving Deanna on the bridge - and taking Beverly maybe over there. Leaving Worf to take on the Viceroy - with some better fighting through the ships - with Worf barking orders to security 'troops.' Maybe even both falling into the 'abyss'.

Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :

I for one like the work that Eaves does. Even though, speaking from a technical view, ships don't really need to be shaped in a particularly sleek way to fly in space, the shape does affect a viewer's PERCEPTION of the ship and its capabilities. Like Eaves said, the Galaxy-class doesn't LOOK like a fast ship, even though that's just a perception of the audience. Your ship's got to have some CHARACTER when you're speaking in terms of entertainment and drama. If you want the audience to believe a ship is a fast and powerful craft, then make it look like one, even if the science behind it isn't exactly spot-on.

I like the E-E a lot. I also like the Akira and most of the other ships Eaves has designed. (Not the Jemmie ships though. They never grew on me.)

To each his own, though.
-MMoM [Big Grin]

Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :

quote:
Originally posted by AndrewR:
Why the hell do we need 'sleek' in the Starships!?!?! They're not flying in air or fluidic space.

No...but there IS proabably a form of drag in warp, otherwise everything would just be a big brick. There IS even drag in space--it's not a comPLETE vacuum, y'know.

And I always preferred the design stage directly before "cleaning up" into the approved version; that is, the one show at the bottom of page 4. I prefer the blended hulls, the curves, the way the neck scoop hides a bit of the ventral saucer launcer, the folds of the secondary hull, the nacelle design, the central impulse deck & double-sided shuttle & cargo bays. Very neet.

Posted by Futurama Guy (Member # 968) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Shik:

quote:
Originally posted by AndrewR:
Why the hell do we need 'sleek' in the Starships!?!?! They're not flying in air or fluidic space.
No...but there IS proabably a form of drag in warp, otherwise everything would just be a big brick. There IS even drag in space--it's not a comPLETE vacuum, y'know.

The Borg dont seem to have a problem flying around in their bricks...

Posted by Fleet-Admiral Michael T. Colorge (Member # 144) on :

I'm sure the Borg have enough power to make sure the bricks don't hit a "wall."

Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :

Drag is irrelevant.

Posted by E. Cartman (Member # 256) on :

"There IS even drag in space--it's not a comPLETE vacuum, y'know."

That's where deflectors come in. As far as starship designs go, bricks are more sensible than pencils and discs.

Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Fleet-Admiral Michael T. Colorge:
I'm sure the Borg have enough power to make sure the bricks don't hit a "wall."

In the Borg's case, I'd guess that they've just got such unlimited(?) power that the benefits of a streamlined design are irrelevant.

Posted by Kazeite (Member # 970) on :

So, to sum John Eaves approach, he doesn't try to rationalize or extrapolate designs - he just makes up some shapes and then throws around details while trying to "pay homage" to other shapes he saw earlier and liked.
While I see some similarities to the Excelsior, I was very suprised that those weird hull armor was supposed to be 'homage' to the Enterprise-A armor.

Which is sad, because some of his work look sensible enough in early stages of work, and then proceed to become more and more weird. To provide another example, proto-Valdore visible on sketches looked even sensiblem sorta like fighter variant of Warbird, however the final version become incredibly stretched... [Frown]

Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :

Eaves' designs tend to look very much the same. Take for example his sketches for the Ent-E interiors and the NX-01 interiors. Apart from Okudagrams, they are almost identical.

The most ridiculous design feature as described in this article are the NCC-1701 triangles on the ventral saucer. Instead of thinking what they are, he has to find out afterwards that they're landing legs.

Nothing personal against Eaves, and he's probably a good designer in general. But he sure can't beat Sternbach at designing Trek ships. I mean, just compare the Ent-E article to the Prometheus article! Sternbach starts thinking about engineering and fitting into Starfleets history even before he draws a single thing. All Eaves thinks about is how to make his ships look FAST AND SLEEK!1!!!. Oh well. That's enough ranting for now. Perhaps we were just spoiled by Sternbach [Smile]

Posted by Ryan McReynolds (Member # 28) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Shik:
There IS even drag in space--it's not a comPLETE vacuum, y'know.

Reminds me of a short story I read, can't remember the title or author. A colony ship of frozen pioneers reaches some nearby star (Tau Ceti?) after centuries of travel to find that there's already a thriving human civilization that colonized the system with speedy new ships a few decades after the slowship left. The pioneers see a streamlined starship docked at a space station and ask one of the locals if it's sleek and dart-like purely for aesthetics, because a ship would have to move insanely fast and near the speed of light for aerodynamics to be a factor in near-vacuum. The local simply replied, "They're that fast." [Smile]

Posted by MrNeutron (Member # 524) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ryan McReynolds:

quote:
Originally posted by Shik:
There IS even drag in space--it's not a comPLETE vacuum, y'know.
Reminds me of a short story I read...The pioneers see a streamlined starship docked at a space station and ask one of the locals if it's sleek and dart-like purely for aesthetics, because a ship would have to move insanely fast and near the speed of light for aerodynamics to be a factor in near-vacuum. The local simply replied, "They're that fast."

The number of stray hyrdogen atoms in the interstellar medium is infinitesimal. On the other hand, at high relativistic speeds the energy released by colliding even with a dust particle is pretty extreme (I've read somewhere that hitting an object with one gram of mass at high sublight speeds would release energy on the scale of a nuclear weapon). If that's so, streamlining wouldn't help, because a hit is a hit. That's what the navigational deflectors are for...to make sure there's nothing to run into.

Posted by Vogon Poet (Member # 393) on :

I think I read a similar story, but it was quite an old one - probably Poul Anderson I think - and the crew was quite small. . .

Posted by Dax (Member # 191) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Harry:
Nothing personal against Eaves, and he's probably a good designer in general. But he sure can't beat Sternbach at designing Trek ships. I mean, just compare the Ent-E article to the Prometheus article! Sternbach starts thinking about engineering and fitting into Starfleets history even before he draws a single thing. All Eaves thinks about is how to make his ships look FAST AND SLEEK!1!!!. Oh well. That's enough ranting for now. Perhaps we were just spoiled by Sternbach

I know I'm in the minority but I personally think Eaves is a far better illustrator/designer than Sternbach. Sternbach is very, very good on the practicality side of things but I feel that his designs are excruciatingly bland. I can't help but think that Sternbach is far better suited to blueprinting than he is to actually designing.

A common complaint of Eaves is that his designs are too much alike. That's all well and good, but the same thing can easily be said of all the illustrators that have ever worked in the franchise. It's not that hard to tell which ships are designed by who.

Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :

quote:
Sternbach is far better suited to blueprinting than he is to actually designing.

Agreed. But it's just that I like blueprinting better than designing [Wink]

Posted by Phoenix (Member # 966) on :

But the Prometheus is the most gorgeous ship in the history of the universe! Anyone who can design that is a god in my opinion. [Smile]

(If only it had the right number on the hull... but we can't have everything I suppose)

Posted by Kazeite (Member # 970) on :

And Sternbach ships just make more sense to me. Eaves may be superior illustrator, but...
Sternbach design may share some common things, but Eaves designs share more than that - they share whole elements (like those familiar-looking nacelles on Romulan BoP)

Posted by Dax (Member # 191) on :

I agree that the similarity of Eaves' alien ships nacelles is a big problem but, as an example, it's not all that different to how the Galor-class looks like a backwards Vor'cha-class.

Posted by Kazeite (Member # 970) on :

Oh, yeah, I remember that someone have made a Cardassian ship from inverted Vor'cha hull [Smile]

Anyway... Out of curiosity, could someone tell me who designed Vor'cha and Galor?

Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :

Rick Sternbach

Posted by Da_bang80 (Member # 528) on :

quote:
Why the hell do we need 'sleek' in the Starships!?!?! They're not flying in air or fluidic space.

Cause Sleek Starships look way cooler.

Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Phoenix:
But the Prometheus is the most gorgeous ship in the history of the universe! Anyone who can design that is a god in my opinion.

I don't know, like most of Sternbach's ships it suffered from Stumpy Nacelle Syndrome [SUP]TM[/SUP]. Something that Eaves's ships thankfully lack.

Posted by Dr. Phlox (Member # 878) on :

But Eaves' ships all suffer from Pointlessly Pointy Nacelle Syndrome. At the unvealing of another of his designs children around the world are heard crying "mummy, why does that ship have a pointy thing?"