I have...a project. Some of you here might have heard me mention it in passing.
For the past 20 years, I have ventured to keep a complete shiplist. When the first edition of the Encyclopedia came out in 1994, I totally revamped my process, & since then, I have worked off of 10 sheets of paper scrawled with columns of incredibly tiny numbers. My project is simple in nature if not in execution.
I am attempting to name, number, & class every ship in Starfleet, from NCC-1 to NCC-100000. That's 100,005 ships.
This is a list for my personal universe. It includes all canon designs, selected fandom classes, several of my own designs, & many that are nothing but a name.
As of this writing, I am 67.75% completed with the entry phase. Massive strides have been made in the past 18 months & at the current average rate of 500 ships a day, I expect (barring delays & complications) to be complete within 2 months or so. After that, the editing phase will take, I estimate, another 2 months or so, after which time, I plan on releasing this on the web. When finished, there will be 183 different classes of ships to work up, canon & non, ranging from pre-Federation alien member ships to the slightly post-NEM years.
Which is where you come in.
The suggestion was proposed to me that images of the ships should go with each class listing, & the more I think about ,the more it seems a good idea. However, as I said, images of some are easy to find, others not so easy, & still others non-existent. Therefore, I come to the vast membership of 2D artists out here. My intention for this post at the moment is to find out (A) if this is feasible, (B) if enough people would be interested in lending their talents to the situation, & (C)to give notice of the planned selection methodologies.
While there are images out there for many of these classes, they there is no uniformity to them. what I would be looking for is 4- or preferably 5-views orthographic images of each class with no framing embellishments (LCARS-style titles, measuring bars, artist logos, etc.) with the name & hull number of your choice form the list of ships in that class. When posted on the page, you would be given full credit for the artwork along with (if desired) a link to your personal site or email.
I wish to address what might be a sticky area for some: the use of previous material. As I stated, I have incorporated select fandom designs into my universe These include but are not limited to the Belknap & Knox classes from Starship Design, several FASA ships, a handful of hulls from the ASDB site, & many of Masao Okazaki's SFM designs. In many of these cases, the available images are too incomplete, too cluttered with framing elements, or are simply labled "incorrectly" for my universe, & would need to be redrawn. In these cases, the credit values would read something along the line of (for example) "Lancaster-class image drawn by (YOUR NAME & LINK HERE); original design created by Masao Okazaki (with included link to SFM). I will not attempt to pass off your or another's work as my own, or another's as yours.
Should there be enough interest in this to justify images for the site, then I will soon after release RFPs with appropriate information to be examined. But if there is no interest, then I won't bother with images. It is, after all, only an embellishment & not the meat. I remind you that this is not a "do it now" sort of project; there will most likely not be a need for the images for another 4 to 6 months, so please take that it consideration.
Thanks for your time, gents.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Jeez, and I thought coming up with 400-some names for Masao's UESN fleet was crazy enough!
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
Mate, there's no way you're gonna get anywhere near 183 images to those specs done in 4 months; more like 4 years! I think the best compromise is to do solid black silhouettes instead of full colour 5 view plans. Even that would be something of a chore, but I think it's your best chance of get all of those done.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
well, I've posted this over at SCN as well...& I'm not looking for anything massively huge or superdetailed....so...we'll see.
Posted by B.J. (Member # 858) on :
A) no grpahics program. B) I want it done right.
Posted by B.J. (Member # 858) on :
A) GIMP B) "If you want something done right...."
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
Why must everyone question everyhting I do lately??
Posted by Brown_supahero (Member # 83) on :
Wow, fighting procrastination and investing one time to accomplish a goal! Too bad I smoke too much weed.
Posted by B.J. (Member # 858) on :
I wasn't questioning what you're doing, merely offering suggestions for a way to accomplish it. Personally, I'd use Rev's suggestion of doing silhouettes if you want any level of consistency, not to mention getting it done within your lifetime.
Posted by bX (Member # 419) on :
Yeah, even if it were only one view per ship class, that' would still be a MASSIVE amount of work. If you wanted help coming up with a design guidelines/template/formatting document, I could maybe help out there.
You might be better off linking externally to, say, Bernd's site. Securing permission first, of course. You could do the silhouette thing and click on it for detail.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
Maybe people aren't quite getting this.
I'm not looking for one person to do it all. I'm looking for MANY people. If one person does one, another one tries 5, another 10, whatever. And it's not "this one has the Allegheny-class, so you can't do it." Anyone can do any, & I'll take the one I like the best. See.
Start small, thus the large lead time. And it might NOT be 6 months from now. It might be a year. If I can have enough people doing enough, then...yeah.
For example, bX, the stuff you did of that little scoutship I drew? If it can be polished off & put on a simple white backgorund...perhaps colored (doesn't have to be gradiated unless the artist wants that), then that would work for a class I have most likely.
A lot is interpretive, a lot is simple redraws. Scrubbing the numbers off Masao's ships & putting on mine. Things like that. I'm not looking for massive control ("The saucer should looks like this. The nacelles will be pointy & like so, blahblahblah"). My notes are pretty general in most cases & allow for artists interpretation. even most of the designs I have physical models for can be fiddled with.
Yeah, it's a challenge. But I thought that's what artists like is a challenge & a chance to play a bit.
Posted by Irishman (Member # 1188) on :
Shik,
The basic idea is awesome. I dig it!
Yet, let's say that you did get all the artists' referenced to help you out, that's a lot of different artistic styles and page layouts, shading techniques (everything from B & W line art to full-blown eyedrop-sampled-to-copy-the-color-palette-of-the-model-seen-onscreen, gradient meshes, Illustrator's wet dream, etc.
How do you plan to create a unified look for all that?
Posted by Fabrux (Member # 71) on :
In my conversations with Shik, I think he just wants things simple but effective. Masao's style of drawings are what he cited as the best example. I don't think the level of detail that usually takes the longest amount of time (say, on Reverend's Antares and some of your own works, Irishman). I think (not entirely sure) that the level of detail on my own works would be adequate (clicky).
Unified only in that everything is coloured and in the same general style with no scale bars, insignia, etc. Plain B&W line drawings are boring, hence why I drew coloured views of all those TOS Movie-era ships.
Posted by bX (Member # 419) on :
I don't think B&W drawings are boring. See, already we have an artistic disagreement.
No, I did get it that it wasn't one dude. But how many different classes are we talking about? It's a lot I think. More than 100? 200? 500? 1000? I'm just saying that even with 10 artists, there's still a lot of work because it's going to be at least X 4 (or 5) views.
I guess maybe I should say it depends on how exacting you plan to get. The more artists you have working on this, the more variation there is bound to be in the execution, the less it's going to feel like a cohesive presentation. If you're OK with that, you've definitely got a shot at pulling this off.
I maintain that having a suggested style guide might be useful. Something where you set the preferred scale (3px=1 meter, or whatever), the line-weights for shield grids vs. other parts, the profile lineweight (outline around the ship), uniform hull colors per era (if, god forbid, you're doing gradient fills) and whathaveyou. I can't speak for the others, but I suspect it might be similar for them. I have my ship-art (including your scoutcraft) broken out into different layers, so conforming that to a set style would be a relatively simple excercise. Once you knew what that style was.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
The man from the past has it mostly correct.
I'm not looking for a single design STYLE, I'm looking for a single design look. Fabby doesn't do gradients; Irishman & Rev do. It's up to the artist to decide what he feels up to. I have a low baseline of what I want: largish, enough detail where it doesn't looks bad, colo(u)r, no scale bars, no framing elements.
Now, I won't deny that a little flash might bias my opinion a bit, but a better design with no flash will be better received than a mediocre design with lots of flash. Put simply, I'm looking for Kung Fu Hustle, not The Matrix.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
BX: I admit I know very little on computer art. I still jerk-off design things manually. I do know enough to know that something like that tends to be a grey area to me, in that it almost touches on the area of artist impingement.
I mean, obviously, I don't want something done up in MS Paint, but on the other hand I don't need 927 colors, specifications on each & every bit of curve & line. I find that the best artists are the ones that have a persoanl sense of how it should look, & I want to work with that rather than constrict them to what I think it should be. Maybe that's a problem as well: too much freedom causes freezing at times.
I have absolutely no problem with it not having a unified style..just a unified look. Take for example, Rev's Antares & compare it with Jason Colbert's Istanbul, both of which are at the ASDB site. I love them both & want to use both in this project (with the applicable forms, of course), but they're very different styles representative of the creators. I want to preserve that
I wish I could offer money. All I can offer is the fatc that I think that when this hits the web, it'll be a massive draw, & that will expose the artists to more people. And maybe cookies. I can make cookies.
On a slightly more personal note, I'd like to say that I posted this both here & at SCN. I'm glad for the feedback here; there's been none there, which saddens me.
Posted by Masao (Member # 232) on :
quote:Originally posted by Shik: Why must everyone question everyhting I do lately??
Hmm, why do you say that?
I'll willing to help by outputting new versions of my own ships. I'm not going to touch anyone else's ships. Of course, if you're going to tackle a graphics-intensive job like this, you should really learn how to draw yourself. Waiting on other people is a drag.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
Ther are several factors that preclude my learning the art myself. Some are technological, most are pyschological. But rregardless.
I apprecatie your help, Masao. To be honest, I was slightly worried about your stuff.
Posted by B.J. (Member # 858) on :
A word of warning - some people don't like their designs redrawn and/or published without their express permission, and will defend them vehemently. I think the Starship Design ships fall in this category, but I can't be sure. Just don't want you to get into any more legal troubles.
Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
I'll deal.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
quote:Originally posted by Masao: I'll willing to help by outputting new versions of my own ships. I'm not going to touch anyone else's ships. Of course, if you're going to tackle a graphics-intensive job like this, you should really learn how to draw yourself. Waiting on other people is a drag.
Likewise I don't mind repackaging my old ASDB/JoAT stuff if that helps, but I'm a little busy with DKA at the mo to contribute anything more significant...and I wouldn't touch Masao's ships with a barge pole. Posted by Da_bang80 (Member # 528) on :
quote:Originally posted by Brown_supahero: Wow, fighting procrastination and investing one time to accomplish a goal! Too bad I smoke too much weed.
Yay another toner! I like the weed too. Too bad i don't have any but I ordered some online. Isn't canada awsom? Oh and plz excuz my poor spelllin. I just had my widsom teeth removed. And they game me hydromorphone or something. It's like really got me doped up now. But it's fun. just be carful about talkin about weed hear. while we're all mature enough to discuss it, and cuz charles the capps is like really cool about it, adverkatin drug use might get you byebyed. ok then.
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