Topic: RFI: Starship class orthos for future web-based shiplisting
Shik
Starship database: completed; History of Starfleet: done; website: probably never
Member # 343
posted
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.
-------------------- "The French have a saying: 'mise en place'—keep everything in its fucking place!"
Registered: Jun 2000
| IP: Logged
posted
Jeez, and I thought coming up with 400-some names for Masao's UESN fleet was crazy enough!
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
| IP: Logged
posted
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
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.
Registered: Jul 2002
| IP: Logged
posted
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.
Registered: Sep 2000
| IP: Logged
Shik
Starship database: completed; History of Starfleet: done; website: probably never
Member # 343
posted
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.
-------------------- "The French have a saying: 'mise en place'—keep everything in its fucking place!"
Registered: Jun 2000
| IP: Logged
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?
-------------------- This is just fun...it's not life...keep this in mind and we'll all enjoy it much more
Registered: Dec 2003
| IP: Logged
posted
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.
-------------------- I haul cardboard and cardboard accessories
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
posted
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.
Registered: Sep 2000
| IP: Logged
Printer-friendly view of this topic
