Category Archives: Star Trek

100 Days, 100 Renders— Day 67

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cdcr-067-one_of_those_days_credits

As the U.S.S. Sisyphus loses power in the face of the… cube? Higher dimensional structure? Viewscreen test pattern?… Captain Baxter realizes that it’s going to be one of those days.

I thought a picture inspired by the Improvised Star Trek would be fun, and give me a chance to do something slightly off-beat. I had a brain-fart when I was setting up the image, and misaligned the cube, so it’s not quite a real Belvedere Cube. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to model a Squircle.

I have no idea why the glow textures for the model didn’t apply, prompted the unplanned energy drain on the ship. Everything looked correct in the settings, but, hey, conversions are weird.

100 Days, 100 Renders— Day 58

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cdcr-058-klingon_word_for_bait_credits

So, what is the Klingon word for “bait,” anyway?

It was overshadowed by later developments in the show, but Deep Space Nine had a bit of backstory about a history of conflict between the Cardassians and Klingons, including a “incident” in a certain nebula that lasted for 18 years.

The cloaking effect on the Birds of Prey was done with the smudge tool in Photoshop, which is probably not the best way to achieve that effect.

100 Days, 100 Renders— Day 54

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cdcr-054-end_in_dock_credits

One from the archives today. This is actually a frame from a roughed-out animation I’ve put on the shelf, an opening credits sequence for the “Seekers” novel series. This version is notably unpolished in lighting and scene setup (one thing I wanted to definitely add were TOS-style Travel Pods buzzing around, based on some unused John Eaves designs for Star Trek ’09).

100 Days, 100 Renders— Day 50

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cdcr-050-hiding_a_starship_under_water_credits

An experiment inspired by Star Trek Into Darkness, and a recent conversation where I talked about my fake water reflection trick. I think I should avoid water until I have some tools to do it in a more modern way, rather than just a procedually-textured plane and old-style CG draw-distance fog. Sometimes the old ways aren’t classic, they’re just old.

As an aside, comics artist Lucy Bellwood has started shipping handsomely printed copies of her own hundred-days project, which was the direct inspiration for all of these pictures I’ve made over the past two and a half months, generally of boats that fly. If you like the boats that don’t fly, I’d check her out.