Obsessive Weekly for Concept Art: Star Trek

So, for a couple of my classes I'll be posting some things that I've been interested in or "obsessing" about twice a week (one post for my concept art class and another for 3D modeling). In retrospect, I guess these posts should be called "Obsessive Bi-Weekly" but that would make the titles really long and who likes super long titles? Not I!

Alright, for my first two posts I decided to make it easy on myself and just post about the guilty pleasures I revealed during our little get-to-know-you session for our first day of classes.

So, I give you... Star Trek! Or, more specifically, I've been interested in the evolution of the Enterprise from The Original Series and the recently released film.

Here's the original Enterprise in all it's glory:

I'm not entirely sure if this image is original concept art for the Enterprise or not, but it's a pretty good representation of the ship.

What I've always loved about the original Enterprise is it's simplicity. As you can see from the concept image, it's just a few simple shapes put together in a logical way so as to represent some sort of object that could move through space. In addition to this, you can tell that the concept artists wanted the ship to seem somewhat aesthetically pleasing with the diagonal neck (giving it a feeling of movement and sleekness) and slightly stylized main body.

But, I don't think this 1966 design would live up to today's expectations of an attractive design.

The new, 2009 design:

Now, keeping the original design of the Enterprise in mind, I think the concept artists for the 2009 film did an excellent job of not only enhancing the positive and simple aspects of the original Enterprise but also tweaking a few features to make it a bit more pleasing to the eye. For example, both the warp engines and the main body of the ship have been given more curvature to give the ship an updated, and sleek, science-fiction feel. Also, the way the saucer, neck, and warp engines are attached appear to be more seamless rather than just stuck on the ship.

After geeking out a bit about the two ships, and looking at so many concept images, I find that analyzing these two designs could really help me as an artist to determine what's currently aesthetically pleasing to the public in terms of machine design. Well, in the sci-fi world at least!

Here's a comparison picture of the finalized designs of the two ships: