you look at the modeling for the original trilogy, and most of the vehicles are simple shapes. Fighters are shaped after letters (the TIE Fighter is known as an H-Wing in the timelines where Palpatine's coup failed). The Death Star is a sphere. Star Destroyers and snowspeeders are wedges, the Mon Cal corvettes and Cloud City are ellipsoids. A Corellian Corvette is ... an I with heavy serifs? (reaching here, I guess)
You also had simple animal shapes (AT-ATs, AT-STs, Slave One)
Even when the modellers started compounding shapes, like with the nebulon frigate and the cloud car, they stayed simple and joined the compound shapes with narrow beams so that the simple shapes were the ones that defined the design.
I found much of the modeling for the prequels was much muddier and less distinctive. The models I liked were the trade alliance blockade ships -- just toruses and spheres. The spider walkers were distinctive too, they really drew the eyes. Obi-Wan's fighter from Clones had a nice simple wedge shape. The ARC-170 is a bit busy but it's okay to me.
I thought that much of the rest of the vehicle modeling was really blobby and undistinctive, like nike swooshes glue-gunned together. The Naboo fighters and the droid fighters in Phantom Menace were the same basic shape, having much the same front-on profile. I suspect they made the naboo fighters schoolbus yellow so they'd be recognizable on the screen.
I do like that the Naboo stuff is shiny, though, a nice visual cue that we're dealing with a more genteel age, before the polishing droids were melted down into AT-ATs.
Originally shared by Jonathan Tweet Tonight, my "Lethal Damage" 13th Age campaign draws to a close. Meanwhile, the guys are work have talked me into running a couple D&D sessions for them. That was the day 13th Age was announced, and they're happy to play 13th Age instead. That will be my "Great Center" campaign, based in the imperial capital of Axis, the center of the world. It's my opportunity to explore the setting from yet another perspective.
Pre-gen from Frank Mentzer's module, The Needle , 1987. I knew this was insulting and gross when I was 14. At the time I didn't know who Frank was, since I only played AD&D. I found this module again when I was going through a box of old stuff and was surprised he wrote it, because I thought it was a pretty shitty adventure.
From Voyageurs National Park on FB: Called “Catamaran” by locals, Bert Upton is among the strangest of historical characters on area waters. He lived in a hut built over a dug-out at Squirrel Narrows. Found frozen to death in the 1930s by Kettle Falls pioneer Oliver Knox; Upton was perched lifeless in the snow just a half-mile from his home. Shunning civilization, Upton defined the word hermit. First spotted rowing his crude log raft on Namakan, no one knows how he got there. Upton’s accent implied an English heritage but any personal inquiries brought a stony silence. Some suspected him a man fleeing the law; others saw a bizarre outcast; everyone knew he was peculiar. Just five feet tall and wildly unkempt, Catamaran wore hacked-off pants and walked barefoot with a stick. Winter demanded shoes but no socks, a cast-off Mackinaw, and a trailing cap made from the leg of old underwear. He was oddly religious, and suspicious of being poisoned. Surviving on snared rabbits and fish, he ofte...
The prequels had tons of super creative and talented people working on the design and effects. It's a shame that a lot of it went to waste.
ReplyDeleteYeah, Naboo designs are great because they're so unlike everything else in Star Wars. Smooth and new and not dirty and greebley.
ReplyDeleteBased on the awesome P-61.
ReplyDeleteaviation-history.com
you look at the modeling for the original trilogy, and most of the vehicles are simple shapes. Fighters are shaped after letters (the TIE Fighter is known as an H-Wing in the timelines where Palpatine's coup failed). The Death Star is a sphere. Star Destroyers and snowspeeders are wedges, the Mon Cal corvettes and Cloud City are ellipsoids. A Corellian Corvette is ... an I with heavy serifs? (reaching here, I guess)
ReplyDeleteYou also had simple animal shapes (AT-ATs, AT-STs, Slave One)
Even when the modellers started compounding shapes, like with the nebulon frigate and the cloud car, they stayed simple and joined the compound shapes with narrow beams so that the simple shapes were the ones that defined the design.
I found much of the modeling for the prequels was much muddier and less distinctive. The models I liked were the trade alliance blockade ships -- just toruses and spheres. The spider walkers were distinctive too, they really drew the eyes. Obi-Wan's fighter from Clones had a nice simple wedge shape. The ARC-170 is a bit busy but it's okay to me.
I thought that much of the rest of the vehicle modeling was really blobby and undistinctive, like nike swooshes glue-gunned together. The Naboo fighters and the droid fighters in Phantom Menace were the same basic shape, having much the same front-on profile. I suspect they made the naboo fighters schoolbus yellow so they'd be recognizable on the screen.
I do like that the Naboo stuff is shiny, though, a nice visual cue that we're dealing with a more genteel age, before the polishing droids were melted down into AT-ATs.
The droid ships do nothing for me. I take that back, when they're walking I like the vulture droids.
ReplyDeleteI've always been partial tot he ARC-170 too. Love it.
ReplyDelete