[NCC-73515]

J.J. wanted a "new Enterprise" and that was the description he and production designer Scott Chambliss gave me — they were open to anything and wanted to see everything at that point. My concepts ranged from "extremely faithful to the original," with just material and detail update, to "complete rethink," which I don't think anybody ever really considered, but sometimes you have to go too far in order to see the right answer.
And J.J. had a very specific idea with the direction of the script and the update of the mythology and therefore how the look of a new Enterprise would fit in. So only he knew which one would be "right," that's the one he picked, and so we went with that direction and I finessed it and finished it out.
It was a huge honor of course — hugely intimidating and a lot of fun to play with and develop. Hopefully, some day I'll be able to show some of the other directions we tried — some are pretty interesting.

(The size of the new ship has been of some debate among the Star Trek fan base; according to ILM the ship is a whopping 2379.75 feet long, as contrasted with the original series Enterprise, which is about 948 feet long. Was this something that was determined up front, (and why?) and did it have any bearing on your design?)

I'm not able to comment on the scale change, I think ILM or J.J. could better address the ship scale.

http://www.round2models.com/articles/church-interview

[Kukalaka]

Ahhh man I knew it! The nacelles and the overhanging hoods definitely reminded me of the alien design from the recent War of the Worlds update. Same guy.

Also nice to see he is a huge fan of TMP ("true sci-fi which is so rare these days") and TWOK ("pretty much the perfect movie"), especially considering all the flak he gets around here.

[wade8069]

Thanks your information.

[kevin]

It's interesting that he acknowledges the range of design options that they went through in the film before choosing the changes they did.

Interesting link.

[Livingston]

Nice article! Great find NCC!

[Commodore]

Originally Posted by kevin

It's interesting that he acknowledges the range of design options that they went through in the film before choosing the changes they did.

Kinda what they went through in designing the NX-01 for ENT, although it was decided fairly early on that the shape would be more "traditional" than not:
http://forum.daz3d.com/postimages/or..._1_1963212.jpg
I'm seeing a sort of irony in this early sketch...

[Dominus of Megadeus]

" I guess my favorite kits I've ever actually built were a nice 1/48 Monogram A-10 that I detailed out pretty nicely, and I did a 1/72 scale XB-70 which was really impressive — big."

My favorite war plan is the A-10.
The warthog ain't pretty, but she sure does get the job done!

[kevin]

Originally Posted by Commodore

Kinda what they went through in designing the NX-01 for ENT, although it was decided fairly early on that the shape would be more "traditional" than not:
http://forum.daz3d.com/postimages/or..._1_1963212.jpg
I'm seeing a sort of irony in this early sketch...

Interestingly familiar concept.

It doesn't look too bad but I think there's a better sense of 'evolution' out of the design they went with for the NX-01.

That's concept is just too close to the Constitution.

[Commodore]

Originally Posted by kevin

Interestingly familiar concept.

It doesn't look too bad but I think there's a better sense of 'evolution' out of the design they went with for the NX-01.

That's concept is just too close to the Constitution.

Apparently the ENT art department was stuck on similar Constitution-like designs for quite awhile and then went to the CGI models they still had on file for inspiration as time was beginning to run short.

But I could easily have seen that early design being used for Star Trek XI though...

[Kaboom]

Very nice article. I love seeing insight into the creative process of these things.