Sandi: 16 teams have been working day and night on the concept art for their spaceship,
but will their creations be enough to impress the judges?
The competition is about to get very real on The Next Great Starship.
Hi. I'm Sandi Gardiner, and we're here in Austin, Texas,
which is home to one of Cloud Imperium's main development studios.
Austin, Texas is also home to some of our judges. Let's meet them again.
Mark Skelton.
Mark: I am Mark Skelton.
I am the art director here in the Austin CIG office, and I'm an amazing dresser, obviously.
Chris S: Style guru extraordinaire.
Mark: Still style guru.
Sandi: You lost the tag. Mark: I think I'm going to fly away here...
Chris R: Yeah, where is the tag?
Sandi: Yeah, where is that tag? Mark: Maybe I should wear them up like this...
The tag is gone.
Chris R: I think the tag was actually taking way too much screen presence away from you...
Mark: I think it was too. I think it was attacking my neck, is what was happening.
It was going to attach itself.
Chris R: So, I'm Chris Roberts, the project director and head of Cloud Imperium Games.
I don't live in Austin anymore, but I used to,
and it's actually where I created Wing Commander a long time ago, at a company called Origin,
and then later on started another company called Digital Anvil, where we did Freelancer.
It's a great town, has a huge amount of talent,
which is one of the reasons why we have one of our major development studios here,
and a bunch of really talented folks, of which some of them I worked with before.
Chris Olivia worked with me on Wing Commander and at Digital Anvil. So Austin's great. On to you, Chris.
Chris S: I'm Chris Smith. I'm the lead ship modeller, and I'm based here in Austin, as well.
Been living here for five years and I love it here.
Chris O: I'm Chris Olivia, and I'm Chief Visual Officer of Cloud Imperium Games. I live in Austin,
and like Chris said I worked with Chris at Origin way back in the day and also Digital Anvil here in Austin.
Sandi: And for the very keen eye, this is not Sean Tracy.
You would've seen David Hobbins on the last episode, showing off the Mustang,
and he is here with us to help judge the concept phase of this competition.
He has worked on a lot of world class films, haven't you David?
David: Yeah, before Cloud Imperium I worked at Lucasfilm,
and most recently the movie Flight and the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy,
but super happy to be here, in the Santa Monica studio.
And, I get to design spaceships everyday, so...
Chris R: Yea, it's cool. We're happy to have you.
We all love the work that you did on the Mustang,
and there's some other stuff that you've done that everyone hasn't seen yet,
but that's also pretty awesome stuff.
Chris S: Amazing stuff.
Sandi: And now the competition is just getting started,
because we have 16 teams vying to get their starship in the upcoming space epic Star Citizen.
And, what else do we have for them?
Mark: Some crazy swag.
Cintiqs... Oh my god, just a ton of stuff.
Chris R: The Maingear rigs, which I don't know if we've shown yet,
but each one's themed for each one of the ship manufacturers.
So we have a Drake one and an RSI one, an Aegis one and an Anvil one... a MISC one.
Mark: If nobody wins, I'm stealing them all.
I'm taking them for myself. Nobody wins!
Sandi: What about time with you, Mark? C'mon.
Mark: Yeah, and they get to touch my shirt, maybe.
Chris O: They should get the shirt.
Mark: If they want to give up their Cintiq, maybe I'll even give them the shirt.
Chris S: Even trade.
Chris R: And there's the Autodesk Creation Suite.
That's a pretty significant package.
I think they're like $8000 or $9000 retail, and everyone in the team gets one of those each.
Chris O: It's all the stuff that we use at work, so...
Mark: Plus the cash prizes, right? I mean, geez.
Sandi: Cash prizes, yeah. There's three cash prizes.
Mark: It's incredible. Chris R: We've had some very generous sponsors that are helping us do the show.
There's some great stuff for people to get. It's awesome.
Sandi: So, we're in the concept phase, which is phase 1 of this competition.
And Chris, do you want to talk about that?
Chris R: Yeah, sure.
The concept stage for me is one of the most important stages of pretty much any art development,
especially something as involved as a spaceship that we would have in Star Citizen,
because it's really where you start to figure out the look,
but also it's not just the form but also the function you do a lot in the concept.
You're trying to figure out where I'm going to place the turrets, where the engine's going to be,
and so even though you don't fully model it, you have to start to think about -
where would the pilot climb into his cockpit or where would the cargo be loaded,
or say in the case of the gunship that we're doing,
it's meant to be able to carry some troops - where could they unload.
For me, it's really important to execute concept well because that sets the tone for the rest of...
The modeling is very involved, and the texturing and obviously animation,
and that all brings it to actual life, but without the concept as your blueprint...
The concept really, like... If you think about it in film terms, it's like the concept is the script.
You can't have a good movie without a good script.
I mean, yes, you need actors, sets... All those things need to work and they'll always be done,
but without a really good script, everything else doesn't work.
And the concept is basically that version when you are creating art,
especially something as complicated as a spaceship...
Chris O: You'd say concept is like a two-tier thing where you're trying to sell an overall look and feel,
and get a sort of an emotional reaction of the ship,
and then you want to be able to call out specific areas to where you know it -
can be built in 3D accurately.
It's trying to communicate a few different things, and it's not easy to do all that in one image.
Except he can do it.
Chris R: But even when David was doing the Mustang, which everyone saw last episode,
you could see there was a couple of different tries, and you say this one looks a bit too -
the engines are too big, it looks too racery, let's move it to this.
Chris O: It's an evolutionary...
Chris R: And that's what you do in the concept stages, because you can explore things quickly,
and like Chris says, there's an emotional reaction that you'll have.
Like, you've got an idea - someone says "gunship" and you think of something.
If the picture on the page evokes that feeling to you, then you're on the right track,
and then, like Chris says, the next stage is...
You have to work out some of the details, because you want to work out the details of, like,
how you get into things or where the engines are, or whatever, before you actually start modeling it,
because modeling takes a long time.
Sandi: Everybody remembers the specs, right, for the mercenary gunship?
David: Can you repeat them for us real quick?
Sandi: Yes, let me just recite them for you.
Chris R: So, we gave all 16 teams the same sort of bid from the UEE,
which was very specific in terms of engines and turrets, and functionality.
One thing we left open was what the manufacturer was going to be,
to allow them to add a little creative inspiration.
They could decide they want to make it an RSI gun or they want to make it an Anvil Aerospace gunship,
and then also hopefully infuse some of the design elements we've seen from those manufacturers -
in our other ships into their gunship design, which I think would be really great.
But let's see how it goes.
Sandi: Alright, guys, so here's how it works.
Today we're going to see six teams, but only four can go through.
So you're going to be voting, and two aren't going to make it.
So there's a lot at stake. Are you guys ready to see the videos?
Chris R: Yep! Chris S: Let's do it. Mark: Can't wait.
Sandi: Let's roll the first one.
Chris R: Everyone's going: "too much talking from them people on the couches..."
3Dingo: For us the mercenary gunship is a ship that covers different roles.
It is at the forefront to give infantry support.
It must be robust but also livable with the great firepower.
This ship generally has low maneuverability, but the military level will follow the general linear attacks.
Let's say that our ship is a part of the third phase.
We're there to bombard the enemy infantry to cover the allied infantry with landings.
Following that, we created the interior to highlight the multi-functionality of this ship.
The main goal was to create a ship that does not give the idea of speed, but of strength.
Sandi: Chris Olivia, do you want to kick that off?
Chris O: Me?
Sandi: Yeah, you.
Chris O: I liked the feel, and the silhouette was really cool.
I thought that profile in the top-down looked really nice.
Beefy, powerful.
He explored a lot of different things, as far as the interior, in a lot of detail.
He had a lot of concept that was very helpful.
I think the front part of the cockpit was a little bit boring and can use some work.
But overall - I liked it. I mean it's cool.
Sandi: David, do you want to jump in there?
David: Well, I thought it was interesting.
I do feel like I would want to come in and tweak some of the proportions,
especially in the top view I found that it felt directionless.
It could be either going backwards or forwards and it was completely symmetrical.
I think I would want to make one of those wing frames smaller versus the other.
And the same thing in the side profile. I found that it was a little even,
and so I might want to distribute the mass around to make it a little more dynamic.
The only other thing I would mention would be the connection points between the major components.
I think I might want to spend some more time on that,
and make sure that each of the parts are informing each other and working with each other.
It felt a little bolted together.
Chris S: I like the front part, actually.
The language of the wing and the front part, and the rear felt a little off for me.
Mark: Detached, yeah.
Chris S: I think, yeah, that's what you meant -
like that middle connection was maybe a little too fragile looking or something.
I do like the detail that they put in. Sort of, where the thrusters go, the pilots, and the interior design.
There was some thought put into that, which I liked.
But I thought, too, what you were saying, all the appendages were going in all kinds of different ways.
Like those back wings...
David: Yeah, it's what's interesting about it.
Chris S: Yeah, but... You know, well...
Chris O: You're wrong. Mark: You're wrong!
David: I think that's interesting. I just think that one of those needs to serve the other. One needs to be...
Chris S: Yeah, those wings that kind of were on the sides - I like those.
I like that. But the whole rear part didn't gel with me, with the front.
Chris O: So did you feel it was just all too much of the same?
David: No. In particular from the top silhouette,
I felt it was two arrows that were pointing in either direction.
Chris R: I didn't love it... I liked what those guys did with their gun.
It didn't really do much for me.
I like the fact that they were thinking out where things would go and all the rest of the stuff,
but in terms of shape and silhouette - ehh, it was kind of there.
Then also the rendering style of the concept art wasn't...
Chris S: Yeah, it was a bit juvenile.
Chris R: Like, I'd prefer a more sophisticated photorealistic style.
This felt more, I don't know, cartoony, graphic novelly style for me.
But I don't know. What did you think, Mark?
Mark: I could see the marine animal vibe... Kind of felt like a manatee to me.
It felt like a sea cow. I shall name it the sea cow.
The thing about it was... I think if you're going to go that spikey with the silhouette,
that honestly your rendering style has got to calm down in the interior bits, because it was way...
There was just too much detail to look at all at once. I mean, I liked the...
Chris R: Is this your frequency tip?
Mark: Yes. Dammit. I say this every time, but if you're going to crazy frequency like that,
then either smooth out the silhouette and concentrate on frequency inside the object,
or if you're going to go that detailed spikey with the silhouette,
then it would push the concept better if you just calm down the interior a little bit to give your eye a rest.
Because it's got plenty to look at.
Chris O: What do you mean "interior"? Like the interior of the silhouette?
Mark: The interior of the silhouette of the ship.
It's not bad.
I agree with David that it feels like the front part is kind of separated; it doesn't feel like it flows.
There needs to be more pieces that flow into each other better.
David: I think also the illustrative style delineating all the panels is not helping.
Like you said, the silhouette is already dynamic. It's going to move the eye around.
But then as you go inside, you go to move from the front to the back,
then you have all these panels that blocking eye movement.
Chris R: When they were in - I don't know what 3D application, I didn't see it,
but when they had the simple silhouette in the 3D application,
that looked better to me than the 2D concept rendering.
Chris O: That's where you can blow it with just too much of a cartoony style in the concept,
or calling out too many details.
Chris S: In the interior?
Chris O: Yeah, the interior.
Chris R: For our game. In some other stuff that could work, but for the style we're going for -
we're going for a very photorealistic style,
and so that's partly important to have it in the concept stage, or else,
when you get down to the model stage, the model feels a bit cartoony.
Sandi: Mixed reviews on this one. Let's roll the next one.
EPhalanx: Hey, guys. EPhalanx here with team Tri-Tri.
This is our entry for The Next Great Starship.
We started out with like four or five concepts and narrowed it down.
We really were thinking on this one, at first, it was a heavy fighter look, a little bit, outside the gunship.
Then we moved on to this one, which we thought had more of that aggressive stance.
And also made some thrusters we thought we'd use.
More sketching of the concept just to give us a better look from different angles.
And then some thruster work just showing you how the wings articulate with the thrusters.
That was going to be important considering the gimbaled thrusters that were outlined in the concept.
Then we moved on to a little block-out phase to give us a better thought on the geometry,
and moved in to some internal layouts.
This showed you just how things are laid out inside of the ship, with the turrets and stairs.
As you can see, the design has been a little more fleshed out this time around.
The paint-over has been added to, giving you more of a better look and feel of the ship overall.
Sandi: Mark, do you want to kick this one off?
Mark: That one was pretty awesome. I like that one.
I like the silhouette, how it has kind of an aggressive stance.
It almost looks like a gorilla flexing, silverback kind of feel to it. I dig that.
The details - very nice.
Again, I like the way... Like we were talking earlier about flow.
That's a good example of how you can have a lot of detail on the ship but they flow nicely together,
so you're not breaking your eye from going across the ship. I think there was a lot of nice detail in there.
And overall, I think it's a really strong design.
Sandi: Chris, what did you think?
Chris S: Yeah. The quality of the concept was better on this one,
so it already comes across better in that way.
I like the shape. Actually, that stance reminded me of the Vanduul ship.
That kind of has a cockpit in the middle with those two arms sticking out.
It did look powerful and heavy. I quite like the design, I agree with Chris.
Maybe the rear thrusters... We'd have to look at it some more, maybe in another iteration,
and see where the other maneuvering thrusters are.
There was a couple of detail specs that were maybe not included in that.
But overall, the art style, I thought, was pretty good.
Sandi: Chris?
Chris O: It was cool.
Sandi: That's it?
Chris O: I generally agree with everybody.
I do like the front arm parts.
Chris R: Everyone likes that except for me.
I think it may be just because it reminds me way too much of the old Wing Commander Dralthi stuff...
Chris O: It might take away from the fact that it feels less powerful thrust wise,
because it's putting all the focus on the front.
Mark: That's what's making it feel heavier.
Like you're saying, it's kind of front heavy, and that's because your eye just goes straight to those wings...
Chris S: Yeah, it feels like a bulldog.
It's got the tail end diminished and the front exaggerated...
Chris O: Gorilla, I thought you said...?
Mark: Yeah. Silverback.
Chris S: Silverback, yeah.
Chris O: It was nice. The rendering style was better.
I think in the design phase a lot of stuff doesn't need to be photoreal right off the bat,
because you're still exploring pieces and shapes...
Chris R: But I like, like... You could see when he went...
In the video, they go over the process, you could actually see what the concept process is.
They drew some stuff out, then they did a simple 3D block-out, then they did paint-overs on it.
That was actually quite nice, because that was showing what you normally do in that process.
David: The blue color erase pencil iterations and dissolving surfaces...
Chris O: And you should reference, which is key to bring it in the real world.
But yeah, overall that was cool.
Sandi: Alright, what did you think, David?
David: I really like this one. I thought it was fantastic presentation. Pretty professional all around.
I like the arms, too.
Chris R: I give up. I'm in a minority.
David: But I will say this: I do think the rear thruster pods, the ones that are gimbaled and articulate,
I feel like they weren't really long enough to balance the length of the front part.
And I think that if you were to just figure out a way to lengthen them...
Sandi: So Chris, what did you think?
Chris R: I really liked it. I thought the rendering style was really good.
I also liked the way that you could see the process of the concept evolution.
A lot of it was the initial sketching, then a block out in 3D, then doing paint overs.
That's very much what you tend to do on this kind of stuff.
I'm not so sure I was in love with the two big front wings.
It felt a little too front heavy for me, but the rest of it I quite liked.
But I thought in general it was cool.
Like I said the style was more functional and slightly more detailed and photorealistic for me, so it worked better.
I think we forgot to tell everyone that the need to pick a manufacturer, but for me this one felt very Drake-like to me.
The turret on the top felt like the Cutlass, so perhaps is a Drake submission for the gunship bid.
But yeah, I thought it looks really great. It would be nice to see what sort of changes and tweaks they make.
Sandi: Alright, well generally well liked. Let's roll the next one.
Fuzzy_Modem: Greetings Citizens, Fuzzy Modem here, passed the first gauntlet,
and onto the concept phase of The Next Great Starship competition.
For this design, I'm imagining that it's a used ship. You're buying it from these three mercenaries.
There's the captain, he's an alcoholic vet who has a grudge against pirates.
There's a crazy guy who couldn't get into the military because he couldn't get past the psych evaluation.
And then there's the technician who got kicked out of the military for
hacking into his drill instructor's file and changing his gender.
So these guys have been living and working and sleeping and sweating and eating on this ship for years.
When something broke, they patched over it or jerry rigged a work around.
Now they're looking to get a bigger ship and add some more crew.
So you can get this ship at a good price if you accept that it's kind of a fixer upper and you're buying it as is.
For the design itself, I took inspiration from a sword and shield.
It's an asymmetrical design with a big plate of armor and two turrets on one side.
Because it's an asymmetrical design, I'm working on visual balance as well as center of mass.
I'm also trying to position thrusters for improved roll speed as well as VTOL capability while in atmosphere.
So it would fly more like a helicopter than a jet.
Sandi: Alright David, you want to kick this one off?
David: Well, I really liked the colorful back-story, and actually the design story.
Starting with the shield and sword concept, then trying to bring that through into the design.
Also his thoughtfulness when it came to function and utility of the vehicle.
I liked the second design better, I felt it was a little more unified.
For me what's jumping out as a negative is really the surfacing, the form language is a little too rectilinear.
I get that it may speak to survivability and being robust, but that said,
I feel like parts need to be integrated a little more, a little more designed.
The large bolts were really speaking to an earlier construction period that doesn't fit into
this universe and is also throwing the scale off for me.
So I would refine the surfaces, but ultimately I think he's balancing the asymmetric design pretty well.
Especially in the second one.
Sandi: Alright, Chris, what do you think.
Chris O: Yeah, I uh... Pretty much everything David said.
[Laughing]
Chris O: It was a great build up.
Sandi: You guys hug a little bit, it's like love.
[Laughing]
What David said.
Mark: Copying off his paper are we?
Chris O: The back-story was awesome.
It was a nice build up, but then the first version was very ugly, but not in a good way.
He made some big improvements with the second version,
but there's a lot of little pieces all over the place that just seemed tacked on, you didn't know what they were for.
Obviously the bolts and the scale was a huge issue, they're just all over the place, too big.
And the fact that he was presenting it with a lot of black shadow everywhere,
you couldn't really get a sense of overall form.
I think he needs to display and show it on a nicer render or a few different views at least.
It was an interesting concept, the way he was describing the shield on one side and the weapon on the other.
I thought it just needs to be executed better, you know, taken a little further, try some different things.
Sandi: Chris, are you going to copy off of Chris and David, or have you got some of your own thoughts?
Chris R: [Laughs] I have no thoughts of my own.
Chris S: [Laughs] I mean yeah, I agree with some of the stuff that they said obviously.
The one thing I missed was the thruster placements.
It was not very fleshed out, and some of the interior crew design stuff was not there.
Just a lot of the hardware stuff wasn't really fully rendered out.
The first design, I didn't really like that much.
The weapon was bubbly looking and the surface was lacking.
David: It also looked like the gun pod, towards the narrow end of the wing--
Chris S: Very fragile.
David: Yeah, like it would snap right off.
Chris S: So yeah, the second design is definitely better, more cohesive, and a little bit more tougher looking.
I agree the surfacing could use some work.
Even though he describes it's supposed to be patched together, you can do that in a better way.
It was just not rendered very well I thought. And presentation is a big thing, so it carries a lot.
Sandi: Mark, presentation?
Mark: Yeah, the presentation for me wasn't super great.
It felt because the bolts were so big, it made it feel super small. So it felt like a matchbox car or something.
It was hard to tell what was what. Like where are the thrusters, where does the pilot sit, where are the...
Like it looked like a bunch of random boxes on a ruler or something, with a little weight on the end of it.
It didn't flow very well as far as to tell me, visually, what I'm looking at, and that kind of ruined it for me.
Sandi: Chris Roberts?
Chris R: The story was great, maybe we should talk to him about getting on the writing team.
It felt like a very Serenity/Firefly background story.
But generally I sort of agree on a couple of things.
One, it does feel like a horizontal B-Wing from Star Wars, that's the ship that's the tall vertical one.
And the second design I definitely liked a lot better than the first design.
But even on the second design, I would look at that and go "ok, well how are the thrusters placed?"
Because he was talking about how you can roll to put the shield in front of your attacker,
but are the attackers coming from the side? Are they coming from the front?
It felt to me like that whole concept sounded really great in the pitch,
but I was looking at the ship wondering how it's really going to do that.
Where are the thrusters that would allow it to roll, where are the thrusters that would allow it to yaw and pitch.
As far as the manned turrets, they didn't look very...
Like how do you get into those how do you sit in them? It's hard to get a sense of scale.
Chris S: Sort of stuck on there.
Chris R: Partly because probably, talking about the rivets and the bolts.
So yeah, I would have liked to see more angles of it, not just that.
It would have been better to go to the concept and do a block out,
then render some different versions of that and do paint overs, and get some sense of scale like Chris is suggesting,
with like a human figure in there. How do you get inside the ship? How does it land?
All those things have to be thought out before you go to the modeling stage.
I think maybe he's stronger on the 3D modeling side, because he's a one man show,
so maybe he's stronger on modeling than concept. But those are all things I would like to see answered.
I like the idea and the concept of the shield and the sword, so that all sounded great.
It's just looking at the ship, I wasn't saying "I want to own that spaceship."
And really, that's why we're designing it. We're designing a spaceship that everyone out there in Star Citizen
will go "I want to have that sitting in my hangar," and I'm looking at that thinking it's not doing it for me unfortunately.
Sandi: Ok, well, people seem to like the second version, but still quite a few questions unanswered.
Let's roll the next one.
Jan: This is 1Bit Amoeba, and I show you my concept for the mercenary gunship.
The first thing I did was to think about where to place the turrets on the ship.
I decided to put two on the top and one on the bottom in the front.
This way we have a very good coverage and nearly no dead spots around the ship.
In addition to that, we have some areas which are covered by two or all three turrets.
The green area here is where two turrets cover, and the red one is where all three turrets can shoot at the target.
Then I got the shape which I really like, this one.
The interior, I made a rough layout with the main areas.
For example, the crew area and the cargo hold.
Here you can see the ship again from the side view, top view, and the front.
And this is how it would look like while landing.
And another one while in space.
Thanks for watching.
Sandi: Alright, Chris Smith, what did you think of that one?
Chris S: So I actually like this one quit a bit, uh...
Chris R: That's surprising to you?
[Laughing]
Chris S: No, I mean I thought he had some good iterations.
I liked the idea of the coverage of the turrets, that was kind of cool.
And he thought about weaponizing it and making it powerful that way.
The first iteration, he went through a couple and I liked it better as it went on, when it went a little wider with the wings.
It was a cool design, the one thing I would say critique wise would be, animations would help.
You know, some preview animations on the thrusters. It was hard to tell how they would work.
The whole pitch and yaw thing, how it would actually work in space.
I liked the interior, he pulled out the interiors and had specific areas, I liked that.
I didn't like, from the top view, for a design standpoint had a weird snake-like cockpit with a head.
I probably would adjust that a little bit because it makes it look a little fragile.
In that area it's just this long, skinny neck, with the cockpit on the end.
But over all everything else was pretty solid.
Sandi: Chris, do you agree?
Chris O: It's interesting the way that it over all feels like a very flat shape,
except they have the cockpit, fuselage area more of a skinny vertical.
It needs support structures holding that there in place and it would feel a bit more powerful.
I think in the next iteration, use the paint overs to push it a little further.
But the fact that he was able to achieve something really nice with just basic flat shading and very angular shapes,
it was very well done, done in a very nice way.
It reminded me a little bit of Ryan Church.
Chris S: Like a little stealthy.
Chris O: Very stealth, the side view, at first I was like, "Oh, it's very simple" from the profile,
but it is a nice, clean, profile silhouette.
The front view head on looked a little weird and sort of messy. I wasn't sure why, but over all it's nice and clean.
Chris S: Sort of like a wedge.
Chris O: Yeah, yeah.
Chris S: I like that kind of wide shape.
Chris O: No. Chris S: Yeah.
Sandi: David, what did you think?
David: I like this design a lot, I think it has a lot of potential, I like the tear-dropped delta wing,
but then he cut into it and extruded the cockpit section from that. I think it creates a pretty sophisticated form.
That said, when it comes to some of the cockpit and volume break up of the cannons and the front cockpit,
it seemed to be lacking in sophistication.
So if I were him, I would go back and bring those things up to the level of sophistication of the main shape.
The only other critique I would have would be when it was landed,
It wasn't quite as sexy looking as it was in flight mode.
Mark: Yeah, I agree. I think what it was is the verticallity of the thrusters kind of ruined the lines of the ship.
Chris S: Is that a word?
Chris R: Add that to "frequency," verticallity.
Mark: [Moving hands up and down] Verticality, [Hands side to side] frequency, [Hands forward] thrusters, you know.
It kind of ruined the lines when it was sitting, and that bothered me too.
Chris R: You mean when they were deployed into VTOL position?
Mark: VTOL, yeah.
Chris R: Vertical Take Off and Landing.
Mark: That's right, that's what that stands for.
[Laughing]
Mark: So, the other thing, yes, the neck is annoying because it's so fragile.
I think if you were to have, maybe from the top down, if you had some supports that came out and made it porous,
it might make it look a little more reinforced.
Chris R: I don't think it needs to be quite as long and deep. I mean what's the benefit of that?
Chris O: I didn't see the reason why there was that gap. David: Yeah.
Chris R: I mean usually there should be some function.
Chris S: Just fill it in.
Chris R: It had a bit of of--
Chris S: Wide flat snake?
Chris R: Retaliator kind of vibe to me, like I would say it could be an Aegis ship or...
Chris S: Even Drake.
Chris R: I'll say for me this is my favorite one of the ones I've seen so far, so, like Chris said,
I really like the idea of gun turret placement. If you're making a gunship, that's the first thing you should think about.
So that was really good. I actually, for a couple of the earlier iteration, one that was sort of like the Millennium Falcon.
That had the two turrets actually attached on the side, so I like the final design a lot.
I agree on the neck, it sort of feels like it's a bit too long, so I would have it shorter and make some reason.
Some detail could be in there, it could be cool.
I actually thought it was cool when it was landing with the thrusters down in the VTOL position.
So that may just be me verses other people's opinions on that.
Mark: Maybe a little smaller.
Chris R: Like Chris said, I would like again to make sure the thrusters could move and apply the directions.
It looked like he placed them in generally the right areas, so I really liked it.
Chris S: I think for the second iteration, maybe the guys can include little preview animations on those things.
Really simple key-framing block out animations on those things would help a lot.
David: Basically if you have a great idea, you have to show it. You can't just tell us about it.
It has to be communicated in an illustration or an animation.
Sandi: Well positive reviews for that one, but we're not done yet. Here we go with the next video.
Scott: Hello Star Citizen Community. Our design process involves the members of team catapult getting together,
sitting down, throwing ideas onto a sketch pad, talking about various features we wanted.
We wanted the mission profile to be able to involve things such as land marines on a planet's surface,
and function like an armored truck in space.
As those discussions came to a head, we decided we wanted to go with something that was
aerodynamically sleek, and avoided the sci-fi pitfall that most "dropships" use of the "flying brick."
We came up with the idea to use retractable wings that could help with aerodynamic control going into
the atmosphere and also be pulled in during combat to provide a lower profile target.
Now I present to you: Anvil Aerospace's Albatross, the mercenary gunship from team Catapult.
Then what we did is we printed off some renders that we could then sketch on in paper so we could share our ideas.
As we go forward, we'll be adding more and more details to the overall design.
As you can see with this image here, we're in our closed mode, and this would be for interstellar travel,
providing a smaller target and keeping sensitive parts of the wing out of the way.
And this is again the top down view of it opened up.
So you can see that when they're coming into an atmosphere the pilot would pull up,
deploy the wings, and that would provide a huge breaking surface.
So the engines we wanted to go with something similar to how the F-35 Lockheed Martin works where the engine can
turn 90 degrees, and in our case we could rotate the engine so you can get some more range so they act as thrusters.
And this is its landed view. As you can see here, we've got the cockpit access as well as the missile racks deployed.
This is an interior cross-section of our ship.
We wanted to go with a two level split design. It would be very compressed and compact.
This is Scott from team Catapult signing off, see you in the 'verse.
Sandi: Chris O, what did you think?
Chris O: I can't really comment on it, 'cause it just, it's... Everything is so not finished and amateurish.
So I wasn't happy... Moving on.
Sandi: Ok.
[Laughing]
Mark: That's very diplomatic of you.
Sandi: Ok, David Hobbins.
David: I feel like there's nothing really pulling me into this design. There's nothing , it's...
Mark: Come on.
Chris S: Just say it.
[Laughing]
David: I feel like the overall shape could be cool, could be workable, it's interesting to see the thought going into
some function, utility, layout of the interior.
That said, a lot of the sketching over the 3D model renderings was...
Chris S: Drawn by a three year-old?
David: Was lacking.
[Laughing]
David: So I would go back, continue to work that 3D block in, maybe try to get a little more visual interest going there,
and then take another pass at the surfacing and internal graphics of the ship.
Chris O:I think it took away from it how loose the sketching was, even if they had used a
ruler to do some of the lines it would have helped. Sorry, I don't mean to keep...
Chris S:There was a lot of problems with that concept, first of all the sketches were very
rudimentary and amateurish. Like David was saying, there was no confidence in the line art
even though we are making 3D assets it helps to be able to draw and present things, right?
You need to be able to present things correctly, and there was his problem. Even though he put a lot
of thought into things where thruster placements were and loading, docking collars, stuff like that
it was just hard to tell what was going on because the drawings were not very good at all.
The 3D shape maybe had some promise, but overall I thought this was pretty weak.
Sandi:Chris Roberts?
Chris R:Hmm. Well I will remind everyone that I voted for AEM over team Catapult ....CS:I did too...
Chris did too, because I thought the AEM design was much more interesting.
Mark:So the rest of us are fired? (laughter)
Chris R:I thought team Catapult's design was not particularly inspiring, therefore I'm kind of
angry about that, then angry about seeing a concept design that feels like it was "phoned in" or
done over a very short period of time.
Chris O:There's no reason to be angry, this is all for fun...
Chris R:And not presented well? No! because I feel like you should take it seriously, you got
this far right? There is a bunch of people that wanted to get this far, that worked really hard to get
this far, there were some on the cusp, that you could flip a coin, we even had some people that,
after we had all voted, emailed asking why they never even made the cut into the 24?
Well it turned out that they were number 26 or number 25, and they were literally, when we were making
our picks they had 4 of us saying they would be a good one to put in, but they just ended up just missing
the cut, so I feel like, if you get to this stage you can't phone it in, and this is absolutely phoning it in.
Maybe they are not great on 2D work, not great on concept, because when we saw Catapult
it was mostly more sort of 3D work that we saw, but if you are going to do that, do what 1bitAmoeba did
which was concepting in 3D and block it out. The little bit of 3D blockout in that was the best thing about it
The detail and line work on top was not going to help. There is no way it's going to have any chance
of going through. I can promise you that, we the ten to go through from the 16, and they are not
going to make the ten, that's just not going to happen ...Sandi:Twelve... or the 12, whatever it will be
It's 10 we vote for and the community saves 2. The point is that it feels like it was phoned in and
that kind of bugs me. If you get this far, why drop the ball.
Chris O:Can we get them on the phone right now? (laughs)
Chris R:I would! If someone was working for me and did that I would chew them out.
I'm not happy, and I'm not voting for them.
Chris O:You can curse it you want to. (laughs) Chris S: they will bleep it out.
Sandi:Mark Skelton?
Mark:I loved it. (laughter) I thought it was fantastic for a second grader.
Well, it's got a Romulan Bird of Prey feel, I will say that for the block out, but how can you argue
with the implementation. It's not good.
Chris R:They have got the talent, that's why I'm sort of angry, you got talent, deliver it!
Mark:They just ruined their chance. They ruined the chance, and that's a bummer because
you have to take this seriously, there's a lot at stake here. We take everything we do here seriously
we have the top people in the world working on this, and there's hundreds of people who would
die for this chance. Chris S:Yeah, they wasted it for someone else.
Mark:They wasted it. That's a bummer.
Sandi:Right. Here's the last video of the day.
Greetings once again fellow citizens, this it Skyguard Fabrications, and I'm honored and excited to
have been selected to compete in this competition.
I spent a lot of time doing nothing but silhouettes, I did a LOT of them.
I was looking for a silhouette that resonated with me, and the challenge was to come up with an
overall design that would fit in with the current military ships, but that could also be identified at a glance
as an independant, unique design.
I'm proud to present the Guardian AX-1. The core of my design centred around the idea of
being able to deploy Marines into combat as quickly and safely as possible.
You'll notice that the mercenary gunship has two large hatches on either side with built-in rapelling systems
This is to allow Marines to deploy from the ship without forcing the ship to land.
Because of where the turrets are placed, the main class 4 and one class 5 turrets are able
to provide ground support to the Marines either during deployment or throughout the ground operation
It would be very difficult to sneak up on this ship. You have almost no location around this ship that is not
possible for this mercenary ship cannot shoot back at you.
Sandi:Alright. Mark, silhouettes? Frequencies?
Mark:Silhouette, silhouette, silhouette. Awsome. I loved the silhouettes that he explored
a lot of those were great, he could have used quite a few of those. I think the one he picked was good
I would say that, there was a lot like, the top is very clean, and ah, the underside has a lot of
detail in it, and because of all that detail and the bulkiness of the bottom, that the wings felt
a little small. A big fat bird with little wings. When they fold out they look better, but he needs,
for me personally, to re-think the wings a little bit and make them proportionate.
I realise that it's a spaceship, and wings don't really matter in space, but just weighting-wise....
Chris R:The specs say it also has to be capable of atmospheric flight.
Chris O:See those guys rapelling out?
Mark:Yeah, I know, If you have enough thruster then you can have a UFO saucer if you want,
but for me the wings felt too small to handle this big ship. I do like the underbelly, I like the way the
detail works. I like that the top in clean, kinda like a turtle from the top? You don't realise what you
are dealing with. Chris O:What about the wings?
Mark:(sigh)I think I'm going to kick you in the face about the wings.
Sandi:What do you think about the wings Chris?
Chris O:Oh, you're going to me now?
Mark:YEAH! What do YOU think about the wings Chris?
Chris O:Well, I completely agree, for the most part, with Mr. Skelton. Mark:(whisper) What?
Chris R:Even on the wings?
Chris O:About everything. Mark:But the WINGS though! We are talking about WINGS!
Chris S:He always disagree with me...
Chris O:No, overall I felt it was too sleek and "Fightery" looking actually. I think there
could be something done differently with the wings without just, sort of, standard, swept back, wings
I think even though the rendering style was a bit "cartoony" I think it would translate into
"real world" pretty nicely, and there was a lot of thought put into the interior and what was
going on. Pretty good. Thought the wings were a little too small for the ship.
Mark:Whaaaat?
Sandi:Wings?
David:ah wings. That was not my biggest problem, especially when the wings deployed out
I felt it was a little more balanced. I think from the profile it's drooping nose? I get that it serves a
function, that it would get more visibility for the pilot and the gun-pod and landing gear assembly
but with that said, I still, in profile, I felt it was a little droopy and needed to be balanced
by something else, so I would play around there.
I like how he communicated, a lot of the ideas he had about the function and utility, people being
able to drop down and deployed on the ground. Style-wise, surfacing-wise, it could use a second pass
although I think he's headed in the right direction. I would look at more reference, more real world
vehicles, and certain things. I remember these two intakes on the side, they felt almost cartoony
so it's important to get the size and proportion of these things correct, then it will sell the rest
of the vehicle, but otherwise a pretty good job.
Mark:I take back what I said and I'm gonna say what he said.
(laughter)Sandi:Aaaaaaw! ... Chris, would you like to say what he said?
Chris S:Sure, yeah, I disagree....no. (laughs) Actually I DO disagree with the wing part.
I thought the wings were cool. I looked like, well kinda like a bomber, a heavy bomber, to me rather
than a gunship perhaps? The style was cool, all the silhouettes he did were awsome. Like Mark said,
he probably could have used a few of those. The silhouette he chose I almost liked better than
the final rendering, but with the extended wings up I thought the shape was interesting and cool.
One thing on the technical side is he mentioned the main thrusters, but not the manouvring thrusters
that maybe needs fleshed out, maybe he did, but he never mentioned it.
Chris R:I was looking, I didn't see them on the front. The back thrusters he had them rotating
which was great, but you need to yaw too, make them go this way.
Chris S:He had the main ones.
Chris R:They were just that. You need them to come out this way, and then some in the front to do
the same thing. I didn't see those on the design.
I liked the approach, right, so I liked the fact it was "I'm going to make these silhouettes" and
"I'm gonna look at the silhouettes of existing military ships", so I though he really approached it
in the right way in terms of how to make this ship fit inside the universe. That though process was
really good. Like Mark said, there were a bunch of silhouettes that would have been really cool.
I tend to prefer a slightly more photo-realistic rendering style when doing the 2D side, and
his was a little cartoony, I think there were parts on the ship that came across as slightly out of
proportion. They would look great in a comic or graphic novel, but not necessarily in a more
film design stuff? Having said that I really liked the way the inside was thought out.
How you would get in, what the coverage of the turrets were, that was all good.
I felt the the front cockpit/nose area, for me, it just felt a bit small, I didn't like the shape
For me I would like to see different explorations there, maybe more visibility, more exploration.
It just sort of felt like he was attaching an Apache helicopter cockpit on the front of some big
fat thing at the back. Chris O:Was it too droopy?
Chris R:It just felt really small compared to the rest.
Chris S:You have the cockpit then all this mechanical stuff. It was really bulky underneath.
Chris R:I liked the fact that there was a concealed gun that would come out, but that front area
that could have had more substance. Thrusters I would have liked to have seen. I like the wing
configuration when tilted up, I liked it less when they were not tilted, but I did like that he had
worked the interior out, where they would store weapons and the rest of the stuff, that was good.
Generally a lot of potential, some criticisms, love to see the next iteration.
David:I wanted to add that the silhouettes were awesome, I wanted to design in all of them
(noises of agreement from all) Really creative, and it you have that stage going on then
you are well on your way to becoming a fanstastic designer.
Sandi:Alright guys. Now time for voting. get out your phones and email me your top 4 I'll tally
the votes and we will work out the 4 going through and the 2 getting cut.
I'm guessing Catapult might not make it....
Sandi:Alright guys, I tallied the votes and it's unanimous, team Catapult....
Mark:Is IN....(laughter)
Sandi:Will not be moving on, but with 5 votes each I can tell you that Skyguard Fabrications,
1bitAmoeba and TriTri are now officially going on to round two.
That leaves us with Cryo and 3Dingo's, it was a close vote, let's hear how that played out.
Mark:(whisper)You guys are going to shoot me.
If we can work with them and iterate a little bit I honestly think that 3Dingo have enough there
to be able to art direct them into something that's really cool.
Chris R:So you went 3Dingo. I went with Cryo because I liked the weapon that he did
and I think there is talent in 3D modelling. I felt like, even the rendering style wasn't terrible in the
concept stuff, it was just the approach that has the issues we brought up, but I thought Cryo was
trying something different where the 3Dingo one was more straight ahead "drop-ship" style
that's why I picked Cryo but, hey, I picked AEM because I thought that was more interesting
and looked what happened! (laughs)
Chris S:So I went with Cryo as well, they has a little more interest, a little more thought put into it
and I really liked the back story of the guy too, it was interesting in that regard. I think more iteration
on that and it could be something pertty unique.
Sandi:Cryo for you Chris Olivia?
Chris O:So exciting! Ahm, I went with, er, like Mark, 3Dingo.
Sandi:Wow Mark:Nailbiter Chris R:You'd think this was staged! I don't believe it.
Chris R:It's like the NBA finals. Why listen to the four of us, just ask David Hobbins
(laughter)
David:Erm.
Chris O:Whoah, whoah, whoah (laughter)
David:Please, go on.
Chris O:I had a long winded explanation, 'cos these are the Italian guys right?
Chris R:Right. Mark:Party with those guys!
Chris O:As much as I like the guy from Alaska, and all the alcohol in that area, and I agree he had a
unique approach and design, I just think in the end I think there is more potential with the 3Dingo ship
Sandi:Alright, David Hobbins. All the pressure is on you. Chris O:Drumroll
David:This for me was really close. I can make arguments either way, that said, I did end up
going towards Cryo... (laughter) ...it was really close, but I guess the back story, the thoughtfulness
Cryo's passion for his vehicle and the weapon in previous episodes won me over.
Him not going with a conventional design, I liked that, and with some coaching he will have the passion
and resilience to take this all the way.
ChrisO:He's rolled his eyes.
Mark:I guess I can accept that. I'm changing my vote to "I like Cryo". Unanimous!
Sandi:So Team Catapult and 3Dingo have been cut, however, that does not mean they are out
because there is "The Save".
The community gets involved once again at the end of phase 1 the community will get to
vote back in two teams.
All the teams will get the judges feedback, they will do another pass and put out a new video
and you guys will get to vote two teams back in.
Next week, three more teams move on, and two more get cut.See you next Friday.
All: Later. Take it easy. Cyas. It's been real. Oh My God!(laughter) "It's been real!"