Buck Rogers Starfighter

[Fabio]

This is a return to my youth a bit - this ship has always been a firm favourate of mine - it looks mean and vicious and damned fast!

IMHO It should have made an appearance in the film that it was originally concepted for - Star Wars..


Here's as far as I have got after about 2 hours tonight - in between work and other stuff.

Yes, Yes!!! I always thought this was a way cool fighter. And of course I know you'll do her justice.

[Thomas P]

One of my all time favorite ships!

I am so very very very very very very very happy you are making this one

But wasn't it originally designed for season 2 of BSg, but never was?

[Titon]

Yep, considered for Galactica before redesign to the viper

I like them both.

Awesome work Fabs, as usual.

[p.s. Cargile]

Drools . . .
And fonds memories of Erin Gray surface.

[Fabio]

Did a bit more tonight - decided to go for the more blocky look of the horizontal outer wing as was common in the show - Going to animate them rear aerilons too :


Also finished off the preliminary Blurbs shape for the lower wing - freezing to come next and then stencilled details after optimisation



click all thumbnails for larger versions

[Fabio]

Here's the latest on it:

Finished the lower wings and started work on the middle fuselage section - there won't be any more now till next week - client work to finish first

[skyhawk223]

Oh yeah, now we're talkin'. Looking great so far.

[Fabio]

Someone asked for a wireframe - so here's what the wires look like right now. There's quite a lot of Polygons to come off that figure when I get round to cleaning these sections of the mesh up when it's completely finished..

click on the thumbs for larger images...

Great job Fabs!


You know, I never cared much for the fighters. They're definately a cool look, but I don't know... One ship I've always loved from Buck Rogers though, is the ship they used in the second season. The Searcher or something? It just had such a cool look to it.

Plus, that's when they introduced Crichton, and I have an affinity for hoity toity, sarcastic robots.

[Starship]

Very well done Fabio !
Any chance that you model these ships too:

http://members.fortunecity.com/wendh...s/searcher.htm
http://members.fortunecity.com/wendh...derfighter.htm

That's it! The searcher!

Such a bonny ship...

[Fabio]

Finished my client work last night and was itching to get back to work on this

Here's another 4 hours work - one of the more difficult things to do was suss out from the reference how the rear and underside "meshed" together - but I got it in the end - (thinks he maybe should have bought a model kit of this ship for better reference! )

here's the latest

Looks like you nailed it. Fantastic work, she is the best I seen done so far. I can’t wait to see the finished version.

I do have the 2D CAD files available if you would like them.

Have a great day.

Alan
http://www.angelfire.com/scifi2/wizardofflight/

[Fabio]

Those are the blueprints I am using WOL

[Starship]

Fabio,
Any chance that you model these ships too:

http://members.fortunecity.com/wendh...s/searcher.htm
http://members.fortunecity.com/wendh...derfighter.htm

[Fabio]

Coming along nicely now

Just the cockpit inners to sort out - some minor tweaking all over the body (detailing) and then onto the texturing.

as usual click the thumbs for bigger images

[Fabio]

Here's some wires





as usual click the thumbs for larger images

[p.s. Cargile]

Excellent. biddy biddy biddy.

Not to chastise your work, but why is it that modelmakers sought a need to limit fighter pilot visibilty with these wide framed cockpits? Too much reliability on technology?

[Fabio]

I've often wondered that too Paul My theory on it is that iot's probably a trade off on construction strength and visibility. Coupled to the fact that in space combat these ships are porobably going at such ludicrous speeds that target aquisition would probably be an entirely screen holographic cockpit based affair and they would only need an approximation of where they were for postioning and approach

actually I asked someone about that. Its a left over from bluescreening days. Cockpits like that show up better on film. And they are easier to matte I bet too.

I would also bet it has to due with the number of artist who have flown combat missions

[p.s. Cargile]

Wow. Both make sense.

On the other hand, both the X-wing and the Viper had smaller cockpit frames. But I can understand how an all glass canopy wouldn't show up against the background in a scene. Such is the trade off.

I've loved this fighter. Thanks for modeling it.

[meshula]

Looking great!
I'm curious about the design history. I never heard that it was considered for SW and BsG. What's the story?

looking really cool!

from what I understand, at that time, John Dykstra was the chief modeller for starwars and he was the one principally responsible for the models in starwars, Battlestar Gallactica and Buck Rogers. which is why all 3 mediums share a quality in modelling and detailing that is similar at least....
models that were rejected by George Lucas were kept by the model makers and then sold to other productions.

Originally posted by thomas7g
actually I asked someone about that. Its a left over from bluescreening days. Cockpits like that show up better on film. And they are easier to matte I bet too.

Originally posted by p.s. Cargile
Wow. Both make sense.

On the other hand, both the X-wing and the Viper had smaller cockpit frames. But I can understand how an all glass canopy wouldn't show up against the background in a scene. Such is the trade off.

If you watch the little documentary before The Empire Strikes Back: Special Edition, they go into this issue a bit. Apparently thin cockpit frames were not a problem with fighters like the X-wing and Viper, because they operated in space, and what you'd see through the windows would be black, so matte lines wouldn't be as obvious.

The special effects people on ESB ran into problems with the thin frames while doing the Battle of Hoth, since you'd be seeing white snowscapes through the windows of the snowspeeder, and then the matte lines would look really horrible. So they played with the opacity of the cockpit which helped diminish the matte lines. The before and after comparison shots from when they digitally cleaned up the matte lines are really neat; I'd never actually noticed it before.

I dunno... it seems like it would still be a problem. The old way to do spacehips in film, ala star wars, was to do the bluescreen background shoot, then use acid to remove the blue parts of the film. The acid was a very inexact process. Too much and you would eat away all your scene, too little and you wouldn't get a good clear area.

Now the edges of the viper cockpit would be fairly easy to do in space, since you can grow the matte to be larger. The extra black matte would be invisible against the black space background as you indictated.

But to do a bubble cockpit requires the edge of the cockpit glass to show up on film, which is hard since it is glass. And also you have to be able to make a good matte of it.Which requires exact acid corrossion across a large footage length of film. I don't think it was possible back then. Your cockpit glass would tend to appear nonexistant in space. Which looks funny. And in atmosphere you would get that corroded matte that you often see in bad chromakeying.

[Elowan]

? I thought they used traveling mattes.

[Andy M]

Wow, nice work,

Andy

okay........were be the updated images or completed mesh beauty shots?!