Saddened to learn of Paul Darrow passing, known to science fiction fans as Kerr Avon, BBC TV Blake’s7. Paul Darrow really excelled in the role, clearly enjoying the part Avon gave, while I feel that the conflict between Blake and Avon made the show work to the best.
Time to dust off my Robert McCall inspried CGI model and rendered a few scenes, first two features a concept art by NASA JPL Caltech Tim Pyle for Kepler16, I love it so I had to make use of it again, fits the McCall design far better, and also Ringed planet art by Graham Gazzard aka GrahamTG on deviantart.
My final work on Blakes Liberator and Federation Civil Administration Prison Ship London, I think so anyway.
The final scales I think works based on my own scale testing, not only using images from each episode of the ship, but also based on set and character situations, by no means definitive but a workable guide, I got a lot of help with Simon Atkinson recent restoration of the original model who also built it for the show.
The background image is by artist Tim Pyle, who creates many awesome images depicting NASA/JPL/Caltech discovery’s or conjectures
In recent weeks I have been working on the Liberator from Blake’s7 and this has been commented on, thank you, Ed Diment, for your comment, I was away on holidays and could not make a more detailed and considered response.
but I also like to check as many sources as I can when I look at a ship design scale, like Star Trek original USS Enterprise, the Battlestar Galactica and Blakes7 Liberator and there are a number of sources available to me now that where not there before, but as with most if not all sci-fi designs they don’t always work, and we all have our views and imagined preferences, the internet allows us to share and to agree or disagree which is perfectly understandable.
Commenter Ed Diment suggests a scale of 450m and he suggests a number of sources so for a complete look I have scaled the Liberator accordingly too 4 different lengths.
1000m/3280.84ft
780m/2559.055ft
450m/1476.378ft
304.8/1000ft
The last scale length is by model maker Martin Bower who detailed the model, though he did not build it, it was designed by Roger Murray-Leach though is also credited as the designer is Ian Scoones, but from what I have read its Murray-Leach.
The scale of 1000m was given to me by another fan who said it was suggested by Martin Bower who detailed the model over 4 days, this was in a unnamed magizine, so I thought that it would be in either Starlog or Starburst sci-fi magazine late 70s early 80s when Blakes7 was still in production.
I found it and it was not 1000m long but 1000ft/304.8m long according to Martin Bower STARBURST issue 34 from 1981 found on archive.org, here are the pages in question.
Now I find this scale does not work for me at all. so like the classic USS Enterprise 947ft I am going to say, does not work for me. next is 450ft for the Liberator, and it does work far better than 304.8m but again I am going to say, it’s not for me, not wrong just not for me. I still favour a 700m to 780m length.
The London Civil Administration Ship works best at 55m long, in terms of internal and external arrangement as I explored it a few years ago, smaller scale it becomes more difficult
I have removed a number of older images, work in progress of the USS Enterprise and such which have never had any trafic worth mentioning, along with my shift away from Star Trek and other franchies like Blakes’7 which was a great distraction away from ST I have spent far to long in that universe to the point I have Star Trek fatigue, my focus will be for my own designs like the Halcyon ship, I had in mind to design a mothership for this, and currently racking my brain to remember the ideas I had at the time.
In my imagination I thought along the lines of a huge design, a few miles long design perhaps never to return to Earth once launched, a generation ship. And this Halcyon ships/shuttles would act like Space1999 Eagles 🙂 the shape of the cockpit windows now make sense, yes! (Londo Mollari voice)
Will I hope to have some early designs posted asap.
