Star Citizen: Reverse the Verse LIVE - The Jim Martin Experience

16 March 201801:04:021,469 linesWatch on YouTube ↗

Transcript — every row opens the video at that moment

00:00:11
greeting citizens and welcome to another episode of reverse the verse live the weekly star citizen livestream where we cover the news of the week provide follow-ups to the weeks around the verse and sometimes just sit down and chat with good friends about their careers and work for the project like we'll be doing this week I'm your host Content Manager Jared Huckaby now on the show this week we're gonna change gears a little bit while we'll still be taking some questions live from the chat this won't be your typical RTV where we learn more about star citizen's continuing development but instead we're gonna look back into star citizen's past as we chat with professional art person Jim Martin who in addition to getting his start on one of my favorite television shows he designed the Defiant for Star Trek new space 9
00:00:58
he also worked on such a claim sci-fi Ferris Starship Troopers Spider Man The Chronicles of Riddick AI and films in the alien and Matrix series and more so we'll be we'll be discussing his career and its work creating the concepts for some of star citizen's most iconic ships but before we get to that let's go ahead and do our Week in Review now last Friday we had Clive and Rob Johnson on the show discussing all things performance and optimization it was a fun show that explored many of the ways we're working to improve the overall performance of star citizen and hopefully we debunk the notion that all slowdowns in the game are simply you know netcode issues now if you missed it the replay is available up on youtube monday brought with it another all-new episode of calling all Deb's our weekly Q&A series where this week we had
00:01:46
answers to your most popular questions about planetary outposts how player 2 player interdiction will work how repair will work in all four three point three without any repair ships and the future of our player owned hangars now if you like the show and want it to continue remember to tune in every week and click those like buttons at least once and the play button like 40 or 50 times because they give me an hour to see my family every week for every 10,000 views and my nephew's birthday is coming up so help you Tuesday is Laura day in this week brought with us a jump point portfolio article about the inner workings of the history of dumpers depot while Wednesday brought forth another of bug smashers where mark Aben had problems getting his landing gear out but down then Thursday we had another episode of our atv shipshape this month focused on the pending releases of the
00:02:34
aegis reclaimer and the tumble cyclone with additional looks at the work on the f8 lightning and the Vandal blade the Vandal blade looked very very red and that was it for this week's review so yeah we're gonna take a quick break and when we return it's time to geek out with Jim Martin so we'll be right back greetings citizens i'm composer jeff Cinelli I wrote the music for squadron 42 and I want to talk to you about something very close to my heart this is the soundtrack album and I just want to go over a few highlights first piece I wrote for squadron 42 is called coil commander's actually my nickname in college that's where I got that and I hope you like saxophones we have another
00:03:23
one Admiral bishops tax return you're not gonna believe when you find this part in game what's what's actually going on in this in this story it's um there's a lot of money laundering subplots and lots of paperwork and stuff in the game and so I wanted to make sure there's like a paperwork theme because I know a lot of people care deeply about taxes tax returns and Admiral bishops so you know we found a way of combining all those things we've got another one we've got um single-player at night it's about Jarrod's love life hope you like saxophones I do I hope you like saxophone oh here's a good one forty seconds of food transportation bagel carrier you're gonna want that I was thinking really really hard about
00:04:10
what I should name this piece and I decided on intense space action those are the three words the three important words I hope you like saxophones the other thing Oh pimp your spaceship that's right that's that's you guys were asking you about space radio pimp your spaceship is the new hit Gillian Anderson is in this there I wrote a song about that oh I'm supposed to talk about the f8 lightning I think that right oh right sorry no no no spoilers no spoilers okay I mean I already talked about the tax return okay that's okay colonel Blair's funeral what else can we do and I hope you like saxophones some of you have heard my piece vertical slice wait till you hear horizontal
00:05:00
slice so there it is the squadron 42 soundtrack you can buy it in any format you want as long as it's CD I'm Geoff Cinelli composer for star citizen squadron 42 and I approved this CD on this week's show we are sitting down now I said I said a claimed art art person because I didn't actually know what would how do you how do you I survived in my year are you an illustrator are you a concept artist are you would you when people say what do you do how do you describe what you do to people that's a good question so I didn't know that's why I said art person over there
00:05:47
you know what all three are right hmm your illustrator you're a concept artist you're just an artist you're someone who uses their imagination to come up with a visual to help a project well there is no there's no wrong answer well he's all that more it's Jim Martin hey everybody thank you thanks for having me back I started the clapping didn't realize there was nobody else here to clap but JJ had my back I got you thinking hi everybody so reversal verse live we got Jim Martin here now Jim you are let's talk a little bit about your you're an artist you're an illustrator thing he's worked on probably more concept ships for star season than any other concept artist now
00:06:36
we have at the last count 115 different ships and vehicles in the star says its citizen pantheon of ships not include that includes variants right and well but as far as the the individual designs the the base models that start things right the cut list the freelancers like that you have worked on eight ships four for star citizen before we get to your work on star citizen let's just talk let's just total folks a little bit about what you how'd you get started in the business and what are some of the things that people might know you from you got it alright ready yes kid from a small town Northern California redwood coast hey Eureka how's it going came down to LA and got into Cal State graduated with in art degree and was lucky enough to
00:07:29
get a job as a PA production assistant in the art department of Deep Space nine so that was my start it was a just a lucky break and when you're a young kid you don't know you know what a great break that was you just go with it we work we we do a PA working directly like Doug Drexler I was working for the production designer and basically I was the errand boy and supply runner and run blueprints down to set and make sure everybody has what they needed and my boss Herman Zimmerman he knew I was an artist and one of the reasons he hired me that I had an art background and he would let me do drawing on the side too
00:08:18
because he could see that that was you know my passion and I had that first year of Deep Space nine to demonstrate to him that I really wanted to be a production illustrator luckily I didn't have to to start that job I could be in the art department watching what a professional was and and what that role really is and so I didn't have to hit it cold I had a year to to figure it out you know worked on some things and then the second season the illustrator left to go on to do movies and my boss slotted me in as junior illustrator season 2 and that was my break so and so what kind of stuff did
00:09:07
you get to design for do space 9 the first thing I ever designed for actually for the show I worked with Rick Sternbach the illustrator at the time and we did the run about design and I think I did some a little bit of medical stuff and then my first official prop was the Cardassian field control unit and I have a picture that in my office to remind me that was like my first actual illustrator assignment in the entertainment industry and I noticed that you can that someone has a reproduction that they sell on eBay like you can buy that little prop now I don't mean to plug do a plug or anything are
00:09:55
you saying are you the one selling it and then I went on to to do some ship design and a lot of that job was doing prop design because it's a space station and the premise of the show is that a an alien culture comes in visits the station and they have to have their own stuff so it's a lot of alien bags alien weapons this and that yeah so as far as the spaceships now because a lot of this conference a lot of our conversation today is going to be focused on spaceships so before we get to the stuck to the ships you did for starters and what were some of the ships that you did for juice force nothing I did the Defiant which is the the tough little ship I did the let's see I
00:10:45
did a couple of Cardassian ships I did some Bajoran ships I did Sisko solar sailer say that three times and I got a bone to pick with you about this at the solar sailer by the way but couldn't continue the JEM Hadar ship and and the federation not that yeah a flagship the beatle ship musician and the mckee fighter just thing it's kind of some odds and ends it it was a really fun time when i'm you really didn't know what was gonna come along in the next episode so all of a sudden you'd be in the art department and then and herman would come by and let you know oh by the way we have this coming up and then you would you would do your design pass it would go to the
00:11:32
production and then that would kick off the the process during solar sailer because i didn't realize that you had done that i I have a I have a large Star Trek spaceships collection I have ego Moss creates these little you know they do have ships and I've got like a hundred and thirty of them whatever I got every single one they made and the Bajoran solar sailer had to be shipped to me four times because they see fragile she because it's a fragile it's designed to be a fragile ship to your credit so he was meant to be elegant yes very elegant but yeah I think he had to keep getting that ship to me quite a few times because it kept becoming a broken it was that ship was my Appa for a while and three amigos parlance you know what's cool about that though was
00:12:19
that so I worked on the show but I never had copies of any of that stuff you know just left Deep Space nine to go off and work on other things and after all this time to to be able to buy a design that you did or worked on and have that in your office I have those two well I've got three partially broken Boudreau insular sellers I'm sure you can assemble one that might actually work out of them if you want them you know you can buy like a glue gun and just there's me I'm not arts and crafts all right look tat Jeremy said that guys are perhaps all right so eventually you left Deep Space nine you went to work in features I did too III think most closest to my heart you know we mentioned before that you worked on one of the alien films who worked on the matrix that the sequels
00:13:07
but Starship Troopers I'm gonna talk about Starship Troopers what did you do for Starship Troopers so starship troopers and like when I left Star Trek you know that's definitely a type of universe you know it's very it's has some a lot of design rules that that are unique to Star Trek I get hired on starship troopers and they need me to do ships and I did the Roger young the landing ships the rescue boat the the little escape pod it was there a ship and and did sets that for them and their gear that they that they wear and for me that being on that show helped me channel my inner Star Wars Battlestar Galactica which is like a
00:13:57
separate universe from designing Star Trek stuff you know and I realized like we can get boxy let's get military boxy and chunky and let's let some really do it right and and that was pretty a pretty wild ride Paul Verhoeven was a very energetic director yes a number of our starters and streamers take a lot of their influence from things that you've worked on like we have we have detox who his entire stream is is Starship Troopers themed with the immobile infantry as they were because he's a streamer who's sitting stationary like our captain Richard is very alien themed
00:14:47
you know from the alien movies just like that so so I don't know if we have a Star Trek themed as starters industry memory or not but it's definitely you see a lot of you've touched a lot of sci-fi touchstones in your in your in your career mm-hmm so now it's what is it it's 2011-2012 when you get a call from Chris Roberts right so tell me tell me how that happens I had got hired on to the Robocop remake and then I'm in Hollywood working on Santa Monica Boulevard and I get a email from Chris and he had he was looking for a concept artist to do to do some initial ideas for him for a project
00:15:36
that game project he wanted to start up mm-hm called star citizen we I met him for lunch and he graciously bought me lunch and and pitched the idea to me and he had me at could you design ships would you like to design some ships I mean who can say no to that mm-hmm right that's like our dream job is to to get to do spaceship design I did and now this is before star citizens been announced to the world this is before our GDC announcement in 2012 he's asking you to design ships for an idea for an idea yeah and what was what was the first ship he had you working on he I think he was putting together if I remember this
00:16:24
correctly and it's been a little bit but I think he was putting together kind of like a demo animation and he needed the bad guy ship which would be the site site and he had a he needed some concept ideas for that we have some of your early concept designs here so if we bring his efficacy of my clicker will work no so so so at this point you started off you start off as traditional you know pen pencil to paper ranches we hadn't started concept in 3d at this point yet right so for me like right here if we stay on this page for a minute Chris gave me the brief of what he was looking for and you know it you this is my thinking pass which is basically
00:17:14
you need to start putting it on paper because if you just think about it in your head you it it's gonna come and it's gonna go and you need to start putting some ideas down it's about doing drawing the right and drawing the wrong but getting it all on a piece of paper and we talked about that quite a bit you know in a lot of our concert work you know people will say you show us the early concepts of something and it's like oh the concept period is not just about discovering what you do want it's about discovering what you don't want exactly because when you when you start a process like this I mean you don't it's do you remember the brief on this remember what Chris said he was looking for he he pitched me the idea of the aliens that we were fighting and that that he wanted the ship to feel
00:18:02
dangerous and so my first pass was well okay if you're going to do dangerous then you want it to be kind of sharp you know you want it to feel lethal which in in a visual sense means you know it's got a it's not going to be soft and curved and gentle it's going to be kind of you know spikes and blades and this and that and and my first pass is kind of a little bit of a well you know let's not do the batwing and but you have to you have to work through those so I drew a lot of that and I remember Chris reacting to it going you know have you thought about maybe doing something asymmetrical and that was like a very important moment in shifting to
00:18:53
asymmetry doing something a little bit more unique and we started to work our way to the blade shape which Chris said what about hey I like this what if it was kind of like a flying dagger a flying knife or a blade and that really kind of locked in the path and then you we could take it to some tighter ideas and eventually to to get closer to the finish now these aren't in any particular order this obviously isn't a blade shape yeah that would be the lethal disc didn't didn't make it then we got to this which which also Chris wanted to start working in the idea of armor plating to echo the the soldiers inside and then I went to a scratch model which
00:19:47
is basically just do do a model that you can paint on top of but really start to lock it into a 3d reality so that it's not just a one view ship hey that looks good but what does the underside look like you know this was the very first vandal anything at this point because in 20 you know for the reveal at GDC in 2012 you know this is the only aggressor that we see we don't see the Vandals as characters and one so so you're this ship design it's not just you know let's design a cool ship but this is the introduction to what will be you know one of the principal aggressor races for for star citizen and squadron 42 so it's up that's pretty a pretty heavy responsibility you know it you know it was really exciting about it though was when you guys sent me a copy of that of
00:20:37
that first demo and it comes around from behind the asteroid and yeah and it's the ship and I and it's really exciting that's a reward for an illustrator is to see your ideas make it all the way to the final even though many people touch it after you and that's how it should be because you want people to come in and you want them to to work it and plus it you know and do what didn't do to it the things that need to get done to make it fit into the game you know so so now you've said now you've you've got that you've got the site the site that's used for that that original GDC released now we're starting the crowdfunding campaign we started with with five original ships we had an Aurora Aurora constellation
00:21:27
the Hornet a 300 and a freelancer those were the five and of those five you were tasked with creating the freelancer that's right let's see what we got as far as these early shows hope you got some more there what's this this isn't the freelancer it could have been but it was a design direction that we decided not to pursue so I think and originally I did a spread again of sketch ideas that some tighter some a little bit looser to start the process of what could it be and yeah like this the same process that the thumbnails on trying to create a shape language it's okay to hate a couple of these if you want to you
00:22:14
because put you know you're not you're gonna do stuff that is a good idea and you're gonna do stuff that's a bad idea but you you got to draw it to know yeah let's not do that and then continuing on with with you know more ideas is anything landing you know we still searching I think that the asymmetry was the starting point that that I abandoned hmm we're not we weren't gonna do that and then I think we started to to lock in to some ideas that were a little tighter a little more unibody and finally I think that's the one that that kicked off the design direction yeah I
00:23:03
think I think there was there was there was a vote at one point right it was it was between this one and the one that we had at the beginning there again I think we actually put that up as a vote to let people disassembly if I remember correctly so I my memories and always I think you're right as king but back when it was miss ship won and miss ship to I think I think it was a choice between this one and this one and this is the one that the community the community voted on so then you see so then they vote on this and then you start exploring that option further yep and then I met with Chris after kind of mocking up a quick study model to make it feel more real and let's talk about what's working and what's not working and I'm I remember meeting him and then at the
00:23:52
time I had moved to another show so my context for this is I remember getting the getting the assignment and going oh yeah that's when I was working at Universal on another project mhm and then I came and I jumped over the hill to Hollywood and and we had a meeting to talk about this and to keep the process going my memories and for most of my life are tied to similar things has to do with a theatrical plays and musicals it's you know if it I did theatre for 25 years so so every event in my life that's not theater still linked to what show was I do right back then so I I can I can I can relate to that absolutely so we've got some more freelancer here so interesting with the two big engines in the in the rear I
00:24:40
don't think I'd seen this one yeah that was earlier on and then I remember we needed to to make sure that we had a cargo hold that was viable and that's when we started working the the like back ramp door to a cargo hold this was a alternate telling go ahead of the cockpit which ultimately was not successful what do you mean not says oh it's as people who love struts if there's one thing that the entire star citizen community can come together on is that they love cockpit struts as many as many physical items to obstruct your view as possible right the more struts
00:25:30
you you get in there the more these ships sell it's just well I think because people want it to look cool on the outside not when they're actually sitting in there and realizing that they can't see anything when they're flying you know well that's the that's the it's the million Falcon thing it's it's the Millennium Falcon had those had those you know big copper strikes and it inspired an entire generation of spaceship design but they didn't know but they didn't actually have to sit in the cockpit and actually go hey you know I got a blind spot here yeah hmm do you do it Chewbacca impression no I'm just I just have allergies okay you sure you don't want to try right now no okay Oh see that's we gotta here still so get some more explorations either yes this is in with the freelancer with the big engines in the
00:26:16
back or those listeners no there's just the way that those look like the same one with the center engines I think that's the center engine version then a retool of the cockpit with a with a hooded top you know and more open glass which seem to be getting us on the right track and then the new cockpit and and a little bit of a reef styling and this is the chunky version that I don't think we ever got to it's got some things on there that were that I tried out well we win with that freelancer max which is at which which is a variant of the freelancer that I think took a lot of inspiration from this okay cool that's good to hear that's it actual snapshot of it flying in space when I do that you can go
00:27:09
that's not funny it's alright I work with Ben Lesnick so I'm used to I used to jokes that are funny you know another interesting thing about working on this project for this amount of time is that I can look back and kind of see my progress as a modeler a 3d modeler in looking at some of this earlier stuff based on versus like my later stuff going you know what I we've talked about that in the past were you doing 3d modeling before star citizen I was but um but being in the light of action you have to do both you need to be able to to 3d model starting points and but then you also have to shift gears and just be right at digital paint so um but I find
00:27:59
that the gaming work that the 3d part of it is a bigger chunk and so when you're forced to do a bigger chunk then I think you grow that skill so it's been kind of my it's been a growing process for me to go oh you know what I'm gonna I'm gonna go back in and hit this model again I'm gonna do it till it's right one of the questions that just really chat yeah asks about what the second ship on the Kickstarter page I don't have the Kickstarter page here so I actually not able to answer that question but if somebody else it's somebody else you can go to the kickstart page and identify with which ship would it what do you say here what was the second ship pictured on the Kickstarter page Kickstarter sub section it's about the gameplay and your interaction together I can't see the page right now so so I can't tell you
00:28:47
what the interested maybe somebody else in chat can tell you hmm all right so after the freelancer which is one of our five original concept ships we started to expand out obviously the project was was was taking off we want we knew we wanted more than just those five ships to start with and they tell you the Cutlass right the freelancer was the first ship in the mist manufacturer and and that we've got this concept of of manufacturers now what do they tell you what can you remember about Drake when they say it they say okay we're gonna do a new manufacturer it's gonna be Drake what are they telling you at this point so for me the the kickoff on this one was this is going to be a pirate ship that that's the one element that I remember more than than the other so
00:29:34
like it's a this is a ship that that is getting usurped by people with pirate intentions and then that starting point for me was kind of like the the moment of fun that you know you want to find your happy place in the assignment and go okay it's pirate time let's do let's kind of do something that it looks a little evil you know looks like it's nefarious and have done and you know that I remember doing the back engines going these are kind of a little bit like skulls but not but maybe just enough to have fun with it about that and that was the start of this assignment and I
00:30:23
know that um that you know needed to be a cargo hold but there needed to be a cargo aspect to it too but it really had to have that kind of at um rough-and-tumble pirate feel to it you actually you worked on later on you would work on the variants the red the blue right I think we've got some of the red and blue variants just mixed in here so this isn't chronologically appropriate here but so when we come back later on and we say now we want to do the red and blue well this is your chance to read this is now your first chance to revisit right and holder ship and any Krave variants so what are you thinking here so then I think the conversation changed a little bit too well what if it is someone's using it as a medical ship like an ambulance or
00:31:13
whatever you know what are the different roles that can play and then I kind of break out of the that early idea of let's do the pirate ship and into a little bit more of well let's make it feel more utility you know and also let's make it a little cleaner and and kind of give it a multi role and that's where this comes in like the cockpit here wow thanks so it go it kind of goes from our to utility so then after the Cutlass you've now done an alien ship you've introduced our alien aggressors you've introduced the misc style you've introduced the drake style and then the
00:32:02
next ship you actually get to build on your previous work you get to do the caterpillar right which is also drake so now you don't have to you know have to start from absolutely nothing like from scratch more so now you're working on the caterpillar so what was the brief on the caterpillar that you can remember okay the caterpillar um was it called the caterpillar it was called the caterpillar and it needed to be like a long hauler you know kind of a freight hauling ship and for me though they had me a caterpillar because that that was the challenge how how are you going to make a ship that um that kind of evokes the idea of a caterpillar and but isn't something
00:32:51
that's sort of ridiculous you know what's that's my design challenge and these early drawings you see a lot of Cutlass influenced because right again for the first time you get you get to start you have to start off with something else so it looks like the Cutlass with it with a bigger centerpiece here and Allah and this kind of sketches me thinking as I'm drawing like hey what if I what if I put these on the side what about that you know a bad idea and maybe I can try it and then how do I work in my core idea for this which was if we're gonna do caterpillar let's do a long segmented shape you know and put in you know the caterpillar body was that maybe it was that given to you did they say that was me going how do you say caterpillar in a spaceship and when you
00:33:41
had to come back and you had and you had to pitch to Chris like a long segmented ship I think that I kind of showed in like I let the sketches do the pitching you know one kind of talked them through well maybe we can do maybe we can do repeated long segmenting to say caterpillar but also do our best to make it you know a viable interesting ship in the universe I think the bad our controller here's okay a battery so so so now you you also we haven't seen a lot of interior work now obviously this but this is this is original caterpillar stuff this is back before we actually had to build it out and stuff like this so so right right here you're looking at a you know a two two floor interior
00:34:32
which which would have been a first for for starters and we hadn't yet introduced any mm-hmm Multi multi level ships at this point and this is me just kind of throwing it out saying you know hey let matarese let me do a cutaway real quick and explain it my controller you're taking the controller so I did this cutaway and you know purely on speculation like hey let me let me show you what the what I think the command crew pod looks like you know we I mean the cargo I did a cargo module and that's pretty straightforward but you know what if we do what if we open it up and I'll just show you what I think is going on inside here and that's what that was and I live for that by the way I cut out for me it's like illustrator joy you forget to work on it
00:35:21
it was like the visual dictionary books know like what's inside and it knows I haven't but but if given an opportunity on a project I'm gonna go to a cutaway if I can yeah so caterpillar was definitely a ship that uh that triggered some imaginations I especially this one you managed to incorporate the the legs the category legs so that's a second idea in there was like okay if you're gonna call it a caterpillar it's got to have multi legs right and did that stay and knots not so much okay we tried we're here with the very literal Jim Martin and this is early early one eye I really like the styling that it that has happened you know since
00:36:11
doing these study models you know I really think that the that the team here really kind of fleshed it out and made it made it look pretty awesome yeah teamwork yeah oh yeah it's it's it's one of the cool things here you know we were talking about this before we started the show but you know there's it's the the Drake style guide you know it was really came into its own last year when when the team here in LA would add you know we're building out the Harold we're building out the the the the caterpillar and we're redoing the the Cutlass we're doing the Cutlass they wouldn't they would I know I don't know L when it specifically went back to a lot of your old drawings but it's it's fine some of the things that that we lost you know when we when we built the cat when we built the colors
00:36:59
out for the very first let's go back to the concept and find these personal touches these these things that made it seem a little more lived-in and personality we didn't keep the caterpillar legs but but you know that's really cool to hear because you um it's a collaboration it is a complete collaboration in fact well you know no no one is island you know it you need someone to come in and go and look at it with fresh eyes and then and then plus it so after after the after the caterpillar you're now becoming the the direct person at this tranq you don't because if I'm in the Drake person at this point and this people might not be might not recognize this was some of the earlier images of the Harold yep so so
00:37:47
why can you remember that's what was what was the brief here I think that the brief was the Harold it's small its compact it's fast and it gets in it transmits and receives you know information and it gets out so to me that a translates to big engines and a cockpit keep it really streamlined make it look fast and compact and and keep it simple so first pass was trying those ideas and what kind of configuration seems like it's gonna land you know it's you know some kind of kooky stuff here that there's there's some stuff here alright so wasn't the batteries it's
00:38:38
just a lame clicker yeah the one in the upper left there reminds me of like the snowspeeder from the pressure expected yeah with the killer engine in the back and you know these are really their thumbnails it's like dry you know and then move on got away again right yeah I want to go back to this one here yeah the B we didn't number these so if we're going if we're going around why's the third one the one that actually looks closest to the one to what we ended up using and the one directly south-southwest of it with with it the big hawk engines like between the two of these the it reminds me of the
00:39:29
the gun start from from The Last Starfighter right I remember when I first when I first started when I first started seeing this stuff come in you know and I just I just kept getting a last starfighter vibe from it and I think I think it's been it's just because of the the tapered thing in the version that we did you know it's bigger in the back you know smaller in the front but when it was when I saw that the other one I saw that you were exploring the one I'm like just put two more on the bottom and then you've got it just snuck on starring Jim you guys stuck in comes star into the game see that I think so for me right those are my influences whether I know it or not you know those are the things that like a Ralph McQuarrie painting from you know my power strikes behind like those were you know we're just relished when I was
00:40:19
a kid drawing what was cool and I guess that kind of makes me old-school when it comes to ship design but it's a good mix that's what I like about this game it's kind of a mix of everything now let me ask you a question based on something I just said here when when somebody like me sits there and says hey this reminds me of the gun star and whatnot it is is that how do you take that you take that end and your friend you can be honest with you is that insulting it or tell you absolutely honestly that it is not insulting in any way in fact it's a compliment to think that you know I was a kid watching that movie back when it came out in like 84 people and and to
00:41:08
sit here now and have someone go hey you know that's kind of like that then I think that connects me to that project and when you're a kid watching that movie you can only dream that one day you'll be able to work in the entertainment and get into spaceships for a living yeah and then to be here now and to be talking about that stuff that's it's pure it's nothing but good yeah I didn't want it to seem like you have no original ideas and you're in your head that's like everybody can turn you really need something you twist everything but but I meant it as a you took it exactly I took it exactly as I meant Amelie it's it's it's a shared inspiration and you tap into those things that inspire all of us and make us excited about this stuff it's kind of like when you're on a movie and they say okay you're doing the space helmet but you know we need to do something that
00:41:56
we've never seen before but it should have a face plate so we can see the actor some kind of covering at the top and then two ear sides that feel like they they are receiving you know audio you go okay you just described a space helmet [Laughter] right so are you know like were of course a ship design is gonna it's gonna feel like this or it's gonna feel like that that what you want to do is you want to really put put your design love into it and all your inspiration from all your sources and and try to do your best work all right so now you've done your third drake ship right and they come back and say Jim we got another ship for you at this point you're like are you are you hoping it's something
00:42:44
different or are you like why are you hope are you hoping for a fourth Drake ship are you hoping for something different at this point I'm hoping for something different okay and they come back to you and say we want you to go back to misc okay now you started you started misc and this is now the the whole series now do you remember with the brief for the whole Wes cuz the whole is pretty different from any other ship we've ever we had before and we haven't had a ship like it since right what was the brief on the haul that you can remember so the that was an interesting brief because that was the first time that um that you know the team here gave me a model as a starting point you know and they had mocked up like a blocked in idea of how this ship was going to be
00:43:33
carry like cargo pods and I remember seeing that going okay well we're a little bit deeper into the assignment it's not we're not gonna fumble at the beginning we're just gonna get right to it and and it still had that hurdle to get over which was well how is that actually gonna work you know how are we going to to do you know attached pods to a ship and we tried some different things so they came so when it came to you they had already decided that the cargo was gonna sit on the outside of that right other thing and did they know that it was gonna collapse and expand or no that that was going to come later you know as we were trying to come up with with kind of an engineered logic of
00:44:24
how it was going to be able to hold cargo and you know what it was going to look like when it was empty and what it would look like fully loaded and that's when we came across this idea and maybe we're talking about just this big kind of ship rigging boom that can you know umbrella open and close depending on how much cargo you need to load now did Whitney when the assignment came to you was it just the whole sea or did they bring it to you and say it's actually five ships it's five ships specially meant you know I spent a lot of time working out the cockpit to try to figure out well is it gonna be one cockpit area for for all of the ships you know what
00:45:12
are the conditions going to be and it we kind of went through the idea of yeah this is an earlier idea when it was not going to telescope it was always going to stay a locked condition and then we said well maybe the front can fly away from the cargo and then return and this was the second idea yeah this is that get some like armored neck going on there yeah we didn't we didn't follow through on that but um what you gonna do here here's a crazy loaded one which for me is the illustration fun because you know
00:46:01
you can really get a you really get a good render when you take the time to work out all of the cargo containers well we actually started building out the ship in the game last year that the most most of the the final art is actually done for the for the whole sea at the moment they are they ran into the technical challenge shouldn't ranan we caught up to the technical challenge we knew we were going to have from the very beginning which is the collapsing right to collapse the collapsing system so it's it's it's on it's on hold at the moment right now they actually they actually have a pretty good idea how it's gonna it's going to happen but in the in the game universes we have it right now there's there this is too much cargo but like the economy that we have in the precision universe like if we
00:46:50
introduce two hulls see right now it would even just you know stabilize everything so like we don't need it right this minute anyway and we know that's gonna take some extra time to figure out the collapse anyway though they've kind of they've kind of just put a pin on it right now and know they're working other things but most of its been modeled out if you want when we're done here I could probably have somebody pull it up and you see it actually and yeah I would love to see how you guys blessed it because that's a kind of a treat for me to to to see like okay someone went over it and and did all the necessary kind of frosting to really bring it into the world yeah because it actually actually have the collapse the animations that it's it's the technical part of actually making it work in the game the organs how you actually see it will do a little ship shape we will bring these people hey what else we got landed on a lonely
00:47:38
moon right very looming and then this is what this is the kind of like reward when you're done doing the ship design and you and it's all kind of tied together and then you put it in a couple of environments and you go what would it look like in the world and you kind of give yourself a reward at the end of the design assignment it's my reward do a fun painting land so after the whole series they keep you going on the misc you can they bring they bring you the endeavor right now whatever one of the sort of like the idris and the javelin one of the largest ships we've ever scoped out in the game tell me about this okay this was a lot of
00:48:30
figuring out yes because it was it was about doing a ship design and also I'm figuring out what are the modules that are going to fit in between and how do they plug in you know what are the variants and how do you make it look good for each ship and or or I should say how do you make each component look good in each configuration yes and these are a little crazy with the with the solar panels but um I think we about midway through we kind of got into the into the place we wanted to be with this I remember this one specifically it's it's this was this was one of the first times I got to be involved on this end with with the design and the ship and
00:49:20
one that this this was this was a one of Ben Lesnick babies and Wow okay so yeah Ben Ben was invested in this one yeah definitely I like the hospital module myself you know know will you need a hospital module in a in the game oh yeah okay oh yeah we're gonna get injured oh yeah we've got we've got medical gameplay coming we've got another coming and and well I was about to I was I was I was about to give you guys a little hint on something and I'm like no no but you'll be ever seen more you'll be seeing more about medical I met medical stuff later this year like that so how's your ponic odds this is the side the silent running included
00:50:09
that was the name of that movie right was the silent running silent running yes silent run or senator running silent and running I want cinema Bruce Dern yep yep I remember a quick cockpit concept which is which is a very which is an expanded you know front from the freelancer you know from from the aesthetic that we see in the phrase this is a much more expanded richer and that's so early that you know that that's me just kind of giving you guys a starting point I know you have you know you have a lot of assets already available at the time so you can plug in the seats that you like that kind of thing the bear yeah there she is starting to take shape yeah I like that one on the right yeah what I like here is that as you as you
00:50:58
started coming along the entire know what there was there was a lot of thought that the front part would again detached wasn't there right I kept I think I did a couple loz of it flying away yeah yeah and then the the you have a little travelpod say you can leave the ship I don't think that lasted yeah I don't think the travel cost it here's a combo of light of just showing a layout of how modules can fit on to the ship and when they said that when they may tell you that they wanted module and they want it to be able to go in multiple configurations does that excite you or frustrate you is that is like just pick an order and they go for ardor and then you have to design so you have to design a thing so this works in the front or it works in the back or it works in the middle yeah I think when
00:51:45
you get an assignment like that your first reaction is all right let me that your you have trepidation like okay let me know what a quote yeah let me let me expand the the net and let me cast a broad net and just see what lands you know because you don't you could spend too much time on stuff that that gets abandoned so like a past like this is showing I'll give you silhouettes you know we'll talk about what how the volumes feel and then get them to kind of to buy off on some things yeah and then the the particle accelerator the boom idea that didn't take I like the little idea though I was a big
00:52:33
proponent of the booms we could almost do do a sci-fi TV show based on this you know either the science vessel you know they could be no no no science vessel would ever be called the huh could be a you don't know that I'd known okapi was ever a good a good science student unfortunately so and that there's your medical base yeah yeah that this was probably the most modeling heavy I think of the of the assignments and there's the front piece taken off we got to get out of here yeah a lot and then you have so much artwork for the endeavour it was yeah it was a pretty beefy assignment you know and alright and then after the endeavor we
00:53:23
bring you back to the world of Drake and to your most recent should that you done for star citizen The Buccaneer right now what was the what was the what was the brief on the Buccaneer the Buccaneer it is like like all of the Drake stuff it is definitely utility it's like a tough functional design and it needs to tie in to the other to the other ship designs but this is going to be a compact all-purpose fighter and for me this was one of my favorite assignments on the game because you know it kind of again channels my inner my inner McQuarrie
00:54:11
mm-hmm and you get a chance to do a snub fighter so did a silhouette pass some quick sketches tried to put some configurations together started off with a double two-man cockpit it's right which was never gonna fly but that was me getting a little ahead of myself I I do remember that I do remember that we start we piece we started to see yeah two men you're like cockpits come in and we remember going back to design brief and I'm like did we type in well because you wouldn't have known this the time but around this time we had just gone through this whole thing with the with the car to all where it was supposed to be a - it was originally a two men and cockpit and then design it changed it to a one-man cockpit but the art would have been two men so I guess so now we
00:55:00
started we started seeing these coming with too many caveats and I'm like I'm going back with the design stuff I'm like okay did I did I type something wrong here and why don't I said no it was just Jim Beam Jim got a little ambitious Jim got a little ambitious he's thinking at 14 and yeah this assignment is the is the fun Vidor yeah everybody wants to get the fun fighter assignment and it flies great and the game because this was fast-tracked and putting the game pretty quickly I also like this this game has some great fighters in it you know the squadron 42 fighters are awesome and this isn't this is kind of just its own kind of fun
00:55:49
fighter idea that is it's not the coolest one it's the it's the tough old faithful reliable one drink that's it yeah that's it and guess what Jim you're ours that I want so quickly I know you see if you were so nervously how we're gonna feel again I really talk about an hour well 58 you know what I just want to say though thanks for having me and you know taking the time to talk about this stuff was really great working on this project I appreciate thank you for coming in I you know guys hopefully I wasn't boring and I hope they're done that I enlightened you know the community about
00:56:39
about the design process a little bit III think it's you know we do a variety different shows here starts ISM you last year we did the happy hour broadcast on Fridays and they were five different formats within the happy hours and whatnot they usually reverse the vs. is we take questions from the community and it's always about you know what was this gonna work and how is this gonna work and why not but I thought it I thought every once in a while we can do we can we can change gears we can do something different and just take a look in the board past yeah you know Taylor ignore past and and have a chat with somebody was who's been here from the beginning just to I'm just a kid who grew up drawing spaceships for fun and to get to do it for a living it is like a dream come true lucky I'm a lucky guy I'm you know any time you're around any time you're
00:57:28
welcome here any time you think sir sorry I was meeting you through the whole show I was doing so good without the coffee wasn't I for the whole show all right guys we're gonna take a quick break I'm gonna call for a couple minutes and then we'll be right back here with the wrap-up see it a bit everything thank you welcome everybody I hope you're enjoying this week's RTV as a special treat we're changing things up instead of calling all Deb's today or we're doing a calling all backers it's an incredibly original concept that I just made up right now as I'm recording this on to on the show today this one episode show we are calling Alex s 189 how you doing man I'm doing amazing thanks how are you I'm doing okay you know I abide getting over this thing Alex s one eight nine can I call you one
00:58:17
eighty nine if you want or you can just call me Alex it's up to you all right now you you are you are a star citizen machinima creator would tell everyone you tell people who the hell you are and why you're on the show right now so what I do is I create West posing called machinima but I kind of use similar tools to what the DES would use similar nowhere near the same to kind of actually create cinematic content within a version of the game engine it's not the same it's not lumberyard it's like if you imagine a few years ago that kind of version of cry engine from a few years back that's kind of what I do and yeah and I just kind of make a lot of short films out of it for ranging from a few seconds to commercials of a couple
00:59:06
of minutes to less and Vega which I released on their Tuesday which was a hell of a lot of work yeah tell us about that what was it like where why why would you do this to yourself like I'm to be honest because it's a hell of a lot of fun so it's kind of been my hobby for a few years now just kind of making short stories they originally centered around planetside 2 and that isn't like 3ds max my things like that and then more recently I thought you know I tried to encourage it and I kind of looked right what is nobody done before because we've seen amazing work in bulkheads we've seen combine nodes which is phenomenal and we've seen various other shorts here and there but nobody noticed tried to do something kind of on the scale that we
00:59:55
try to do with Vega as so far right stupidly let's do that so kind of had an idea regarding the whole reporter on an airfield thing and then I sent it off to my partner in crime slayer of TMT and we've pretty much overnight you went and wrote three or four episodes of less from Vega which we layer condensed out in the free episodes and then I was like crap we need to see this for you now probably can't say it on streem sorry all right and we're working people watch this now the first part people can see the first part if they go on the community help or if they go onto YouTube just type lights from Vega or Alex s29 you'll find it on there and you'll see 15 minutes of work by a lot of very talented people that were involved in the project oh cool that's it that's all I wanted to know
01:00:42
man Oh fair enough it was too long to put on the show so I had to come up with something shorter so this is our solution so we can still highlight your stuff so you guys thank you you can check that out on you on YouTube and win-wins part 2 when I'll get to ask quite the questions it'll be when it's ready so right now we're in well the thing is right now we're in pre-production of part 2 because we've recently upgraded I build quite a lot so we need to kind of see what we can and what we can't do but what we can do is use 3.0 assets now which is pretty huge but which can you to write it and see what we need to do but it's gonna be a lot bigger than part one I look forward to it Oh meaty thanks Lyman thanks well you're this week's uh community content and VP by the way so you HOT there's a plaque in the mail
01:01:30
yeah there's no plaque we have no budget okay can I get a play button pause button no stop button nope haha well that was up Alex s 189 and that about does it for this week's show a special thanks to Jim Martin for coming in and discussing his work with us some housekeeping before we let you go there's a special Saint Patrick's Day promotion going on this weekend with some limited ships returning to the pledge availability and a screenshot contest for your chance to get some of them as prizes full details will be available on the robert space industries comm website today if they haven't already I mean I've been in here so additionally the aegis Vulcan concept promotion is in its final stretch you've only got about two more weeks to pick up
01:02:18
one of our most versatile ships yet as well as the paint and decal library 2-pack now if you want to learn even more about the ship in addition to the ATV and the RTV we've already done the traditional Q&A posts for the Vulcan went live earlier this week as well so there's more Vulcan information out there then you can shake a stick at if you're into that sort of thing then of course you can come right back here on Monday for another episode of calling all devs this time featuring questions about a climbing thrusters for players that are on foot the difference between 2d and 3d radar evie a between fast-moving ships and the future of real time commodity tracking on moby glass and the various types of electronic warfare that are not spelled EMP and as a special bonus I recorded the entire thing so fast yesterday that I didn't have time to cop once it turns out that
01:03:06
I'm not sick I have super allergies that yeah look they got they got me on they got me on the easel steroids and stuff now that's that's what's been going on I got allergies who knew so for reverse the verse live I'm Content Manager for global video production Jared Huckaby don't get old people because then the allergies we'll see you next week everybody thanks for watching for the latest and greatest in star citizen a squadron 42 you can subscribe to our channel or you can check out some of the other shows and you can also head to our website at www.uvu.edu/library

Transcript from YouTube’s automatic captions — punctuation and Star Citizen jargon are approximate. The video itself is hosted by CIG on the official channel.