Tuesday 14 January 2014

Rick Sternbach's ebay treasures

I rediscovered Rick Sternbach's ebay profile recently, and once more he is offering some really interesting bits and pieces from his long history of working on Star Trek. That includes books of production artwork, sets of blueprints, and prints of screen-graphics and artwork. I've ordered his booklet of preliminary artwork for the design of the USS Voyager, which he describes:
This is a copy of the original ten-page document given to the producers so that they could give us an idea of the basic direction they wanted for the ship design. The show bible talked about a leaner, meaner, smaller ship, and this first collection of sketches got the ball rolling. The sheets include a text discussion of the ship, various side, top, and perspective views, plus a look at the "Manta" shuttle that became the unused AeroShuttle. There are two additional sheets of Voyager art as it would eventually appear in the five foot miniature...
As you might have gathered from some of my other coverage, I'm somewhat enamoured by starship production art, so I'd say there's a good chance this wont be the last of these booklets Mr Sternbach tempts me with.

Below (and continuing after the jump) are a few of my favourite pieces from the booklets and prints currently on offer. These first three (and the image above) are from the booklets, the first two from the Voyager one described above, followed by a runabout concept, and plans for the damage to Voyager in Year of Hell, the latter from a three-book set of Voyager production information.


Here are a few of the blueprint sheets on offer. Here a cross-section of Deep Space 9, plus plans for the USS Equinox and Delta Flyer:


These two are prints of screen-graphics as seen on the sets of Voyager and the Valdore:


And here are a selection of starship art prints:


Having also worked on many Star Trek publications, a few of the items on offer are also derived from that work, including this print of the Klingon Bird of Prey cutaway from the Haynes Klingon Manual:


And that leads me to neatly segue into something I found on Sternbach's Facebook account. Here's is a mock-up cover for a proposed USS Voyager book in the Haynes Manual series. Apparently this was submitted to Haynes early last year, and from the sound of more recent posts hasn't tempted Haynes to publication yet. I hope they eventually decide to go for it though, the same detailed treatment of Voyager as the Bird of Prey got, would be amazing.





3 comments:

Destructor1701 said...

Re: Haynes Voyager Manual

I'd rather they gave the Enterprises the treatment they deserve first - starting with the original, a series of books covering every incarnation.

The existing Haynes Enterprise manual is a massive disappointment - inaccurate, vague, and the CG models used for the illustrations, not to mention the cutaway drawings, are far from the best available.

A real let-down.

Brandon's Blog said...

I've always loved the early sketches of the Voyager.

JSkagnetti said...

Awww I was hoping these were the real deal and not copies and replicas.

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