Friday 5 August 2016

The art of Starbase Yorktown, from Sean Hargreaves and Milena Zdravkovic

My new favourite thing in the entire Star Trek multiverse is Starbase Yorktown; that staggeringly beautiful structure is one of the most amazing creations to ever grace the screen, and a perfect icon of the Federation utopia. Indeed, designer Sean Hargreaves put that rather perfectly when I talked to him about it:
Yorktown was what Roddenberry's entire source material was about. Living together in harmony, with other planets and cultures we have all discovered.
As a big fan of the design, I am of course really pleased that Sean has shared much of his artwork from the production of Star Trek Beyond, which details how he and other artists created this beautiful thing.

Let's start on the outside, with the outer doors that let starships fly into the very heart of the base. The first image here shows an earlier iteration of the design, which was later widened.



This next sequence continues the Enterprise's journey inside the base, showing the staggering scale, and glimpses of that lovely see through quality of the design that makes the cities visible from within the arms, and lets ships travelling within be seen under the waterways in the arms.





Here's another interior image, this one of the USS Franklin manoeuvring around the central area of the starbase.


The air-side of that central area is perhaps the most amazing part of the whole station, where different planes of gravity collide in dizzying fashion. Sean described what is going on here, and how he worked with others to create it:
This oxygen fan and 4 gravity plane area was a collaboration between myself and Art Director Dan Hermansen. Milena Zdravkovic also did a beautiful rendering with more green and trees. I always thought of this as an industrial hub. Dan Designed the Cool circular room at the end of the film where the fight takes place, known as the 'Zero Point Chamber'. Note the 2 Dubai Burg buildings on the right which were an agreement between the production and Dubai as we were shooting there.

And here is that other greener version, from Milena Zdravkovic:


Leading to this central point are those huge arms, with cities built along them. They are apparently 17.5 miles long!



And finally, lets travel to another strange new world from the film. Sean has also shared the following image from the prologue of the film, what would eventually become the planet Teenax. It seems the joke on scale was played to an even greater extent early on:
Heres an early image of Kirk on the opening planet, before script changes. The planet was sulfurous and bubbly at this early point in the script. The creatures were even smaller and lived in these termite like growths. Kirk puts his hand in and........

I will be posting more production artwork from Star Trek Beyond in the coming days, including a very special ship also designed by Sean Hargreaves. To keep track of all the latest information on the film, including other behind the scenes coverage, visit my Star Trek Beyond guide page.

Sean meanwhile has made some of his work publicly viewable on his Facebook profile, and you can see more of his wider portfolio on his website.



7 comments:

mark bernero said...

I like it better with the green spaces--it was definately lacking those.

mark bernero said...

It looks like the spacedock openings will have to be widened when JJ-Enterprise-D is in the fleet!

Chris said...

The question I'm still really curious about, is the entire interior of the station open air? Or are the cities on the arms protected somehow? I didn't see anything in the movie that would have protected anyone from a single breach in the huge outer shell. Other than running into the buildings I suppose. Really just curious, not trying to criticize, I love the design.

Dwight Williams said...

Keep in mind that the outer shell is transparent to visible light, but it's also likely made of substances several orders of magnitude more durable than even modern-day NASA/RusCosmos-specs safety glass. In the galaxy where "transparent" aluminum is a materials science reality...well, the implications are left to the audience.

Unknown said...

Do we have any information regarding how the rings interact with each other? Maybe some schematics?

Unknown said...

Ok, so we have the design and a 3 dimensional interpretation of how this would look including some of its fictional operations. When can we get started making this beautiful design a reality!? I think it would be many years in the making but I think it looks like a realistic achieveable goal. Ok we don't have all the technology yet but it's only been roughly 30 years since the conception of the datapad and now many of us have something similar in our hands. Comm badges are also a reality via Bluetooth so why can't this be the next goal for humanity!? This could potentially be an answer to humanities overpopulation problems. The potential possiblities from where we could go from there are endless!

Unknown said...

Where does the bright light come from? Does the transparent outer shell of Yorktown emitt light like a solar panel?

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