Gallery: Featured Artists:
Dean Scott
Space1999.org talked with Dean Scott about his work on the Space: 1999 based Eagle animation.
First of all, as a Space: 1999 fan, we have to ask: What is your favorite episode?
To tell you the truth... I have no idea. Really. I haven't seen any shows since it last aired season 2. I was, but a teenager in high school then and just loved all the cool and never-before-seen special effects realism. Of course, I fell in love with the Eagles. One episode stands out and I never can remember the name. The one where the Eagles started having seals corrode and ended up crashing into dense forested land of a new earth-like planet. Tons of pyro and mounds of dirt flying at the camera! The sound effects were just as cool. I remember taping those sounds from the show on one of those portable cassette recorders and "editing" the sequence back to back using a second machine trying to get a longer loop of that whole crash sequence. (Laughing)
What did you find inspiring about the series?
The never-before-seen realism. The plausibility was backed up by the use of the functional props, sets, and effects models. I mean, of course even back then, the notion of the moon being propelled out of orbit by what's obviously now a microscopic nuclear chain-reaction explosion was silly, as was the idea that the moon's travels would take it so far so fast. But, that was the fiction part of the science and I accepted it as much.
What motivated you to create the animations?
Growing up, my friends and I would play around with our little insta-matic cameras and such, trying to photograph our model kits of the Eagle, Hawk, and Moon Base Alpha (MBA) in such a way as to make them look real. Well, it wasn't much of a success back then, but we had fun setting our Eagles on a dirt mound, getting low to the ground, and pretending this was another planet our imaginary pilot characters had landed on. So, with fond memories of those days gone by, and with many years of professional experience in graphic/photographic arts, and with the unprecedented technology of today to create special visual effects right on one's desktop, well, I couldn't resist the opportunity to "finish" what I started out so long ago... to make an real looking Eagle and make it move and fly... something I wasn't able to do back then.
It was also a self-educational exercise to create something from scratch and make it as detailed as a real physical model. I was always not very happy with the quality of the plastic model kit of the Eagle, so to honor the year 1999, I decided I had to make the best digital model out there, to surpass all the other digital models, to make it as though I were hired by a movie producer.
I think you succeeded. What software tools did you use to create the animations?
I used NewTek's Lightwave 3D 5.6 exclusively to model, texture, light, animate, and render this lift off scene. My Eagle model has just over 250,000 polygons total, split up among 15 or so objects. That is, the cockpit, cargo pod, superstructure, service and engineering modules, engine assembly, and landing pods and gear are all seperate items... just as if you had a plastic model kit. I also used Adobe Photoshop 5.0 to help create some of the surface texturing image maps. For instance, I scanned in a plate of blotchy corroded metal, cleaned it up in PS, made it seemlessly tilable, etc. Another image was made from a piece of white plastic that I scuffed and scratched up using sand paper, a wire brush, and my basement floor, then rubbed black shoe polish on it to make the scratches pop out. This was scanned in and Photoshop'ed into another tilable image that I use on almost all the surfaces to give them a slight bump texture. Several other images were used as well for general "paneling" and dirtying up.
How did the Space: 1999 fan community contribute?
I have to thank Geoffrey Mandel for his first Eagle blueprints published in Starlog #7 magazine way back in 1977. I saved this special pull out and used it heavily in getting the general proportions of my model laid out. Next comes Roberto Baldassari's for his first version blueprints that I found scans of on the internet. He's also to be thanked for his unsolicited contribution of sound effects to my first, two part, silent version of the liftoff animation. I believe I first uploaded the two- part soundless animation to Robert Ruiz's (former) Cybrary site. Roberto got them from there, combined them into a single quicktime movie and added his own soundeffects. To my utter surprise he send me an email regarding his actions and the rest is history! Of course, there are countless other sources such as Coldnorth Publishing's site with all those great close-up shots of the real 44" model from every angle possible that I used for detail reference.
Do you have any pointers/recommendations for people who want to get into CGI work? (Or create animations, such as this?)
My advice...
#1: Do NOT be tempted to get your hands on pirated software. I know, I know... how are you going to learn 3D animation when the price of such products cost thousand's of dollars? Well, there are alternatives. Learning 3D is not a matter of learning software. 3D is a mental accuity that you must develop through applied artisitic drawing and sketching as you observe the real world. No professional software package is going to make you a great 3D artist. Remember, it's the person, NOT the tools.
#2: There are more and more high schools and community colleges that have classes in 3D animation or at least have some type of 3D software at your disposal to learn on once you've "mastered" the artisitc "science" of X, Y, Z, and H, P, B, and R, G, B. Check out your local cable station's public access equipment... they might have 3D, too.
#3: Save your $$ and buy a lowered priced application. Bryce, Hash Animation Master, Inspire (little brother to Lightwave), Ray Dream Studio, and Truespace are apps that are under $500. If you're serious about getting into the field, then this is a very good first step to implementing your previous artistic education.
What was the most challenging aspect of putting together this project?
I have a "motto": Complexity from simplicity. What you see as the end product (the Eagle and launch pad) appears so darn complex as to be impossible to see how such could be created. However, look past the complexity and see the simple shapes. Here a box, there a box. Here a disc, there a disc. Long, short, narrow, wide, thick, thin. Their all there. And, when all joined together... bingo! An Eagle.
So, in reality, because I've learned the tools in the application to perform a seemingly complex procedure, there wasn't really anything difficult about building these models. I approached it in the same way as if I were building a physical one... step, by step... part, by part. Then, of course, you have the property of symmetry. The four landing gear pods and pads are identical, so you only have to make one really good one. The superstructure is mirrored in half, so only the one half has to be made in detail. Same for the service/engineering modules... identical. The cargo pod is a four-way mirror, so only one fourth of it needs to be made well. OK, I'll conceed: The hardest of them all was the cockpit/nose. But again, it, too, is a quad mirror.
Do you have plans to create any additional animations?
Not at the moment. As a self-employed businessman, I wish I had time to devote to personal hobbies like this. When a personal project like this is rendering (since I only have one workstation), any other client projects have to be deferred. Or rather, it's the other way around. Then there's always the need to learn new facets and featues or tools of the software, so priorities like this pretty much place many things on the back burner.
The plan that's on hold now is building a highly detailed digital MBA model. I'm lacking serverly in reference photos and seeing that I'm a perfectionist, I don't feel like improvising the paneling and plating details of the roofs of the buildings. I was only able to find a high quality, high rez image of the Science building roof of the real model and have digitally modeled it in 3D, but as for the other 17 buildings, I'll be waiting for the same quality and number of close-up reference photos from the planned restoration of the actual model as exists for the Eagle. (If you have such photos or reference materials, please contact Dean directly.)
Thanks, Dean!
You can check out Dean's Eagle animation work here. Additionally, his web site is located at http://ns.southern.edu/~dascott. Mr. Scott is an Assistant Professor with the Southern Adventist University, School of Visual Art & Design.
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