STAR TREK
STAR TREK: PRODIGY, the Protostar design
THE SHIP
Back in 2019, Director Ben Hibon approached NUEN STUDIO and art director Gia Nguyen with the idea of designing something for the next Trek show, PRODIGY. Little did we know, that idea turned out to be the next iconic Trek ship, the USS PROTOSTAR!
We love his work from other animated projects i.e Harry Potter and League of Legends, so it’s been a thrill for us to work with him on our first Star Trek project, more of his work can be seen here.
Ben Hibon initially assigned us to the command bridge design.
Eventually, Ben let us work together with him in continuing to flesh out the design of the whole ship, inside out, from the most basic layout of the ship interior to the smallest props!
The very first sketches we worked on based on Ben’s idea!
THE SHIP EXTERIOR DESIGN
Let’s begin the showcase with the Protostar design. John Eaves did some ‘very early exploration’ with Ben Hibon at the start of the pre-production, but once we moved into production we quickly changed direction and started finding the ship design together. The team started making line drawings over some early 3D block-out to kick off the development process of the ship design.
The main idea was to make the ship look different from the rest of the Star Fleet, a prototype in making, a very sleek ship, small, and nimble ship.
Gia Nguyen and Director Ben Hibon worked back and forth together through many rounds of sketches and 3D block-out, keeping the essential elements and making it sleeker and hi-tech. The Nacelles always play a big role in a Trek ship so we spend a good amount of time trying to figure it out properly.
Ben had some unique ideas about how the ship will be different, one of them was to have another nacelle that open up in hyper warp jump to speed up the ship to the necessary speed! It was initially being called simply the third nacelle, besides the 2 main nacelles
The Protostar Warp Drive is the most surprising element that drew the attention of the Trek geeks since the reveal of the main title sequence.
FINAL DESIGN OF THE WARP DRIVE, it had to look cool looking from every angles!
LANDING GEAR, we came up with several options for the landing gear of the Protostar, eventually, the director chose to go with the center landing option since the ship is small and needs to be landed on different ground conditions.
THE MOVING PARTS, Finally to make sure it would look nice when the warp drive opens and the parts are moving, our team also helped the animation team with designing the mechanical sequence.
We also needed to figure out the RAMP/DOOR that open at the bottom of the ship, lead directly to the cargo bay and served as the main entrance.
Door / Ramp design
Final landing gear design
Trail of light
EXPERIMENTS One of the cool parts when working with Ben was that he let us do fun experiments with the ship. Here we tested this idea of having a long trail of light coming from the ship nacelles, which is nicely used for the final animation, and added a nice touch to the ship. The kids love it!
THE SMALL DETAILS COUNT!
Finally we did a round of line art over the final ship block-out, to figure out the final details. This will be handed over to the look dev and texturing team for the final ship model!
Final look dev:
THE RESULT The ship in action beautifully done by the animation team
THE SHIP INTERIOR DESIGN
The main idea when designing the interior was to have an open layout, with the warp drive engine parts run throughout the ship that can be visible at the mid and lower decks, while keeping the upper decks clean and sleek for the captain and crew members areas.
We started first with the Command Bridge, which is the very first assignment we got from director Ben Hibon, even before the ship's exterior. The bridge design ultimately set the mood and tone for the rest of the ship.
THE COMMAND BRIDGE
One of the most iconic elements of a Trek ship must be the Bridge, which is usually featured in many of the main scenes in Trek series.
Gia Nguyen did a line drawing over the 3D block out to give the director a basic look at how the lines flow, the composition, and the basic shapes of the bridge, which highlighted the command chair position.
MORE FUN PART !
After 3D block out, we did some lighting tests for the bridge, showing how the panoramic glass would look in action, with colorful lighting conditions outside.
CAPTAIN CHAIR DESIGN
We did many sketches for the chair, since it would be the most important props in this set, Ben wanted to make it look right!
For the final chair design, we’ve also provided with the 3D model to help speed up the process
Screenshot from the show
FINAL BRIDGE DESIGN we designed the whole bridge to the smallest props!
The final bridge in action! Again beautifully done by the animation team!
Some other designs we did for the Protostar ship.
THE CARGO BAY
Clients: Nickelodeon Animation / Paramount Pictures
Director: Ben Hibon
Executive Producer: Ben Hibon
Associate Producer: Tanya Mendelez
Design Coordinator: Zachary Clarkson
© Paramount Pictures
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Services: Vehicle Design, Prop Design
