Fiddling about in Photoshop

I occasionally mess around with Photoshop – I would classify myself as “crap at it”, but for my complete lack of skills, I am quite pleased with what I manage to pull together sometimes.

For example, ages ago, I tried to mock up a teaser poster for the new Star Trek film, and put things like the novelization and the soundtrack on the credits. With the official announcement of the book, I went back to fix it, and then ended up creating another one using MadMan’s brilliant from-scratch rendering of the new-Ent. And here they are (click to enlarge, obviously):

(The first one, of course, uses Gabriel Koerner’s “reimagined” Ent).

I know they’re nowhere near as good as this, but I quite like them.

SCOT*E

Empire Online has been doing these poster mashups for a few weeks now. This week, it was the turn of Star Trek. Most of them were utter rubbish – but the winner was absolutely fantastic.

I give you… SCOT*E!

Suiting up…

You know, I’ve always wanted to own a Star Trek uniform.

I’m quite proud of the fact that I happen to own a screen-original uniform from season 2 of seaQuest DSV. But the Trek uniform has long eluded me. Back in the mid 90s, Rubies Costumes and Warp One were the people producing the replica uniforms. I was too young to be able to afford one back then, and I’ve always seemed to miss the command division uniforms on eBay since. Of course, a screen-original uniform would be far too expensive, as has been seen from the It’s A Wrap! auctions over the last couple of years.

Anyway, the point of this post was to note that Rubies now has the license to produce uniforms based on the new Star Trek movie, and they’re available to preorder in the UK already. And they look pretty good. There are two versions available: “Deluxe” (which makes little sense, as it’s the basic version) and “Grand Heritage”. Now, the Grand Heritage is a mite too pricey for my liking (£80), but the Deluxe (£40) just might be worth the purchase. I’ll have to see them in better detail first, though.

They can be preordered from Forbidden Planet here, with a release date of 31st July. Pictures below.

Deluxe Command uniform

Grand Heritage Command uniform

A little rarity…

As I was browsing through the Star Trek Magazine Archives (preview; review), I discovered something I’d been trying to get my hands on for quite some time.

When Season 4 of Deep Space Nine premiered on video, a special piece of artwork was commissioned for “The Way of the Warrior“. This artwork appeared on the cover and inside gatefold of CIC Video‘s volume 4.1. It was also used to advertise the new release. A little while back, I wanted to try and track the artwork down. I knew there was a copy of it on the back cover of one of the older Star Trek Monthly issues, but, as I have mentioned previously, those are currently several hundred miles away.

Of course, with the new CD-ROM archive, that was no longer the case. And I was delighted when I discovered that the archives included the back covers as well as the main content. And that the issue I was looking for was in the first volume.

So, I present to you a little gem – the promotional artwork for “The Way of the Warrior”, as printed on the back cover of Star Trek Monthly issue 12:

 

One of the things I would really like to know is who actually drew the image, and whether it was used to promote the episode in the States.

I have also made two wallpaper-sized versions for you to download and enjoy!

Downloads

• 1024×768 (270 kB)
• 1280×1024 (390 kB)

The missing piece of the puzzle…

After what has felt like quite some time, a hole in the 2009 Trek literature schedule has been filled, as the novelization of the new Star Trek movie has finally been announced:

http://trekmovie.com/2009/02/12/alan-dean-foster-writing-star-trek-movie-adaptation/

As the title of the link says, renowned author Alan Dean Foster will be adapting the movie for prose. It will be a trade paperback, and will be out at roughly the same time as the movie itself.

In a quick Photoshop session, I made the image at right to celebrate…

 

Review – Exploring the Archives

Last week, I told you all about the new Star Trek Magazine – The Archives, and said my order had already been placed. Well, it arrived on Tuesday, and, after a few moments of confusion about what the package was (since I hadn’t actually received an email confirmation that everything was OK with my transaction), I got on with the task of exploring the product.

Each issue has been carefully scanned and reproduced, with the exception of the comic strips that were originally featured in these early issues – licensing and copyright issues have prevented that. The interface is fairly basic, essentially a navigation frame built over a PDF document, but this release isn’t really about the programming, but the content. This first volume covers what many consider to be the “peak” of Star Trek in terms of popularity and impact – the mid 1990’s, between the launch of Voyager and the release of Star Trek: First Contact.

Admittedly, there are some gripes, like the fact that the text doesn’t quite display properly – the fonts seem slightly reduced, making them harder to read as a result. Also, the “copyright restrictions” message on the comic strips is reasonable, but does it have to be displayed in place of every single page? Why not just have one page with the message on, and then skip to after the end of the strip? Otherwise, it is extremely hard to navigate past it, as you don’t really know how many pages you’ve skipped, and how many more there are before the magazine appears again. Obviously, this isn’t an issue that has to be corrected for Volume 2, since this volume contains the only issues to include comic strips, and the restriction isn’t likely to be needed again (unless there’s an issue with the novel extracts…). The navigation menu – being set up by type of feature, rather than just the order in the magazine – is not all that helpful to navigate, as it happens, particularly if you want to jump past the comic strip (since you can’t tell what the first feature after it is).

Still, regardless of all that, it is a brilliant product, which does exactly what it says on the tin, and certainly will be of interest to those who crave background information on the various series. Volume 2 cannot come soon enough for me.