Shaw's 2D stuff

[Shaw]

Since the site is starting over, I'm going to pretend that I haven't shared any of this stuff with you guys before.

My background is in mathematics and physics. My main areas of interest are differential topology (immersions of manifolds and homotopy theory) and general relativity. What some people find odd is that I'm actually not that good at math... I'm barely passible in most cases. What I was good at was visualization of geometric and topological concepts. I could see (mentally) things that were happening in complex immersions/embeddings, even beyond 3 dimensions. And in a lot of cases, I would work backwards from what I was visualizing to putting down the mathematical expressions because it was easier for me.

But that was years (decades) ago. I still practice visualization because it is good exercise and fun (and sometimes produces stuff that is esthetically pleasing... at least to me). Every few years or so I'll sit down with pencil and paper and draw out an immersion of the Real Projective Plane into Euclidean three-space.

Here are a few examples...

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There are other ways to do this. Back when I was at the National Science Foundation's Geometry Center we had an application that let us do it with a polyhedral version...

Click images to enlarge

Which is why I keep some pretty old computers around (for example, I can't afford a current version of Mathematica, and for me there is nothing wrong with the copy of version 3.0 that I own).

And there are nicer generic smooth versions of this immersion, like this one...

But the problem with computer generated versions is that it takes the work out of visualizing the surface. Passively looking at something isn't the same as being personally responsible for every aspect of a surface.


Okay, enough of the math stuff...

I don't think I recall sharing some of my more recent art, like the start of my 2243 plans of the Enterprise.

Click images to enlarge

And my rank braids and insignias.

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It is all just stuff I was playing around with.

[scifieric]

It is all just stuff I was playing around with.

Holy mackerel!  That's fantastic!  I don't remember ever seeing you do Rank and Insignia!  Plus the Enterprise, and of course, the multi-dimensional visualizations.

Very cool.

[Lee]

Some very cool stuff Shaw, Nice work!

[scifidude79]

Great work on everything. I especially like those 2243 plans.

[Shaw]

Thanks guys!

I'm hoping to get back to the 2243 plans eventually... along with 2235 plans of the Eagle (NCC-956) that use an earlier variation on the secondary hull. The idea is that the starship class is the equivalent of a Coast Guard Cutter. And the main difference between the Enterprise and Eagle would be similar to the difference between, say, the first couple versions of the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers (which had landing pads but no hangar storage) and later versions which could maintain two helicopters in their hangars. The Enterprise (with the undercut below the hangar deck) wasn't originally meant to maintain shuttlecraft onboard, where as the Eagle (with no undercut) had a small compliment of shuttlecraft. Of course sometime in the mid 2260s the Enterprise was modified to support her own compliment of shuttlecraft (which maybe hadn't arrived by the episode "The Enemy Within").

The rank and insignia stuff is for that far off goal of doing a technical manual someday... as if I don't already have enough unfinished projects.

[scifieric]

I love it when fans put that much thought into what they are doing.  Awesome!

[Shaw]

I had been under the weather recently, so I couldn't work on any model stuff. What I could do was play in Photoshop, so I started in on a set of calendar desktops for 2020. Here are some of the images I'm considering...

Click to enlarge

And here are the few that I'm pretty sure are done...

Click images to enlarge

[Freak]

Nice

[scifidude79]

I'm sorry to hear you haven't been feeling well, Shaw. The images look great, though.

[scifieric]

I had been under the weather recently, so I couldn't work on any model stuff. What I could do was play in Photoshop, so I started in on a set of calendar desktops for 2020. Here are some of the images I'm considering...

And here are the few that I'm pretty sure are done...

Shaw!  Those are BEAUTIFUL!

I'm sorry you haven't been feeling well.  I hope you feel better and soon.

Thank you for sharing your work with us.  Absolutely splendid.

[Shaw]

Thanks guys!

I was looking for some of the older images of my models (my camera isn't very reliable right now) and came across some of my early notes on how I planned to build my 33 inch Enterprise replica from 2012. The notes included my future plans... after finishing the 33 inch replica I was going to start in on the Phase II Enterprise.

If you guys know me, you know how nuts I am for the TOS Enterprise in general and the 33 inch model specifically. So you might be wondering what could have happen to make me shelve the 33 inch replica until after the Phase II Enterprise.

Brick Price contacted me. Yeah, right out of the blue. That was enough to move the Phase II Enterprise to the front of the line.

And the 33 inch replica almost got further delayed when I nearly got some parts (primary hull, secondary hull and nacelles) cast from the original molds for the 5.5 foot Phase II studio model. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) I wasn't able to get together the funds to acquire those parts.

Anyways, if I get my camera working well enough again, I might try taking some new images of my Phase II Enterprise to replace the ones for the months that are using that model now.

[Shaw]

The 2020 finalists!

Click image to enlarge

[scifieric]

Brick Price contacted me. Yeah, right out of the blue. That was enough to move the Phase II Enterprise to the front of the line.

The 2020 finalists!

Brick Price?!?!  Wow!

That's awesome!  And your images are spectacular!

[Shaw]

So I was thinking about the fact that, even though I recreated illustrations of Jefferies' original plans of the Enterprise, I hadn't copied his layout or included his notations. So, for the fun of it, here is a recreation of the layout with readable versions of the notations.

Click to enlarge (1.7 MB)

I included the windows (some of which were later added to Datin's copy of the plans), and sections of the original sheet were missing (cut out for use while building the 33 inch model), but I think this replicates the feel of how the plans looked.

[scifieric]

Shaw, this is EXQUISITE!  Thank you for sharing it with us!