This is a partial transcript of the recently released Episode 34, which featured an interview with Perpetual Entertainments Ryan Denning.
The Transcript will be completed at a later stage, very soon!
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Man: Hold it....This looks interesting....Hailing Frequency........Computer do we have this on file?
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Man: Alright....Let’s Hear It
Zach: You are listening to Hailing Frequency, The First Internet Podcast Dedicated to Star Trek Gaming....This is Episode Number 34, Dated Sunday April 1st 2007
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ZACH: Good Evening Folks and Welcome to Episode number 34 of Hailing Frequency. Today we have something a little bit special for you, we are sitting down with Mr Ryan Denning, Lead concept artist for Perpetual Entertainments Star Trek Online, How you doing Ryan?
RYAN DENNING: Doing Great!
ZACH: Great to have you here...First of all, would you please tell us a little bit about yourself?
RYAN DENNING: Well, living in san Francisco, California, from Canada originally, and this is my first time living in San Francisco, before that I was working at an architectural firm in Canada for five years designing theme park related stuff, like Lego in Germany, and various theme parks all over the place, and I guess after doing that for a while I just really...that whole time I guess, when I was younger I loved drawing ships and thinking about that kind of stuff, and I really wanted to get into entertainment art, more than just theme parks, so I quit that, and worked on my portfolio a bit, and then, applied at some game companies, worked at one in Germany for a bit, and that’s where I noticed the post for a Star Trek game at Perpetual, it was pretty exciting when I applied for that....I guess you probably want to know a little bit more before that or......
ZACH: Well, How long have you been an artist?
RYAN DENNING: I guess since a kid, I always loved drawing, umm, then I guess in high school at one point, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, I really loved art but I wanted to get a job to, so I looked into commercial art and all that stuff, so went to school for illustration, technical and scientific illustration at college, um, near Toronto, Ontario, in Canada- so I guess professionally I’ve been working since 2000 I guess, so man I guess it....2007....so coming up on seven year professionally.
ZACH: Ok, and have you working on any game projects previous to star trek Online?
RYAN DENNING: Yeah...I worked on one for a bit in Germany...at a company called Acne....I don’t know...That game is not out yet or anything like that, yeah, it was more of a realistic type of game, it wasn’t really up my alley, like I said, I think perpetual is really the first...definitely the first kind of game I would love to work on, I have a bit of experience in games.....the stuff before the architecture firm where I worked for like 5 years, is very similar in a lot of ways...I did allot with concept illustration and in its own way, the designing everything from props at parks, to signs, to how things are going to look, so there’s allot of crossover there, but yeah, this is my second actual game project...
ZACH: Ok and would you say that you're a fan of Star Trek?
RYAN DENNING: Oh yeah! Love star trek, when I was a kind I used to watch it with my dad, the classic, I used to like Kirk fighting the Gorn and all that great stuff, and I was always....I was a big star trek and star wars fan, I remember also when the next generation showed up ,such a big event, we all went over to....my neighbours had a bunch of people over, the opening one, they had an hour special beforehand so when that show came on I mean, that was really exiting, the way they realised that ship ,and for me, I loved drawing space ships, and as soon as the technical manual come out, I was all over that, so yeah it was great....I've been a fan of mostly the sci-fi side of the stuff in the shows, and I liked the stories as well, I recently went back and have been re-watching everything, and I really like the show. Some of it I hadn’t seen so much before, like deep space nine, which I know you know you guys probably don’t want to hear, but I’m doing my homework on that one, and I’m really liking that show as well.
ZACH: So what was it like for you as an artist, and as a star trek fan, to be recruited by perpetual to work on star trek online?
RYAN DENNING: Oh man, I was so pumped! Someone pointed it out to me, they said "Hey Ryan, There’s a Star Trek Online game and they’re looking for people" - so I checked it out and applied and crossed my fingers, and hoped to hear back, and when I heard back I was pretty excited - it was the reason I was moving away from doing theme park stuff, I really wanted to...this was the perfect project for me, I was super pumped!
ZACH: So following on from that a little bit, when you got the call from Perpetual telling you that you had got the job, that you had been recruited to work on Star Trek Online, this big project, what was your reaction?
RYAN DENNING: I guess I was...I guessed how big it (STO) was, from the description they had when I went for the interview, how big it was going to be and what they were trying to do, and it got me really excited, and they already had some art on the wall, from a talented guy here called Yung, who was the only guy on the project for a while, and it just all get me even more excited
ZACH: Folks, we are just going to take a short break now and listen to the Star Trek Gaming News, but we'll be back in just a few minutes with more from Ryan Denning, so stay tuned folks!
---------------------Star Trek Gaming News-----------------------
Man: I am Kenneth of Borg, and you are listening to the best Star Trek Gaming Podcast on the internet, Hailing Frequency!
ZACH: OK folks, we are back from the Star Trek Gaming News, and we are still here with Ryan Dening, lead concept artist for Star Trek Online, and joining us from here on in, in the interview, we have the Hailing Frequency Co-Host and artist, Kinneas, how you doing Kinneas?
KINNEAS: Good, Howdy Folks
ZACH: Ok so before the break we was talking about what it was like for Ryan to be recruited by Perpetual, and what it was like when he got the call from Perpetual, so we are going to move on now, and get onto some of the more hot topics that I am sure allot of you out there in the community are waiting to hear about, so, Ryan, We understand from speaking to Daron Stinnett, that you are primarily responsible for the recent concept art that was released at the GDC, these concept images showed off a new star ship design, a planetary temple, and a star base concept, so I guess the first question is, How much of this was your work?
RYAN DENNING: Well the temple was done by a super talented guy on the project called Rob Brown, he did the temple, that was definitely an inspiring image, and the other two, I did, so, the Sacawegea and the space station with the little ship in it, which I love to see the reaction from on the message boards, which is real fun to see.
ZACH: Ok, so can you tell us a little bit about the design process that you go through, from the original ideas that pop into your head, to the final concept images that get released – what are the stages you go through in the development of the idea?
RYAN DENNING: I’ll give you one example, a good example, is one of the main ships we were trying to figure out the look we were going to go for, it was one ship called the Excalibur, it was, first what they had done, it was such a “what are we going to do” – so they had a bunch of different artists submit different ideas, just sketches, shapes and things, with the idea, what is our next flagship going to look like – from there, me and many people on the team talked about it, what we liked, what we didn’t like, from there, we took some of those ideas, and started working on a new group of sketches that sort of distilled down allot of those shapes, and then, from there, we took those sketches, and experimented with some different ends of the spectrum, what we can do, how far can we go, and then talking again with people on the team, and then picking a sketch that really just felt like the right way to go, and then taking that detailed sketch, which is still very loose, and then taking that to the level that we saw on the Sacawegea, which is not that ship, but that sort of level of detail so it can be built – and I would say that since then, I think that one persons kind of on a, whether its a prop or a ship or a character, would do some sort of, explore some different ideas and get reference of what’s been done before, and then looking at doing those quick drawings, to communicate a shape or a feel, and then taking it to the next step, so it’s kind of a bit of a staged process, that allows different people to see what’s working and what’s not.
KINNEAS: Well I am glad you brought up the Excalibur, because people have been going kind of crazy since they read that article over on mmorpg.com about the Excalibur or about the ship with the donut hole idea, or a donut hole saucer...can you explain a bit more about what that means, a saucer with a donut hole?
RYAN DENNING: Well I saw somebody post an image, of a duck with a donut for a head, on one of the boards, so not it doesn’t look like a big donut, I think the idea is, if you took....not every ship has a hole in it, just some of them, it’s just something john eves wanted to try out, and we were like, “Go For It” – If you took one of the ships, I’m just going to throw out a name, the sovereign class maybe, and you took out around where the bridge is, and you took out that sort of section that comes up to where the phaser banks are on the inside, around to where the bridge and armour come in, if you took that out and put some windows on the inside there, or taking maybe a science ship that’s a bit smaller than that, that might have some sort of a bridge in the middle, and then a ring, that they may been to use for various purposes, and I think mostly it was to give us some different shapes in the game, because we are doing a lot of ships, allot of old familiar faces and allot of new ships, and to really get the feel or silhouette of the ships when your flying around, we really need to see some new ships, so it was really exciting to see john bring those out, and put some holes in some ships – and they are very cool looking, don’t worry about that – when I heard donut I thought that sounded chunky and gross....but err....
KINNEAS: Well Mr Lloyd who did the article over on MMORPG.com was really impressed by what he saw; the excitement in his article really came through about the images he was able to see.
RYAN DENNING: Yeah the Excalibur is a pretty exciting ship, for us, it was really a big deal, because it was just ,everybody looked at it and it was like, this is definitely the way we want to go, and I guess....I could try and describe it if you like, do we have time for that?
ZACH: Please yes, go ahead!
RYAN DENNING: Ok Well, I don’t know if I should tell you that....umm......*laughs*....yeah, well it’s the ship that’s in that little blur, that’s the Excalibur, I think some people were trying to figure out what it was, so yeah that’s the Excalibur...you can’t see much of it there, but I guess one of the big things we did was, I know that allot of fans are not gunner be happy, and some will be happy, we took a bit further some of the...you know on the....the shape of it, I’ll talk about the shape, the shape of it is more...Daron has talked about it having a bulldog kind of pose, it’s a big more of an imposing....I guess this ship is really meant to be a battleship – not every ship is a battleship, we have science ships, and engineering ships, and ships of various different shapes and sizes depending on their purposes, but this particular ship is a battleship, so we gave it a more aggressive pose, and we went back to that saucer that’s a bit more like, not so much stretched back, but a bit more like the galaxy class, not as big as that saucer, but that kind of....the other way....it’s like an oval, an ellipse, it’s a bit more, geez I don’t know....perpendicular to the rest of the ship...so that was the first thing, getting the overall shape of it, and then getting into the panelling and the details, we sort of took some of the hues from the defiant, and a little bit from voyager....I’ve never been to happy with voyager, and I am sorry if that upsets anybody, but it do like that they had all these sensor bays, exposed sensor bays, and what was cool was that even on the galaxy class, you never saw that, because it was so big, but when you saw the close-ups of the rings, umm, the windows along the err....the edge of that, when you see the close up, you allot of the sensor stuff hidden in there, so what we were trying to do, we make it look a bit more visually interesting for gamp lay, because you’re going to be looking at the back of the ship allot.....
KINNEAS: That sounds good!
RYAN DENNING: Yeah, just adding a bit more of these open areas, and also taking cues from the enterprise e, which had this really kind neat second layer of armour, it looked like, over the back...flowing back from the bridge, so trying to pull a bit of that in, but making it a bit more...slightly...aggressive, but not...I mean don’t freak out – not aggressive in the sense of insane but just a bit more strong feeling than has been done before, so there’s a bit of an open spine down the back, and there’s talk about maybe, when I was designing it, I was thinking that they have ablative armour now, and maybe that would fill in, but I’m not sure how far were going with that, because of technical limitations with the game ,but it does look...I mean...I’m a fan of the galaxy class, so its kind of a smaller version of the galaxy class but a bit tougher looking.
KINNEAS: Going back to the other class, the one in the drawing, the Sacawegea class, was that an evolution of the fast patrol ship? (From Starfleet battles)
RYAN DENNING: That one there, well, you know, were like 20 years after nemesis, so, allot has happened, and also, because this game has so many ships, we have to come up with allot of ships, so for the fiction of it, the federation maybe had allot of the designs in mothballs, kind of like the defiant how it got put away and Sisko had to bring it back, so maybe they had allot of these designs on their plate, so some of them are supposed to feel a bit closer to that 20 year gap, but we didn’t see it, and some of them should feel a bit more like, brand new and more advanced. So it’s going to, I was kind of taking a bit of the defiant detailing, you will notice on the front there’s those little openings, like of the top of the defiant, with sensors in, and some of the panel cuts too, but at the same time too, I was trying to keep with that little, runabout kind of chunky feel, so t was kind of a mix of different ideas to try and get a ship that was one of the smallest in this game, and the idea, I was reading on some of the boards about, some people like the nacelles popping out some people don’t, I guess to me it was just, it’s truly cool when stuff can move, but also I figure that this thing needs pretty fast warp nacelles so it can get around like the other ships in the game, so we don’t kill the people on board, I thought it was pretty important to pull those out a bit.
KINNEAS: I thought it was a really great design for a fa....well I thought it was a fast patrol ship and that’s what I think of it as, so yeah, wanting the ability to pull you nacelles in close, or even under the amour, since you’re going to potentially be doing heavy combat.
RYAN DENNING: Yeah, that we the other point, bringing them in at impulse when you’re fighting battles, you don’t want....because that’s one of the things about the....the big ships it doesn’t feel so crazy because they’re on big supports, but it’s always been kind of crazy that this really important part of your ship has been hanging of the back and really exposed, so making it really like the defiant with the nacelles in close, that we one of the concerns too, for battle purposes, another thing about battle, I don’t know if you guys...I noticed some talk about the weapons on the ship, and one of the interesting concerns we have in the game, is we kind of have to have 360 degree combat possibilities, when you’re playing ,so, it’s very difficult to just have some phasers on the front, for firing, we kind of have to cover out bases, so that’s why you will see allot of phaser strips on that ship, to cover all its angles, so it can fire at any angle.
KINNEAS: I love it!
ZACH: So in essence, in order to cover the combat aspects of the game, we are going to see perhaps ships allot more heavily armed visually, than they have been in the past in Star Trek – is that correct?
RYAN DENNING: Yes and no, I think you will see some ships are way more heavily armed because things have changed, there’s a reason why the federation had to pull out all these ships – things have happened and they really had to bump up their arsenal....
ZACH: The Bimphalians Perhaps
RYAN DENNING: Err...No Comment!
KINNEAS: Well it seems like an opportunity after the old technical manuals, which describe ships with allot more phaser banks and photon banks, it seemed this game can approach what couldn’t be done on film or TV.
RYAN DENNING: Well on bigger ships it won’t seem so apparent, because if you think about the bigger ships, even the sovereign class, it’s got, different photon torpedo banks, forward and rear facing, phaser strips, all around...all over it, the same with the galaxy class, it could fire from any angle, and hit any ship at any angle, so on allot of ships you won’t notice much of a difference, but on smaller ships because they’re so small and compact surfaced, in order to get those weapons on there, it’s going to be pretty obviously different....I mean...I don’t know about you guys but I was really happy in deep space nine when they got the defiant, because watching those runabouts trying to defend things, they seemed to be ill-equiped for such things....
ZACH: The Defiant always looked bad-ass to me!
RYAN DENNING: Yeah, when that showed up I was pretty pumped!
KINNEAS: Well i am a Starfleet battles kind of guy, so the more combat for a guy like me, combat in small ships....
RYAN DENNING: You don’t have to worry about those! We also have engineering ships and science ships with various purposes, and even medical ships, stuff like that – to fill those other guys who don’t want to go around shooting stuff up all the time, there’s some other exciting designs!
ZACH: I think that statement is something that’s probably made allot of people jump for joy! It’s something we weren’t sure about in the past....
RYAN DENNING: Well its difficult for me to answer because I am not a game designer on the project, so I don’t know how the game is going to go, but I know that I’ve got a list of ships in front of me, tonnes of ships, allot of ships from different races, and some of these are science ships, some are medical ships, some are tactical ships, various ships....
KINNEAS: Somebody on the Boards is going to be very happy to hear you say medical ships! They just started a topic the other day over on STOnet
RYAN DENNING: I don’t know how many of those we are going to have, that are solely devoted to medical, but we definitely have an old friend in there...
ZACH: I’m thinking the good old medical class from “All Good Things”
RYAN DENNING: I don’t know whether I like that ship but it’s definitely classic, so we got to get that one in there somewhere
ZACH: Ok So, just to close of this section, of the interview for now, I’d like to ask, from beginning concept to the final concept, to the final, modelled, in game vessel, how significant would you say the changes are from, final concept, to in game ship, allot of changes, or just some minor tweaks?
RYAN DENNING: You know, it’s interesting, because, I would say pretty much just like the concept – the Sacawegea for instance, I mean it looks just the same, it’s got moving nacelles and everything – there are minor changes that happen just because, as they are making the model, they may see something that’s “Oh you know what, let’s cut that part out because its hurting us” – but apart from that, ships look pretty spot on, for instance, the Sacawegea, that you saw, it looks just like that. It’s a big priority on the project, we have allot of great people on the concept team so everyone wants to stick to it as much as they can.
ZACH: Ok that’s good to hear! Folks, what we are going to do now is just take another short break and play one of our usual segments, I think we’ll go for mod weekly here, so we’ll go over to Croesus for some mod weekly , and we’ll be back, very shortly, with more from Ryan Denning, Lead Concept Artist for Star Trek Online, so enjoy the break people, and we’ll be back soon!
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Posted on: April 07, 2007, 07:31:32 PM
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Enara: You’re listening to Hailing Frequency, the Hottest Podcast on the Internet
Zach: Ok Folks we are back from mod weekly, I hope you enjoyed that, with Croesus, Be sure to post him some feedback over on our forums at www.hailingfrequency.co.uk/boards So we are still here with Ryan Dening, and I am going to let Kinneas take the opening question for this section, as he brought up a rather interesting subject in the interlude, so Kinneas please.
KINNEAS: Alright, well one of the big things with MMO’s, is how do you treat the source materiel – on the ship designs, how closely are these going to be following let’s say Starfleet technical manuals or the Franz Joseph books – are they going to be sticking to canon?
RYAN DENING: Ok Well, that’s a good question, What we’re....I mean, for me, I think I said earlier, when I was younger, I picked up that Technical manual for the galaxy class ship, and I love that thing, I read that thing, got lost somewhere in there, and it’s funny to learn later at memory alpha how much it’s not actually considered canon, because there are some discrepancies with what was on the show and stuff, and I found that kind of interesting, but for the most part, for me it’s a big deal to try and get as much of that stuff on a ship, and also at the same time, trying to think of things that maybe have changed, or little things that have to do with game play, but also there is a time constraint that we have when doing these things, because we have allot of stuff to draw in a short amount of time, and I know on the show they had short time as well, but when they did bring out a new ship, it was a pretty big deal, and, so, I definitely try to keep as much of that stuff in there, I definitely think about the little....you know....I guess, imp just thinking about the Sacawegea, what’s on there, there’s some sensor pads, and torpedoes and stuff, depending on the size of the ship, and trying to remain as canon as possible, but like I said, it can be kind of difficult – for me half the fun is getting that stuff in there, and it’s also what makes it feel trek – but it is kind of weird, because over the years, the changes between the ships, the galaxy class and the enterprise e and the defiant, there’s such a.....even within those ships, they seem to be breaking their own rules sometimes, so its picking from that a bit and trying to add what you can – and I think that some ships you may wonder what we've done, because we haven’t labelled this stuff, which may be fun to go back to one day and really go through these drawings and properly label them ,because when we do these concepts we can’t label all the little details, we only label things that are going to be pertinent to the modeller who is going to build it, so if we put too much stuff on their it gets confusing for them, but it would be fun to go back and label allot of this stuff.
KINNEAS: that would be fantastic
RYAN DENING: Yeah I mean, we’ll see time, because there’s so many ships, but the fun thing is I know that the people out there, will take them, and do it themselves also, which is what’s truly great about that, the fan community, they do that already, and I think that most of the details on allot of these ships, comes from fans that are really filling this stuff out and figuring out where stuff went, and it’s also neat to look at ex-astris-scientia. I forget how to say it, but they got this section about treknology where they go and try to figure out what could happen, so it’s definitely something that were mindful of, and definitely something that I try to get in as much as possible, but making it visually interesting is the primary thing for me, and I think, you know, it’s got to look good overall, and I think that’s the big challenge, making it look good and making it feel like a star trek ship, because there’s so many shapes, and something on a ship, the thing that brings it down to star trek is all the little details, so yeah, so some ships you’ll notice that have allot of old stuff, escape pods that look like the ones from the sovereign class, and sometimes you’ll see some that are visually from another ship, or sometimes they are hidden under panelling, and sometimes people will wonder, where is that thing, and sometimes I am thinking, you know, well maybe they found a way to hide it under the armour, because it’s important to hide that stuff and still have it work, but its definitely something that’s fun to see in the forums, and say ok, you know, maybe on sometimes you might need to be a bit more clear, but you know, there’s only so much time!
ZACH: Absolutely, I certainly understand the time limitations!
KINNEAS: Well hopefully this will be the MMO for star trek for the next 40 years, so plenty of time!
****Everyone Laughs****
RYAN DENING: You guys are definitely going to have allot...it s funny, I was thinking , if they are talking this much about one ship, and also about the blurry ship on the space station, people are going to, you know, there’s so much new stuff, and there’s so many cool ships, john eaves has done some really awesome stuff, so it’s pretty exciting, it’s hard to contain it all, it was really fun that we had some people tour around, and when new people come on and see what we’re doing, people are really excited, so I can’t wait to share more stuff with you guys!
KINNEAS: Hey speaking of john eaves, at some point in the show, we were going to mention that STOnet, a website for Star Trek Online, they just did their first podcast and had an interview with john eaves!
RYAN DENING: Yeah john was here!
KINNEAS: it was a fantastic interview!
RYAN DENING: Yeah johns a fantastic guy, really talented, and it was a real opportunity for me, as you can imagine, a fan of star trek, to look at drawings from a guy like john eaves, that was the stuff that, I wasn’t even doing college and he was working on star trek, so you know, just to actually get a chance to work with him and chat with him, was a really exciting opportunity for me, and I think everyone on the concept team, a real thrill to work with the master himself!
KINNEAS: I think it’s just great that they have veterans from star trek working in there!
RYAN DENING: Oh yeah, its super important for us, it’s a Star Trek Game, that’s a big thing, it’s a game, and that’s what some people need to know, you know, were trying to make this a good game, so something’s you know, we have excellent writer who are fan of star trek who will may it fit the fiction as much of they can, but you know, to have somebody like john eaves in here and lead the charge on that...
ZACH: Hey, if anybody wants to check out the interview STOnet did with John eaves, head over to www.stocast.net and you can listen to the interview they did with john there. So moving on a bit, and onto one of our next questions – a little bit deep this one is, so don’t be intimidated, but, as it was put to us by Daron Stinnett, you are pretty much the man, you are your team are in charge of taking star trek in to the 25th century – evolving the entire design and concept of star trek, forward in a way that not only has to be true to what people have seen in the past, but also in a way that’s going to be accepted by the fans, so, for any artist, no matter how skilled, that’s got to be such a daunting concept, - so how does it feel to be the man charged with taking star trek into the 25th century?
RYAN DENING: “Laughs” Well you know, that is a big question, it’s definitely something I think about, but I mean, we are such a talented team here, with such great individuals, on the whole team, so that makes it a heck of a lot easier to think about, knowing that there’s so much talent that we have here at perpetual – so that makes it allot easier – but as far as moving it from the old into the new and making it so the fans are, you know, love it just as much as we do, you know, the first thing is, I am a fan myself, we are all fans here, and were trying to make....we want to see this look awesome too, so I think taking.....looking at the old since I am a fan, my favourite is the original series, I love the classic trek, and I love those characters, but you know, so I have a love for the whole range – I wouldn’t say the old enterprise is my favourite ship, but I have a great respect for all the series and stuff, so having such ha great library of stuff to pull from is great – and evolving it too the next stage, I guess there, one of the things is, we are not super far in the future, so it’s not like the enterprise-j, I don’t know what you guys thought of that ship, but I wasn’t too pumped about it, but were not like THAT far ahead, so I think that trying to keep it in the realm, I think is gong to make allot of fans happy because it’s not THAT distant, it’s not totally different – I mean were definitely doing stuff that’s not on the show, because being a game we have the opportunity to do things that couldn’t do in the movies or the TV show, on TV they were so restricted, especially the characters, but we have a guy here, young, he did a Gorn, which was written about in one of the recent articles, but no one’s seen it yet, but he has taken the guy in the rubber suit, even the one they did in enterprise series, which I wasn’t that impressed with, and has done an awesome job with that – of just making this guy feel like, I think he should off even in the original, like he is an alien, and he has got this sort of reptilian feel, so, I mean I am excited, and I think the fans will be excited with what they see, and I am not too stressed out about it, I remember I was talking to john eaves about that problem because it’s pretty big, because he did it with the enterprise e, he was talking about how fans were very unhappy with that ships, so I think it’s a funny thing to think about, but all I can do is try to make something super exciting and visually exciting so that when players get in there, I mean, maybe there’s a bit of a bump for some fans who were expecting to see the TV show, but I think it will be easy to get over, because this stuff looks so great, but, don’t know, does that answer your question?
KINNEAS: I thought so
ZACH: Yes it does answer it quite well, and it leads into the next thing we were going to ask, extending the original question, In the past with Star Trek, from the 22nd century through the 23rd and into the 24th Century’s, we have seen a very logical advancement in terms of the look of Star Trek - however on the big screen, the changes we have seen in Star Trek have been jumps - from TOS into TMP, into TNG and onwards, and I think that, with Star Trek Online being set 20 years after Nemesis, it stands to reason that there might be another significant jump forward in terms of look........So therefore, what do you anticipate some of the major visual changes will be in terms of star ship design?
RYAN DENING: I think that one of the ones that we touched on before, is we are going to see ships that look at bit more battle oriented, just because that’s been the big lacking part of the federations arsenal, I mean, things have changed, some big advances, you know, it’s time that the federation, they needed some ships that were dedicated warships – so I think that is something that will stand out a bit more than before, because we didn’t see allot of that before, in terms of the looks of the ships and the technology and the advances, I think we've done a pretty logical advance, allot of the same things that fans will recognise are on these ships, you know it’s still got, it still needs two nacelles to make a warp field, maybe there’s, I think one of the things, is, some of the things we can probably fit into smaller spaces, more power output for example, warp cores and things like that, but the visual look, I think we've made things a bit stronger looking, I think there’s a bit more of a n armoured f eel to some of these ships, not armour like tank armour, very star treky feeling armour, kind of ripping of what john did on the enterprise e and taking allot of those cues a bit further – one of the things I liked on the defiant is the way that started breaking up the panels on the ships, I think before on the enterprise d we saw allot of square panels and things like that, and then on the enterprise e john started, actually it looks liked allot of patch work, from some of the ship shots, its allot of little panels, which has a cool visual effect but on the defiant t was neat that the panels and stuff were cut in different shapes and things like that – to me that felt like a neat way to go too, so I think there’s other things like uniforms, you know, we've adjusted the uniform too, I know you guys are pretty eager to see that, we have brought that 20 years ahead, also, I’m trying to think of other things- that image of that station ,that’s a good example too, how it looks pretty classic in a lot of ways- it has similarities to the mushroom stations we saw in voyager – the Jupiter station, I can’t quite remember, like two pods with the hulls coming down, but trying to mix allot of that and then adding something in there that we haven’t seen yet, so, does that answer your question?
ZACH: Yes that’s definitely a very dynamic answer!
KINNEAS: Ryan I was hoping you could help us figure something else out – another question that’s been bothering people and that they’ve been talking allot about this past week – realistic verses stylised, I was hoping we could talk about that to the folks out there.
RYAN DENING: Oh yeah, Right, I’ve noticed that written up allot out here, and there’s allot of confusion, because some people will look at the temple concept and be like, wow, that’s pretty cool, so then they wonder, well what does stylised mean, and they worry, is it going to look cartoony – or what – I mean, I think from a concept art side, stylised, with characters and stuff – one of the constraints of the show, was everyone was a guy in the suit – I think on voyager they did species 8472, and they did the, you know, they brought a different shape, and I guess on the enterprise series they showed the Tholians a little bit more fleshed out, but still, star trek is known for having their guys in suits –and we are still going to have that too, but one of the things from the game play point of view, is, umm, when you pick your characters, and you see people, we want you to recognise who they are from further away – so it’s not just a guy has different makeup on, he has a different feel, so a Klingon would stand a bit bigger, and feel much like they are in the show, but bigger and accentuating some of those characteristics they have, and Vulcan’s might be a bit skinnier feeling, and just picking different shapes – but even the humans – make them a bit more dynamic and exciting – also in the game, I know allot of star trek fans, and there’s also the MMO fans, and in those games you’re up in a camera that’s pretty far back, so when you’re walking around and seeing people coming towards you, we want you to pick this stuff out – and the architecture too, something’s are allot bigger than you might have expected in the series – but its more to solve a solution from a game play point of view, so that it feels right, so I think that the stylised, I wouldn’t worry about it feeling like anime or something like that, I don’t know what people are worried about – but it definitely feels star trek – and I think originally there were some screenshots that got out, and old concept art of the characters and stuff, and they were trying to go just like the show, and that’s cool for novelties sake, but is that really something that you want to do – can we make it more compelling and exciting – and like I said, allot of star trek fans are on the project, and they want it to be really awesome – so I mean, you have to take my work for it I guess, but rest assured in this case, stylised is a really good thing, and all the people that have come in and seen that stuff, everybody is really impressed an excited – so don’t worry too much – it’s not gunna look like the show, but I think its gunna be a much better experience than if we had tried to make it just like the show.
