Impossibility Engineering

My name is Thomas Marrone and this is my art blog. I'm a Starship Artist at Cryptic Studios working on Star Trek Online and I use this blog to share pictures of both work and non-work related art I've made.

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Some Thoughts on the U.S.S. Discovery

I feel a little presumptuous saying I'm a "professional Star Trek ship artist," but I do at least have the perspective of attempting to be one. And the simple truth is that designing ships for Star Trek is hard... especially ships in Starfleet. Especially Starfleet ships that are supposed to be the "hero" of a TV show or a game or movie or whatever.

They need to be familiar (saucer and nacelles at the very least), but they also need to have their own special character. They need to say "I'm a Star Trek ship and I'm the hero!" but they also need to stand out among the other "hero" ships in that conspicuous pantheon.

There are dozens, maybe even hundreds of fan-created designs that are well done. They're aesthetically pleasing or logically arranged or have all the right details in all the right places. But so many of them lack a critical distinction when compared to whatever Enterprise inspired them. When you squint, you couldn't tell them apart from a Constitution or a Sovereign or a Galaxy.

And that's what it comes down to and why the original Enterprise is such an inspired design. Matt Jefferies didn't approach the problem of the original Enterprise as "How do I design a spaceship" - he approached it more like "How do I design a logo." I'm paraphrasing, but the crucial thing for him was that you could recognize the shape of the Enterprise while it was far away and moving fast. Just like a good logo, you could squint and still understand what you were looking at.

Ultimately, that's what the hero ship of a Star Trek show needs to be - not just a cool looking spaceship, but a logo, an icon, a brand that represents everything about its incarnation of the franchise.

A CBS representative said today during a press interview that the ship featured in the Star Trek: Discovery trailer is a work in progress, and I'm curious to see how it evolves as we get closer to January 2017. But already it has established itself with a distinctive silhouette and I imagine the final design is going to be pretty close to what we saw today. Ultimately I'm sure it'll find its way into our hearts; these ships always do.

But good luck to the artists working on her. That kind of responsibility is something I simultaneously do and do not envy!

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A couple of my friends made “his” and “hers” Tusken Raider cosplay for Silicon Valley Comic Con this weekend and when I saw the picture on the left I *had* to photoshop it into “Tatooine Gothic.” I found the image of the Tusken hut here: http://dioramaworkshop.com/events.php?projectId=6&subProjectId=79

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There’s some serious subtext in these Batman V Superman marketing photos, so this needed to happen.

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Wallpaper and screenshots of the Endeavour Tactical Star Cruiser done for Star Trek Online’s Flagship bundle. You can read more about the Endeavour and her sister ships here: https://indd.adobe.com/view/5d7ffcd8-7cf8-4561-a13a-5df451ef0511

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Wallpaper and screenshots of the Sojourner Operations Star Cruiser done for Star Trek Online’s Flagship bundle. You can read more about the Sojourner and her sister ships here: https://indd.adobe.com/view/5d7ffcd8-7cf8-4561-a13a-5df451ef0511

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Wallpaper and screenshots of the Yorktown Science Star Cruiser done for Star Trek Online’s Flagship bundle. You can read more about the Yorktown and her sister ships here: https://indd.adobe.com/view/5d7ffcd8-7cf8-4561-a13a-5df451ef0511

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Wallpaper and screenshots of the revamped Odyssey-class model done for Star Trek Online. This was an update to the original Odyssey skin so it matched the high level of detail of the new Federation Flagship variants. The original Odyssey model was built by Adam Williams.

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This question came up on r/STO so I thought it’d be fun to illustrate where the warp core is on the 25th century ships I’ve designed/modeled in STO.

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This scene gets me every time. The core virtue of Galaxy Quest was how it took something so silly and treated that thing with so much tenderness and respect. It helps us come to terms with the fact that sometimes things we love are silly, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't love them or love them any less.

Such a basic commitment to the profound execution of silly things turned out to be one of Alan Rickman's greatest gifts to us. Voice of God, German criminal, potions master, actor turned astronaut... he brought a flair and a charm to all these characters that elevated the films they were in well beyond the sum of their parts.

"I was an actor once. I played Richard the Third! There were five curtain calls!"

Now you have six. Rest in peace, Mr. Rickman.

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Five years ago today I started my new job as an Associate Web Designer at Cryptic Studios. It was also the Monday right after Thanksgiving, and a huge shift for my career and personal life, I had moved 2,000 miles away from everyone I knew, save my girlfriend at the time, to start over in hopes of chasing a dream.

Since then I've done a lot of things I am very proud of and some things I'm not proud of. I've met some amazing people on and off the job and I've been able to contribute to a universe of stories that I love in ways that a younger me could only have dreamed about.

If you'll permit me the vanity, I can look back at the last five years with pride at everything I've done, all the extra hours I've put in to make STO the Star Trek game it is today - many things I think players take for granted now were done on long nights and weekends, trying to make STO just that much better and just that much more Star Trek.

For the last five years, my life has been primarily about my job because it has been an opportunity that I had no intention of wasting. Looking forward, finding a different balance is becoming more important. But I'm also just beginning to really dig into my role as a ship artist, which has presented even more opportunities to contribute to both the Star Trek mythos at large and my ability to indulge the fantasies of middle-school Thomas drawing spaceships in the margins of his notebook.

Ultimately, I don't know what the next five years will look like. The past five have certainly been challenging in ways I could've never anticipated, but that's a good thing. I hope I've grown a lot and I hope I will continue to grow.

It has been five years, but my own mission isn't over. As a young Ensign Harry Kim once said, "To the journey." Let's see where it takes me next.

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Wallpaper and screenshots of the Defiant-class model I built for Star Trek Online. This was another from-scratch rebuild to bring a classic canon ship in STO up to snuff with some of our newer models, concurrent with the T6 release of the Valiant-class tactical escort.

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Things got a little heavy today.

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My friends, we’ve come home.

I usually stay away from making public sour grapes statements regarding the 2009 Star Trek reboot but the new Star Wars trailer makes it painfully obvious how a talented director loaded with tons of money and a childhood passion can craft franchise moments that feel simultaneously novel and nostalgic.

I think people kind of forget that Star Wars is only 10 years younger than Star Trek. A lot of that has to do with the generally "timeless" aesthetic of Star Wars, and Star Trek in many ways was very much a product of its era. But I do believe there is an alternate universe where a passionate and talented director took their 200 million dollars and figured out how to marry nostalgia and novelty in a way that made other Star Trek fans tear up as if they were being reunited with a lost family member.

"Chewie, we're home," Han said at the end of the first Episode 7 teaser.

Maybe someday Star Trek fans will get to come home too.

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Wallpaper and screenshots of the “Galaxy-X” Dreadnought done for Star Trek Online. Earlier in the year I remodeled the Galaxy class from Star Trek: The Next Generation and the next logical step was to use that remodel to update the look of the infamous “Galaxy X” that appeared in the series finale “All Good Things.”

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Yamato Class starship I designed and modeled for Star Trek Online.

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Wallpaper and screenshots of the Prometheus-class starship model I updated for Star Trek Online. Like the revamp of the Akira model, the proportions and general shapes of the original model were good so I focused on making sure the surface details were accurate to the source material.