Chimera Space Ship - Exterior Design
The Chimera space craft is perhaps the main icon, next to Captain Bill Sprocket's uniform, in my short film, "Bill & Maggie's Intergalactic Taxi Service." The ship's hodgepodge design came from the idea that Captain Bill and his daughter were tinkerers, attempting to build a shuttle business from the ground up, making the best of what parts and components they could get their hands on and integrate together. There was also this concept, brought up by some former production design crew on the film, that during the time period in which the film takes place (500 years in the future) people would be salvaging technology from all across earlier eras and mixing it together into new forms for new uses. So a lot of that innovation has been retained as much as possible in this design, but certainly not as much as it could have, especially if we had been able to have a scene take place inside the engine room.
One of the earliest full sketches of Chimera design. The most prominent features are its two ship bows, the train wheels with oars protruding from them, and the two smoke-stacks on the back end.
Conceptual image of Chimera real angle, flying over IO with Europa in the distance (Jupiter's moons). Shuttle craft in close pursuit.
Initial poster design for "Bill & Maggie" features the first color design of Chimera from the front, still featuring oars and ship bows, but now with a more defined submarine planted on top.
Fully detailed model sheet for Chimear design, featuring color coded components such as the Submarine bridge in purple, 2nd "reversed" ship in brown, engine block in yellow, and warp drive electrodes in blue.
Chimera model being compiled in Blender, using models purchased from DAZ3D. This includes a "model ship" duplicated and stacked, a flying machine placed on top, and a modified submarine above that. Two sets of dirigible propellers flank the sides.
First rendered shot of Chimera deck, lit and rendered in Element 3D (After Effects)
Final composite shot of Chimera ship flying past Earth's moon.
Final composite shot of Chimera ship flying through asteroid field. As you can see, almost everything from the earlier designs is included here, except for the locomotive wheels, and the awkward oars protruding from them.