Concept artist Jim Martin recounts his career from Deep Space Nine and Starship Troopers to Star Citizen. He walks through his early sketches for the Scythe, Freelancer, Cutlass, Caterpillar, Herald, Hull series, Endeavor and Buccaneer, covering design briefs and process.
You know what? All three are right. You're an illustrator. You're a concept artist. You're just an artist. You're someone who uses their imagination to come up with a visual to help a project. There's no wrong answer.
Kid from a small town, Northern California, Redwood Coast. Hey, Eureka, how's it going? Came down to L.A. and got into Cal State, graduated with an art degree and was lucky enough to get a job as a PA, production assistant, in the art department of Deep Space Nine. So that was my start. It was just a lucky break, and when you're a young kid, you don't know what a great break that was. You just go with it.
TL;DRJim Martin worked for the production designer as an errand boy and supply runner, was allowed to draw on the side, and became junior illustrator in the show's second season.
I was working for the production designer, and basically I was the errand boy and supply runner, run blueprints down to set and make sure everybody has what they needed. My boss, Herman Zimmerman, knew I was an artist, and that was one of the reasons he hired me, that I had an art background, and he would let me do drawing on the side because he could see that that was my passion. I had that first year of Deep Space Nine to demonstrate to him that I really wanted to be a production illustrator. Luckily, I didn't have to start that job. I could be in the art department watching what a professional was and what that role really is. And so I didn't have to hit it cold. I had a year to figure it out, worked on some things. And then the second season, the illustrator left to go on to do movies, and my boss slotted me in as junior illustrator season two. And that was my break.
TL;DROn Deep Space Nine, Martin worked on the runabout with Rick Sternbach, some medical items, and his first prop, the Cardassian field control unit, then ships and many alien props.
The first thing I ever designed for the show, I worked with Rick Sternbach, the illustrator at the time, and we did the runabout design, and I think I did a little bit of medical stuff, and then my first official prop was the Cardassian field control unit. And I have a picture of that in my office to remind me that was my first actual illustrator assignment in the entertainment industry. And I noticed that someone has a reproduction that they sell on eBay. You can buy that little prop now. I don't mean to do a plug or anything.
And then I went on to do some ship design, and a lot of that job was doing prop design, because it's a space station and the premise of the show is that an alien culture comes in, visits the station, and they have to have their own stuff. So it's a lot of alien bags, alien weapons, this and that.
I did the Defiant, which is that tough little ship. I did a couple of Cardassian ships. I did some Bajoran ships. I did Sisko's solar sailor. Say that three times. The Jem'Hadar ship and some Federation stuff.
The bug ship, not the big flagship.
The beetle ship and the Maquis fighter. Just kind of some odds and ends. It was a really fun time when you really didn't know what was going to come along in the next episode. So all of a sudden you'd be in the art department and Herman would come by and let you know, oh, by the way, we have this coming up. And then you would do your design pass, it would go to the production, and then that would kick off the process.
So Starship Troopers. When I left Star Trek, that's definitely a type of universe. It has a lot of design rules that are unique to Star Trek. I get hired on Starship Troopers and they need me to do ships. I did the Roger Young, the landing ships, the rescue boat, the little escape pod. It was their ship, and did set stuff for them and their gear that they wear. And for me, being on that show helped me channel my inner Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, which is like a separate universe from designing Star Trek stuff. And I realized, oh, we can get boxy. Let's get military boxy and chunky, and let's really do it right. That was a pretty wild ride. Paul Verhoeven was a very energetic director.
I had got hired on to the RoboCop remake. I'm in Hollywood working on Santa Monica Boulevard, and I get an email from Chris, and he was looking for a concept artist to do some initial ideas for him for a project, a game project he wanted to start up called Star Citizen. I met him for lunch, and he graciously bought me lunch and pitched the idea to me, and he had me at "Could you design ships? Would you like to design some ships?" I mean, who can say no to that, right? That's like our dream job, to get to do spaceship design.
I think he was putting together, if I remember this correctly, it's been a little bit, but I think he was putting together kind of a demo animation, and he needed the bad guy ship, which would be the Scythe. And he needed some concept ideas for that.
Right. So for me, like right here, if we stay on this page for a minute: Chris gave me the brief of what he was looking for. This is my thinking pass, which is basically, you need to start putting it on paper, because if you just think about it in your head, it's going to come and it's going to go, and you need to start putting some ideas down. It's about drawing the right and drawing the wrong, but getting it all on a piece of paper.
TL;DRChris wanted the Scythe to feel dangerous, so Martin went with sharp, lethal shapes, then moved to asymmetry and a flying-dagger form, added armor plating, and built a scratch model.
He pitched me the idea of the aliens that we were fighting and that he wanted the ship to feel dangerous. So my first pass was, well, okay, if you're going to do dangerous, then you want it to be kind of sharp. You want it to feel lethal, which in a visual sense means it's not going to be soft and curved and gentle. It's going to be kind of spikes and blades and this and that. And my first pass is kind of a little bit of a, well, let's not do the bat wing. But you have to work through those. So I drew a lot of that, and I remember Chris reacting to it going, "Have you thought about maybe doing something asymmetrical?" And that was a very important moment in shifting to asymmetry, doing something a little bit more unique. And we started to work our way to the blade shape, which Chris said, "Hey, I like this. What if it was kind of like a flying dagger, a flying knife or a blade?" And that really kind of locked in the path. And then we could take it to some tighter ideas and eventually get closer to the finish. Now these aren't in any particular order. This obviously isn't blade shaped. That would be the lethal disk. Didn't make it. Then we got to this, which also Chris wanted to start working in the idea of armor plating to echo the soldiers inside. And then I went to a scratch model, which is basically just do a model that you can paint on top of, but really start to lock it into a 3D reality so that it's not just a one-view ship. Hey, that looks good, but what does the underside look like?
You know what was really exciting about it, though, was when you guys sent me a copy of that first demo, and it comes around from behind the asteroid, and it's the ship, and it's really exciting. That's a reward for an illustrator, to see your ideas make it all the way to the final, even though many people touch it after you, and that's how it should be, because you want people to come in and you want them to work it and plus it, and do to it the things that need to get done to make it fit into the game.
TL;DRThe sketch was an early Freelancer exploration that wasn't pursued; Martin explains that drawing bad ideas is part of the process, and asymmetry was abandoned in favor of tighter, more unibody shapes.
It could have been, but it was a design direction that we decided not to pursue. So I think originally I did a spread, again, of sketch ideas, some tighter, some a little bit looser, to start the process of what could it be.
The same process: thumbnails, trying to figure out shape language.
It's okay to hate a couple of these if you want to, because you're going to do stuff that is a good idea and you're going to do stuff that's a bad idea, but you've got to draw it to know, yeah, let's not do that. And then continuing on with more ideas. Is anything landing? Are we still searching? I think that the asymmetry was a starting point that I abandoned. We weren't going to do that. And then I think we started to lock into some ideas that were a little tighter, a little more unibody, and finally, I think that's the one that kicked off the design direction.
Yep. And then I met with Chris after kind of mocking up a quick study model to make it feel more real, and let's talk about what's working and what's not working. And I remember meeting him, and at the time I had moved to another show. So my context for this is, I remember getting the assignment and going, oh yeah, that's when I was working at Universal on another project. And then I jumped over the hill to Hollywood and we had a meeting to talk about this and to keep the process going.
Yeah, that was earlier on. And then I remember we needed to make sure that we had a cargo hold that was viable. And that's when we started working the back ramp door to a cargo hold. This was an alternate telling of the cockpit, which ultimately was not successful.
I was, but being in live action, you have to do both. You need to be able to 3D model starting points, but then you also have to shift gears and just be right at digital paint. But I find that in the gaming work, the 3D part of it is a bigger chunk. And so when you're forced to do a bigger chunk, then I think you grow that skill. So it's been a growing process for me to go, oh, you know what? I'm going to go back in and hit this model again. I'm going to do it until it's right.
TL;DRThe Cutlass brief was essentially a pirate ship with a cargo aspect, so Martin gave it a rough, slightly nefarious look, including engines that hint at skulls.
So for me, the kickoff on this one was: this is going to be a pirate ship. That's the one element that I remember more than the other stuff. This is a ship that is getting usurped by people with pirate intentions. And that starting point for me was kind of the moment of fun that, you want to find your happy place in the assignment and go, okay, it's pirate time. Let's kind of do something that looks a little evil, looks like it's nefarious. And I remember doing the back engines going, these are kind of a little bit like skulls, but not, but maybe just enough to have fun with it. And that was the start of this assignment. And I know that it needed to be a cargo hold, but there needed to be a cargo aspect to it too. But it really had to have that kind of rough and tumble pirate feel to it.
So then I think the conversation changed a little bit to, well, what if someone's using it as a medical ship, like an ambulance or whatever? What are the different roles it can play? And then I kind of break out of that early idea of let's do the pirate ship and into a little bit more of, well, let's make it feel more utility, and also let's make it a little cleaner and kind of give it a multi-role. And that's where this comes in. So it kind of goes from "arr" to utility.
TL;DRThe Caterpillar was to be a long freight hauler, and Martin's challenge was to evoke a caterpillar without being ridiculous, using a long segmented body and early Cutlass influence.
Okay, the Caterpillar.
Was it called the Caterpillar?
It was called the Caterpillar, and it needed to be like a long hauler, kind of a freight hauling ship, and for me, though, they had me at Caterpillar, because that was the challenge. How are you going to make a ship that kind of evokes the idea of a caterpillar but isn't something that's sort of ridiculous? That's my design challenge.
In these early drawings, you see a lot of Cutlass influence because, again, for the first time, you get to start off with something else. So it looks like the Cutlass with a bigger centerpiece here.
And this kind of sketch is me thinking as I'm drawing. Like, hey, what if I put these on the side? What about that? Oh, bad idea. Maybe I can try it. And then how do I work in my core idea for this, which was if we're going to do Caterpillar, let's do a long segmented shape and put in the Caterpillar body.
That was me going, how do you say Caterpillar in a spaceship?
And when you had to come back and pitch to Chris a long segmented ship?
I think that I kind of showed, and I let the sketches do the pitching, and kind of talked them through: well, maybe we can do repeated long segmenting to say caterpillar, but also do our best to make it a viable, interesting ship in the universe.
And this is me just kind of throwing it out, saying, hey, let me do a cutaway real quick and explain it. So I did this cutaway, purely on speculation, like, hey, let me show you what I think the command crew pod looks like. I mean, the cargo, I did a cargo module and that's pretty straightforward. But what if we open it up, and I'll just show you what I think is going on inside here. And that's what that was. And I live for that, by the way. A cutaway for me is like illustrator joy.
I haven't. But if given an opportunity on a project, I'm going to go to a cutaway if I can.
TL;DRMartin's early Caterpillar concept had caterpillar legs, but they weren't kept; he credits the later team with fleshing out the styling, calling the design a collaboration.
So that's the second idea in there. I was like, okay, if you're going to call it a caterpillar, it's got to have multi-legs, right?
Did that stay?
Not so much. We tried. And this is an early, early one. I really like the styling that has happened since doing these study models. I really think that the team here really kind of fleshed it out and made it look pretty awesome.
The Drake style guide really came into its own last year when the team here in L.A. were building out the Herald, were building out the Caterpillar, and were redoing the Cutlass. Elwin specifically went back to a lot of your old drawings to find some of the things that we lost when we built the Cutlass out for the very first time. Let's go back to the concept and find these personal touches, these things that made it seem a little more lived in and personality. We didn't keep the caterpillar legs.
But you know, that's really cool to hear, because it's a collaboration. It is a complete collaboration. In fact, no one is an island. You need someone to come in and look at it with fresh eyes and then plus it.
I think the brief was: the Herald. It's small. It's compact. It's fast. And it gets in, it transmits and receives information, and it gets out. So to me that translates to big engines and a cockpit. Keep it really streamlined, make it look fast and compact, and keep it simple. So first pass was trying those ideas and what kind of configuration seems like it's going to land. There's some kind of kooky stuff here.
TL;DRMartin says being compared to the Gunstar isn't insulting but a compliment, since he loved that movie as a kid, and designs draw on shared inspirations.
I will tell you absolutely honestly that it is not insulting in any way. In fact, it's a compliment, to think that I was a kid watching that movie back when it came out in like '84, and to sit here now and have someone go, hey, that's kind of like the... then I think that connects me to that project. And when you're a kid watching that movie, you can only dream that one day you'll be able to work in entertainment and get to do spaceships for a living. And then to be here now and to be talking about that stuff, it's nothing but good.
Yeah, I didn't want it to seem like you have no original ideas in your head. It's a shared inspiration. You tap into those things that inspire all of us and make us excited about this stuff.
It's kind of like when you're on a movie and they say, okay, you're doing the space helmet, but we need to do something that we've never seen before, but it should have a face plate so we can see the actor, some kind of covering at the top, and then two ear sides that feel like they are receiving audio. And you go, okay, you just described a space helmet. Right? So, of course, a ship design is going to feel like this or it's going to feel like that. What you want to do is you want to really put your design love into it and all your inspiration from all your sources and try to do your best work.
So that was an interesting brief, because that was the first time that the team here gave me a model as a starting point. And they had mocked up a blocked-in idea of how this ship was going to carry cargo pods. And I remember seeing that going, okay, well, we're a little bit deeper into the assignment. We're not going to fumble at the beginning. We're just going to get right to it. And it still had that hurdle to get over, which was, well, how is that actually going to work? How are we going to do attached pods to a ship? And we tried some different things.
No, that was going to come later. We were trying to come up with kind of an engineered logic of how it was going to be able to hold cargo and what it was going to look like when it was empty and what it would look like fully loaded. And that's when we came across this idea. Maybe we're talking about just this big kind of ship rigging boom that can umbrella open and close depending on how much cargo you need to load.
It's five ships. I spent a lot of time working out the cockpit to try to figure out, well, is it going to be one cockpit area for all of the ships? What are the conditions going to be? And we kind of went through the idea of... Yeah, this is an earlier idea when it was not going to telescope. It was always going to stay a locked condition. And then we said, well, maybe the front can fly away from the cargo and then return. And this was the second idea.
This is after the collapse.
Yeah, this is after the collapse.
Okay, this was a lot of figuring out, because it was about doing a ship design and also figuring out what are the modules that are going to fit in between and how do they plug in, what are the variants, and how do you make it look good for each ship? Or I should say, how do you make each component look good in each configuration? And these are a little crazy with the solar panels, but I think about midway through, we kind of got into the place we wanted to be with this.
Oh, yeah. We've got medical gameplay coming. Well, I was about to give you guys a little hint on something, and I'm like, no. But you'll be seeing more about medical stuff later this year.
Right. I think I did a couple of illos of it flying away. And then you have little travel pods that you can leave the ship. I don't think that lasted. Yeah, I don't think the travel pods lasted.
Yeah, I think when you get an assignment like that, your first reaction is, all right, let me... You have trepidation, like, okay, let me expand the net and let me cast a broad net and just see what lands, because you could spend too much time on stuff that gets abandoned. So a pass like this is showing, I'll give you silhouettes, we'll talk about how the volumes feel, and then get them to kind of buy off on some things.
TL;DRThe Buccaneer was briefed as a tough, functional, compact all-purpose Drake fighter; Martin enjoyed the snub-fighter assignment, though his two-man cockpit idea was overambitious and wouldn't have flown.
The Buccaneer is, like all the Drake stuff, definitely utility. It's like a tough, functional design, and it needs to tie into the other ship designs, but this is going to be a compact all-purpose fighter. And for me, this was one of my favorite assignments on the game, because it kind of, again, channels my inner McQuarrie, and you get a chance to do a snub fighter. So did a silhouette pass, some quick sketches, tried to put some configurations together, started off with a double, two-man cockpit, which was never going to fly, but that was me getting a little ahead of myself.
I do remember that. We started to see two-man cockpits coming, and I remember going back to the design brief, and I'm like, did we type in...? Well, because you wouldn't have known this at the time, but around this time, we had just gone through this whole thing with the Khartu-al, where it was originally a two-man cockpit, and then design changed it to a one-man cockpit, but the art would have been two-man. So now we started seeing these coming with two-man cockpits, and I'm going back with the design stuff, and I'm like, okay, did I type something wrong here? And what happened? It was just Jim being... Jim got a little ambitious.
Jim got a little ambitious. He's thinking F-14. Yeah, this assignment is the fun fighter. Everybody wants to get the fun fighter assignment.
And it flies great in the game, because this was fast-tracked and put in the game pretty quickly.
This game has some great fighters in it. The Squadron 42 fighters are awesome. And this is kind of just its own kind of fun fighter idea that is, it's not the coolest one. It's the tough, old, faithful, reliable one.