So what was the brief on the Caterpillar that you can remember?
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.