It's My Party And I'll Bore You All With Star Trek Fan Art If I Want To!

"Moopsy!"

 Mwah hah hah hah haaaaaa!!!  It's my birthday and I can do whatever I like!  Including publishing this self-indulgent Star Trek fan art post!  Which I did warn you about in the last post.  Well, I mentioned it, anyway...

 Yes, when I'm not blogging-

 So, most of the time, then. 

 You can talk!  This is supposed to be YOUR blog.  I'm only here to provide the necessary fingers & thumbs for all the typing and HTML jiggery-pokery.

 Hmmph!

 Anyway, when I'm not blogging in Witchface's stead, I can be found messing about with Star Trek related stuff, such as these monthly themed fan art challenges from the only other social media-type site I visit: Trek BBS.

 The following are my efforts since August last year, so strap in!

August: Movies

"Get your drinks in and prepare your popcorn because we're headed to the cinema!

Which Star Trek movie era will inspire you: TOS, TNG, JJ?  Or perhaps you'd like to imagine a movie for a series that never made it to the silver screen.  And how about those new streaming movies on the horizon, can you predict what we might see in the Section 31 movie or what could follow after it?"

 

 

 I'd intended to create another movie poster - Star Trek IV-B - like I did for February's challenge.  Unfortunately, useable free time for such things was in short supply back then, so that plan was scuppered and all I managed were some sketches and a bit of MSPaint art of the Whale Probe from ST IV: The Voyage Home.

September: Storyboard

"In the words of Wikipedia, a “storyboard is a graphic organizer that consists of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion picture” or television show.  Here you can try your own hand at the process, creating a storyboard for a sequence from your own Star Trek story involving established or imagined characters."

 

I just used this as an excuse to draw Rutherford (💓💖💗) in the altogether.

November: Weather (Whether) The Storm

"Whether in space, planetside, or in a holoprogram, show your favorite characters braving bad weather.  Alternately, show them enjoying their favorite season or climate conditions.

I don't know about the rest of you but lately the UK weather has been giving us plenty of inspiration for this Theme.  So prepare your umbrellas, parasols or ionic shields... this one is going to be high (or possibly low) pressure!"

 

 What's more terrifying than a space storm?  A Moopsy storm!   I was doodling clouds with a biro and noticed one of them looked a little like Moopsy.  So then they ALL did!  Just without the adorable little faces.  And fangs! 

 Heres my hastily slapped together final piece for November's art challenge: The Lower Deckers encounter Moopsy clouds!

December: Aliens Stole My Reindeer!

"In Star Trek we often see our human characters puzzled by alien rites and rituals.  For this challenge show us how the alien species of the Trekiverse might interpret or misinterpret human seasonal or festive traditions.

How do you think our favourite Star Trek alien races would make of our traditions this time of year?  How would they respond to tales of Santa Claus, elves and flying reindeer and the festivities of New year?

What would Klingons make of the food or the glorious battles at the New Year's Day sales?  Ferengi would surely love the commercialism, but maybe not so much the gifting?  With their huge extended families Denobulans must love a get together, right?  But would the Cardassians view it all with suspicion?"

 

Deep Space 9's Doctor Bashir presents Klingon General Martok with a Plum Pudding "Torpedo"

 

January: Transporter Malfunctions

"Duplicates, amalgamations and transmogrifications.  Oh my!  Kirkvix!  Tendivix! DATAVIX!  Tuvix your favorite characters... then draw them running in terror from Janeway!

We've seen lots of transporter mishaps in Star Trek over the years: characters duplicated, split in two, or merged.  Will you take inspiration from those or can you imagine some new transporter dilemma for your favourite characters to face?  Or perhaps, you might like to consider the pitfalls of teleporting something as large as a Starship?"

 

 For January's "Transporter Malfunctions", I depicted the Lower Deckers getting turned into puppets:

February: Wrong Episode Posters

"Have you ever read a synopsis for an episode or movie that only vaguely resembles what you eventually watched?  Well, your challenge is to badly interpret the plot of a Star Trek episode or movie and create a promotional poster to advertise it.  Maybe you could shift the emphasis of the episode/movie to that of a side-plot or have the main protaganist to be the villain or a minor character.  Perhaps, you could swap the genre of the episode entirely: Duet as a musical?  The Trouble with Tribbles as a horror?"

 I started the month with the Carry On films stuck in my head, so I knew I was going to end up creating a Carry On poster with an episode or character beginning with C (or K). I really wanted to do Carry On Cargo (as in "Precious") as it's one of my favourite and most watched ENT episodes, but quickly realised that it practically is a Carry On film, so it couldn't be "wrong". Then I toyed with Carry On Cardassians (DS9), before wondering if the TNG episode "Conspiracy" could lend itself to the Carry On treatment. It's been years since I've seen it, so I took a quick trip to Memory Alpha and was overjoyed to discover some joking and laughing right at the start of the episode, but it was Worf's remark that swimming (on Pacifica) is too much like bathing that cinched the deal. I even thought of a (rather long) tag line:

"Swimming? On Pacifica? Will anyone throw Worf a LAUGHline to rescue him from dishonor? Or, even worse: Bathing!

Fortunately, yes. A hostile alien race 'saves' his day!"

 I looked at some Carry On film posters and quickly realised that I needed to spend a LOT of time practicing caricatures (time I didn't have), so I decided to use screencaps in MSPaint instead.  (I briefly toyed with the idea of using an online caricature generator, but the ones that produced the best images used erroneously named A. I. and there was no way of telling whose art they appropriated to do so, so that got knocked on the head very quickly.)

 TrekCore.com and Cygnus-X1.net both had great screencaps of the characters smiling or laughing (except for Worf, of course) - although, some of them (Picard, Crusher, Geordi and Data) I had to flip then reposition their rank pips and comm badges.  I wanted to include Ursaline Bryant's Tryla Scott as female representation is sorely lacking, but I couldn't find a screencap with a suitable expression, so I included her birthdate in the Big Red Wedge instead (4th November 1947 - lowest two markers).  Once I'd put everything together, I used a light watercolour paint filter (in FotoSketcher) over the characters to soften their harshness (and the jagged edges created by Paint's cutting tool).

 Anyway, here's my hasty and somewhat slapdash effort: Carry On Conspiracy:

 [If I had to do this again, I'd spend some time searching for a more similar font to the "Holiday of a LAUGHtime" line, and I'd reposition the Carry On Conspiracy title and Riker to make it seem like the Big Red Wedge is about to probe his rear end (I might even move that parasite along so it looks more like Admiral Aaron is toasting it).]

 

 And now you're up-to-date!