Perpetual Entertainment's Michael T. Gaworecki explains the thinking behind the new designs created for Star Trek Online...
Star Trek Online™ (STO) is an MMORPG (massively multiplayer online game) being developed by San Francisco-based Perpetual Entertainment. It is currently scheduled for release in late 2008.
Set 20 years after Star Trek Nemesis, STO takes a fresh and creative approach to everything Trek. The conceptualization process for the game's artwork is focused on two things: creating designs that will fit seamlessly into the Star Trek canon, and, perhaps even more importantly, creating a game that is fun and exciting enough to bear the name of Star Trek.
The STO team takes more license with some aspects of Star Trek than with others, but they only ever change something that they feel they can enhance or elaborate upon. The worlds of the Star Trek universe, they feel, are ripe for such elaboration.
Before lead concept artist Ryan Dening could create a painting of Starfleet Academy and Headquarters, STO art director Greg Faillace and concept artist Robert Brown designed a distinct visual style that has a heavily-armored feel to it, which ties it in with the Starfleet ship designs the team had already created. They stayed true to what they feel Starfleet architecture should look like, but they also made sure it was a place that would be fun to walk around and explore.
Dening's painting of Starfleet's HQ captures these design objectives perfectly: it is suitably grand in scale, while also representing a dynamic portrayal of 25th century Starfleet architecture.
Image © 2007 Perpetual Entertainment Inc., All Rights Reserved
