Star Trek: TOS:- "The Tholian Web" Diorama - micro build log

linweseregon

Senior Member
Details of the building of the USS Enterprise can be found in "The Enterprise Incident" thread. The only real change here is the swapping of blu tac for 2mm bicone red beads with 0.25mm fibre optic filament threaded through the nacelles:-
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I've used Glen Jupp's pattern for the USS Defiant with a green overlay put in place using a program called ImageJ:-
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Instead of using a disc of thick card to build the saucer, I've cut a thin strip of green card and glued it around the circumference. This ensures that there is sufficient internal space for a green LED which will hopefully penetrate the card and give a nice glow.
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For this one I used pale green beads for the bussard collectors and I've threaded filaments through them too. The almost finished Defiant looks like this:-
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The red wiring will be painted black, as will the fibre optics if they start glowing green outside the nacelles. If you thought that my previous efforts were small wait till ya get a load of this!
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The Tholian webspinners have a crew of teeny, toty wee Tholians the size of atoms - lol.
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I make that 4mm long. There's still a bit of touching up to do around the edges and then I'll start them spinning. It'll just be gold thread this time as I can't see any way of building up fibre optics that wouldn't be totally nightmarish!
 

spaceagent-9

Right Hand Man and Confidant
Moderator
a t-shaped spar of clear, middle downward part painted black, with tholians on each end, and then under the bas with a e-candle lightboxed to the end. >--t--<
 

Rhaven Blaack

!!!THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN!!!
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@linweseregon It looks like you are off to a GREAT START to another interesting diorama!!!
I will be following this one as well!!!
The Tholians are VERY TINY INDEED!!! ;)

KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK!!!
 

Revell-Fan

Co-Administrator
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Excellent start and VERY intreaguing! I'm looking forward to seeing how you are going to put the web together. The Tholian ships look GREAT!

"ImageJ" you say? I had to smile when I read that because it immediately reminded me of "ImageG" which was the name of the VFX company that made the visual effects for "Star Trek: The Next Generation", "DS9" and "Voyager"! That suits well here! :D
 

zathros

*****SENIOR ADMINISTRATOR*****
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OMG! That episode intrigued me so much when it first came out, I don't think I had reached double digits yet! Awesome! :)
 

linweseregon

Senior Member
@spaceagent-9 I just stuck with the thread - trying to get so many filaments ending at the same point was too much for me to face :(. Apart from anything else, I only had about 4" of 0.25mm filament left!

@Rhaven Blaack Thank-you yet again :)

@Revell-Fan The editor is very apt then! lol Kinda like an Enterprise-J for bitmaps ;)

@zathros It's an episode I always remember since being knee-high to a grasshopper - I was nowhere near double digits when I first saw it - lol - but the number of times I've seen it is well into double digits! :)

On with the show...
I had to ditch the fibre optic idea for the web because:
1. I don't have much space and trying to get all the ends together would be take up a lot of extra space
2. the 0.25mm filaments needed at this scale can't be abraded to produce a glow along their length and
3. I'd ran out of 0.25mm filament anyhoo!
So I used gold thread and tried to judge the distances from a screen capture. I used a circle of fairly thick card coloured black and glued thread at 10mm intervals horizontally. I then glued some more thread 10mm apart at an angle with gold thread at the back of the Tholians and black thread at the front:-
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The excess thread was trimmed before everything was mounted. It's not much to look at side-on - lol - but head-on it's not too shabby at all :)
The Enterprise is in the foreground with lit up bussard collectors:-
08.JPG
although the lights don't show up because of the camera flash! The Tholians are in the mid-ground with the disc mounted vertically:-
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The Defiant is mounted just in front of the starscape backdrop. I managed to fit a second LED inside the secondary hull so that a more even green glow was achieved:-
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The final pic shows the red light better and the blurred Defiant better shows the difference between the glowing hulls and the unlit nacelles.
11.JPG
 

Rhaven Blaack

!!!THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN!!!
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@linweseregon You have nailed this one PERFECTLY!!!
You have captured (no pun intended) the TRUE essence of the episode as a whole!!!
KUDOS TO YOU ON A FINE JOB WELL DONE!!!
 

Revell-Fan

Co-Administrator
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WOOOW! This is so great! The web is awesome! I'm wondering what's next ... Well, the Ent and a D7 circling around a certain Tribble-infected Space Station? :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes: ;););)
 

linweseregon

Senior Member
I don't know what to say guys - thank you all so much! :) The next project will be a Klingon bird of prey swooping under the central span of the Golden Gate Bridge ready to release George and Gracie, but I might just put K7 on the backburner ;).
 

spaceagent-9

Right Hand Man and Confidant
Moderator
dsp tribble episode, I made a version of the Klingon if you want it.
 

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D-WHALE

Utopia Planitia Engineer
i really like the "web"! i always thought about to design a Tholian webspinner in 1/1700, but as i saw the lenght of the "real" ship i canceled the idea! it make no sense to create a complex model with less than 1 centimeter! :confused:
 

Rhaven Blaack

!!!THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN!!!
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@spaceagent-9 This D-7 looks GREAT!!!
The Aztecing looks really good!!!
Your design skills are getting better and better by each model that you put out!!!
KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK!!!
 

spaceagent-9

Right Hand Man and Confidant
Moderator
its actually a bunch of cheap tricks, and I don't have no talent, LOL! the real talent is Linweseregon and her micro universe she is creating!!!
 

spaceagent-9

Right Hand Man and Confidant
Moderator
I took my d-7 that I have been working on all year, and then ran it thru paint.net adjustments until I got that green grey color, then cut and pasted the emblems and dripped in a recolor on them. then I over layered a transparent reversed image of the k'tinga top view and made the layer transparent until it fit kinda sorta for those white grey lines.
re-colored some energy ports. I still don't come near any of you guys in the drawing from scratch great models. and am always in admiration and awe of your skills.
 
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