Information Preservation - Painting the Refit (ST:TMP) - By Andy "Gunstar1" Grams on Hobby Talk

Hi, Everyone!

Here is another blog article that I put together in order to preserve modeling information originally posted on other sources.

While doing some casual Enterprise refit painting research, I came across a very insightful forum thread on Hobby Talk that was started on June 22, 2007 by forum member Andy "Gunstar1" Grams.  It was entitled "Painting the Refit (ST:TMP)."  Here is the link: https://www.hobbytalk.com/threads/painting-the-refit-st-tmp.188494/.

Andy started that particular thread with knowledge gained from personal conversations he had with Paul Olsen, the one who performed most of the paint work on the Enterprise refit filming miniature.  The Hobby Talk forum discussion ended up being 12 pages long with Andy's last significant contribution to it on May 20, 2009.  Andy is still seen on Hobby Talk nowadays but has not been a significant contributor to any forum discussions there since 2010.

Because of Andy's unique position of having discussions with Paul Olsen, I wanted to create a blog article that contained his major posts from that Hobby Talk discussion thread.  So here it is...

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***** From post #1 (https://www.hobbytalk.com/threads/painting-the-refit-st-tmp.188494/post-1996149), June 22, 2007 *****

This thread is meant to be a guide for painting the Enterprise as seen in Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Accuracy is the name of the game here as far as discussion goes.  Of course anyone can make posts in the forums about how they painted their model.  Duplicating the paint job would be impossible so there will always be choice and interpretation in our own renditions - but this particular thread is meant to be a resource based on how the ship was actually painted and actually looked.

As far as painting schemes for the other movies, other threads should probably be started for these other variations to avoid confusion - the TMP paint job, completed by Paul Olsen and regarded by many as some of the best work done on a studio miniature, is the goal of this thread - ST:II through the present does not really apply (as far as reference material, though there are a few exceptions).  And in regards to reference material, it seems that the only images that are legitimate are screen caps from TMP, promotional images before production of ST:II, and the black & white images on Cloudster's website.  If anyone has access to other images, maybe you could post them here as well!

I've had the pleasure of conversing with Paul Olsen over the past couple months about how he painted the ship (to clarify various statements on his web site) and this is essentially how he did it:

The surface (as it was before Paul started painting it) can be divided into 4 categories:

1. White primer (most of the plastic body)
2. Blue plastic (molded inserts - front edges of pylons, dorsal front & top, nacelle front ends etc)
3. Green Engineering areas (Secondary hull forward, strongback, stripes on dorsal, stripes on inner pylons)
4. Exposed/lit areas (warp grilles, intakes, deflector, exhausts etc etc)

The only areas that Paul applied paint to was #1 - to the white primed surface.

What he applied was 4 pearlescent lacquer paints: blue, green, gold, red - and that's the order in terms of what colors were used most (blue most, red least) though coverage would be best described as Blue 100%, Green 80%, Gold 75%, Red 70% (this will makes sense further down)

There is no gloss and matte finish flip-flopping going on.  Area #1, after pearl colors are added, is really all gloss (well, more like a satin finish) and the rest (2,3,4) are matte finish.

Below is a JPEG image that briefly describes and greatly simplifies what Paul did.  (The paneling is based on a saucer deflector grid section seen in a screen cap from TMP - most of the smaller panels are accurate, though hastily put together in Adobe Illustrator as I was merely putting it together for Paul to look at as a point of reference.)

You could start by covering the entire white surface with a very very light layer of blue.

Then the basic aztec pattern would be applied (also lightly) with green.  There is a little bit of variation to this, depending on what part of the ship you are painting.  Of note: The underside of the back end of the secondary hull and the shuttle bay doors have no paneling.  Both areas are sprayed freehand in sweeping strokes going up and down the long axis using all colors (the vertical axis for the shuttle bay)

For the smaller paneling it gets fun.

In the JPEG, steps 2-7 really represent maybe 50 (guestimate, but I need a big number to get the point across) applications of paint.  First thing to note, you can't get by with just one frisket for each color.  One grid area (as represented) is not the same as the next, or even the next 3 over in the same row (in the deflector grid).  Also, as the different layers get added, all 4 colors are used and at various intensities such that some panels will stick out more - sometimes a particular panel may be several layers of the same color (this explains my comments above on % of paint coverage - % of surface area covered - such that, for example, there is only about 20% of the white surface that has no green whatsoever...there may be areas - half of the 80%, let's say - where there is only a very very faint amount of green, the rest is more visible).  Because the applications are all very light (some more so than others) it takes a lot of time for just one grid space.  A LOT.

Paul used a combination of friskets and tape (for the smallest areas and those tricky compound curves).  Almost all of the panels are painted independent of each other (depressing, isn't it?) - allowing for greater variation in intensity and color.  The only situation where you can actually "spray all at once" is for the basic aztec pattern.  Paul did not cut out friskets to cover, for example, a whole column of the saucer deflector grid.... he cut friskets of the individual PANELS (he spent a week doing JUST that.  A week.  Cutting friskets.  Don't forget... he used a lot of tape besides.)  That's one frisket = one panel.  Paul told me "zillions."  The bright side is that a particular frisket could be used a lot.

The panels are only partly defined by the larger aztec pattern.  Some panels are simply subdivisions, others stretch to cross and cover both green and blue patterns.  The panels vary in shape from square all the way to very thin rectangles.  The pylons, dorsal, and nacelles get more complicated in terms of shapes.  The smaller paneling does overlap - eg a red panel might partially lay on top of part of a gold panel.  The overlapping has a method to it though: you will not find 2 corners of one panel in the middle of another panel - usually at least one edge is shared if there is obvious overlapping (see JPEG).

The effect of putting the paint on like this leaves a very smooth sheen - no matte finish anywhere on the white hull.  In other words, the aztec is not a gloss and matte flip flopping pattern.  Some of the black and white Cloudster images demonstrate how glossy the ENTIRE ship is.

Depending on the angle and room lighting, it will sometimes look essentially white - the aztec and paneling are meant to be more of a "seasoning" of the base coat - like mostly transparent nylons.

As defined at the beginning of this post, the area (#1) is essentially glossy/satin, while the green areas (#3) are matte, and the blue (#2) are sort of in between, closer to matte.

***** From post #4 (https://www.hobbytalk.com/threads/painting-the-refit-st-tmp.188494/post-1996251), June 22, 2007 *****

Paul said that the whole ship tends toward the cooler blue tones (green included) as they are the primary aztec makeup - though he did not want to say that the gold and red were merely accents.

It's my current opinion that the secondary hull is a little warmer but BARELY.  The analysis I first posted applies to the whole ship (remember the percentages, 100, 80, 75, 70) so there is a good mix but the mix tends to be a little cooler.

I think color can be inferred (is that the right word, or even a word?) from the black & white pictures.... this is what I think needs to be done:

• experiments with the various ways to switch an image from color to black & white to best represent regular B&W developing
• using screen caps and promo images, match the correct colors to some of the B&W pics (the panels)
• then map out as best as possible the rest

But it must be taken into consideration that because these are pearlesccent, they invert depending on the lighting, which is why we would need color references whenever possible (it can be difficult to interpret the color image as well!)

***** From post #7 (https://www.hobbytalk.com/threads/painting-the-refit-st-tmp.188494/post-1996355), June 22, 2007 *****

The issue of the sheen flip flop is the very reason why I talked to Paul Olsen in the first place, and I had him look at the screen caps as well.  In the past I was doubtful that matte & gloss flip-flopping was involved.  I could always find a picture of one panel that seemed to not reflect, and then another picture of the same panel where it did reflect.  Paul was very adamant that all he put on was the 4 pearls and NOTHING else - no additional matte or gloss finishes, and he confirmed that every last millimeter of the white hull was indeed covered many times by the pearls.  The effect is a result of the properties of the pearl paints.  I think it will take people experimenting on this with actual paint (doing a similar method with no matte or gloss) and document it for us to fully grasp the effects of doing this kind of paint job/dealing with this kind of paint - and figuring out what is the best paint out there for the job.....

Part of his explanation ...... remember, the angle changes the effect for pearls to the point of this comparison : "red pearl is to green pearl" as "matte is to gloss."  Depending on the angle of light, you could change that relationship to as "gloss is to matte"...... in other words, you should always be able to find some angle of light that will reflect on any panel ....

Also there are more intensely covered areas that will reflect more.  There are different properties to the different colors as well - hence the need for a painting demonstration of just the 4 pearls....

***** From post #12 (https://www.hobbytalk.com/threads/painting-the-refit-st-tmp.188494/post-1998810), June 25, 2007 *****

Here's a b&w comparison -

Enterprise refit NCC-1701

 

Enterprise NCC-1701-A

I have not found any color images besides screen caps.

It's obvious though that there are no painted panels present (refit).  Because it looks solid (and because of what you can see in the screen cap), I believe that it's essentially lengthwise bands layered over each other, such that an application of the blue, for example, would leave some lengthwise gaps (but very soft gradient shifts) that would then be filled in by the next color, and the process would repeat many times

***** From post #47 (https://www.hobbytalk.com/threads/painting-the-refit-st-tmp.188494/post-2003305), June 30, 2007 *****

1. Zuzana Swansea (who was initially supposed to paint the Refit filming miniature) had the idea of the aztec design.  She "lacked the skill for airbrushing" and so the job (in it's entirety) was given to Paul (and his helpers).  Zuzana applied no paint.  Paul applied all the paint (to the white surface) - and confirmed that he painted on the aztec pattern (WITH PEARLS) - and painted it first - as shown at the beginning of this thread.
2. THERE IS NO SATIN OR GLOSS OR SEMIGLOSS FLIP-FLOPPING WITH A LESS REFLECTIVE SURFACE.  Paul confirmed this and that he covered the white surface with MANY LAYERS OF VARIED INTENSITY (mostly very light) OF 4 PEARLS.  What we see, as far as the surface playing tricks on us, is a result of the varying reflectivity of the 4 pearl paints and the layering and the different intensities of individual panels.

Everything above is what Paul told me.

I'm not saying: "oh, did you realize there's some grid areas with no aztec"

I meant to use those areas as an example of how what you see all depends on the angle of light - such that there are angles where the aztec itself does not stand out very much but some smaller panels do, but then, change the angle of light and PRESTO! - now you only see the aztec and not much of the paneling break-down.  The TMP screen caps ---- look at the beauty pass the ship does at the end just before final warp - as the underside passes above, you can see the change happening with the angle of light changing - one moment, an aztec may have a very discernible rectangle in gold, then half a second later that gold rectangle is invisible.

***** From post #174 (https://www.hobbytalk.com/threads/painting-the-refit-st-tmp.188494/post-2835373), May 19, 2009 *****

That JPEG file I created was based (and cross referenced by him) on lengthy discussions I had with the painter himself, Paul Olsen.

The dominant pattern is the blue, and then the green, then the red then the gold - but keep in mind the difference between each amount is only such that the ship is generally more BLUE - which, due to the properties of the pearls, ALSO means it is "generally more GOLD" as well - depending on the refraction angle to each spot.

Blue (+ proper angle to light source) = Gold
Green (+ proper angle to light source) = Red
Red (+ proper angle to light source) = Green
Gold (+ proper angle to light source) = Blue

And keep in mind that the main pattern (blue and green) is very very broken up by red and gold (and more blue and more green) - so it becomes difficult to "know where you are" in the main aztec pattern....

***** From post #178 (https://www.hobbytalk.com/threads/painting-the-refit-st-tmp.188494/post-2835993), May 20, 2009 *****

Keep in mind that Olsen did many many layers of pearls, such that the color intensity (and therefore metallic pigments reflecting) in one blue square likely would not be the same as another nearby blue square - and so you'd have different amounts of reflectivity throughout - but no pure matte finish where the hull is white.

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I hope you found this collection of Hobby Talk forum posts enlightening and helpful!

:)