Thanks guys, all very good points. As far as possible the Triton base will have been constructed from locally sourced materials, this being by far the cheapest way to construct something like this. The walls of the 'bunker' section of the base, where these rooms are, are made from a concrete-type material, possibly made from mixing carbon fibres (produced from the hydrocarbon-rich surface layers that give Triton it's pinkish hue) with water (also abundant in frozen form) that has been chemically modified to raise the melting temperature. Water/fibre based concrete has been shown to have properties eminently suitable to construction of this type; it's crushing resistance is not as strong as concrete but its tensile strength is significantly better (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pykrete).
I totally agree re the interior fittings being quite heavy and I dithered on this point considerably before committing to these models. While we are trying to stick to 'science-fact' rather than sci-fi as far as possible with this series, it is important that the audience understand the industrial nature of the base. The image from Moon looks to me like a present-day dentist's office... while this may well be the industrial look of the future it doesn't convey the concept of 'industrial' at all. I based the design concepts for the galley equipment from those facilities on modern naval and commercial ships, my thinking was that this sort of equipment must be extremely reliable since replacement would be astronomically expensive. I found it very difficult to combine 'futuristic' + 'well used' + 'lightly made' + 'robust & reliable' so I pretty much fell back on well used and reliable, these being the most prominent points in the design brief.
Regarding the seat, although to a certain extent I wouldn't expect seats to change all that much over time (since human backsides will pretty much stay the same in that period) I agree regarding materials and construction techniques. Possibly the seat fabric would have been shipped without stuffing, the padding being produced locally from expanded hydrocarbon-sourced plastic foam. In this case the cushioning might follow a far more basic design rather than the current upholstered look. I will revise the cushioning shortly, I have an idea that might work ok.
The pictures on the walls are a start, really. The plan is to put many more things on the walls, like kids drawings, posters, calendars, cartoons, whatever; the sort of thing people stick on the walls to remind them of home. The problem is the time it takes to construct and map this sort of stuff is incredibly restrictive, the existing photos represent about 5 or 6 hours of work. The shooting schedule has not yet been finalised and it could well be that there are no actual shots in the galley area at all (its original idea was to show 'more rooms' beyond the control room, basically just background detail). There are other areas I need to move on to, I figured I'd rearrange and add more details as required by the shots... if it won't be seen there's no point modelling it!
I remember Outland well (with the explosive head-swells!), unfortunately there's not a lot of interior imagery available. The design inspiration for much of the other interior spaces is probably most like the Nostromo from Alien, though perhaps less deliberately oppressive and 'drippy'. You're quite right re the integrity of the cup and plate MITM, these models were originally only going to be seen high on a shelf so the accuracy/speed balance was a bit heavy on the 'speed' side. I will replace these with finer models, and probably with a metallic rather than ceramic appearance.
Sorry about the text wall, I have been working on nothing else for a couple of months now and it seems I can carry on about it indefinitely!! Thanks again for the feedback and I'll have some revised images up soon.
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Topic: Mission Backup Earth - the TV Series (hopefully) (Read 45570 times)