Now, don't get me wrong, these robotic systems are very cool and the amount of good they can do is out of this world. However, one of the great aspects of the Black Mirror series is show us what can happen if technology gets out of control. Thankfully, killer robot dogs are still relegated to the world of science fiction.

Take a look at the progress of the 3d modeling and rendering.

After I handed the "official" 3d model in to the client, I added some color of my own, some American flags and of course a LOT of weathering.

When Kenneth Beasley, owner of Mission Critical Comfort Solution, needs creative content produced, he works locally and contacted David Collins to produce this exciting 30-Second Ad. We pulled out all the stops and used cgi, product photos, on site videography and post production to produce this exciting 30-second ad. 

The latest production piece for my long-standing client SWAT Broadheads. David Collins Media was tasked to update the look and graphics of the 30-Second animated elements.
David Collins Media used all the tricks in the book setting up the new graphics in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator and all video graphics and animations were produced with Adobe Premiere Pro and After FX. If you're interested in some short-form and long-form videos, please contact David Collins of David Collins Media at david@davidcollinsonline.com or 478-397-7076. 

Well to get to orbit to send the CSM/LM to the moon, they had to get to space. To do that, the Saturn V had to be created. With thousands of designers, engineers, and workers created the Saturn V rocket system.  The Saturn V Rocket system was the result of Boeing, North American and Douglas - each employing thousands of jobs to accomplish the task. So many vendors had to be employed as the mission to build the Saturn V was SO vast, that not one vendor could accomplish the goal of landing on the moon in less that 9 years. 

The moon mission capable Saturn V Rocket was 363 feet in height with a maximum diameter of 33 feet with a mass weight of over 6 million pounds. 
To get to high orbit to achieve TLI (trans lunar injection) the Saturn V system had 3 stages, The S-IC (Stage 1), S-II (second stage) and S-IVb (third stage).

Be sure to back with this blog as I make progress on the Saturn V artwork. When complete, artwork prints, merchandise and video documentaries will soon follow.  

11-July-2020
After 39,768 people commenting on the technicalities of the previously posted mockup (the mockup had the Escape Tower as it was a previously rendered asset), I'm posting the final of the piece and I'm calling it "Parking." Phrasing the action of the third stage achieving something called a parking orbit prior to Trans Lunar Injection, . . . or simply put, TLI was lighting the third state rocket to send the ship to the moon. 
Parking - Saturn V Stage IIIWhen the Stage III section of the Saturn V launch system reached initial orbit, this position was called the "Parking Orbit."

This is where the Stage III section orbited prior to TLI - Trans Lunar Injection!

4-July-2020
HAPPY Fourth of July! In the times of celebrating America's Independence, we tend to like fireworks. WELL the ultimate firecracker is the Saturn V Rocket. Just about done with Tier 1 of my 3D model of the Saturn V. 

 

28-June-2020
Doing some internal structural work. Since the goal of these models is the eventual video Documentaries along with merchandising, a certain "acceptable" amount of detail is necessary. I'd qualify this a Tier 1 details, meaning the details getting put in could get destroyed by an engineer or some Apollo detailed oriented person could spot the "errors" but the details here can let me make my content. Or as others would say, . . . "Good enough." For now. 

With the 2020 Census quickly coming up, it's important that everyone get's counted. Recently, I was tasked by Houston County Georgia, the City of Warner Robins, the City of Centerville, and the city of Perry, Georgia to produce a short, concise video to help these entities effectively communicate the importance of participation to make sure people know about the 2020 Census. I worked with those governmental agencies, Chris Dunn and Kyle Obst to produce the following video.

To see more of my Video Production work, please see my Video Portfolio Page.

 To quote Kate Hogan of the City of Centerville:
"Video messaging plays an important role in marketing strategies for the City of Centerville. We have utilized David's talents many times and every time, he brought our vision to life flawlessly! He navigated our decision-making process with grace and ensured that everyone’s voice was heard. David is a great asset to your team, no matter the project!"

10" x 20" prints now available

The Command/Service Module - The Command Module was the control center for the Apollo spacecraft and living quarters for the three crewmen. It contained the main crew cabin, control and instrument panel, navigation and control system, communications systems, environmental control system, batteries, heat shield, reaction control system to provide attitude control, forward docking hatch, side hatch, five windows, and a parachute recovery system. It was the only part of the Apollo/Saturn space vehicle that returned to Earth intact.

The Lunar Module - The Apollo Lunar Module was the separate vehicle designed to land on the Moon and return to lunar orbit, and was the first true "spaceship" since it flew solely in the vacuum of space. It consisted of a descent stage and an ascent stage. It supplied life support systems for two astronauts for up to four to five days on the Apollo 15, 16 and 17 missions. The spacecraft was designed and manufactured by the Grumman Aircraft Company.

HI EVERYONE!!! I'm releasing my newest artwork on the SR-71 Blackbird in this exciting profile artwork. In particular, this is BlackBird #17958. She is currently on display at the Museum of Aviation at Robins Air Force Base in Warner Robins, Georgia.

SR-71 BlackBird Profile Artwork

After World War II, a new cold war was heating up between the United States and the Soviet Union.  In order to determine the technological threat of the Soviet Union, reconnaissance was a growing priority for the United States. Early on, the CIA was conducting overland flights of the Soviet Union using the U2 Spyplane – A lightweight, slow but high altitude aircraft with an advanced suite of onboard cameras. Everything had to be invented just to INVENT the SR-71 Blackbird; from the tools, materials to machining construction procedures. The Skunkworks really had to think outside of the box to create the SR71 Blackbird. Over 90% of the SR-71 Blackbird was made from titanium, which is quite a difficult metal to work with. Not only that, the United States didn’t have much of it. In order to get enough titanium to build the SR-71 Blackbird fleet, the CIA setup several front companies to get ahold of that precious metal. The SR-71 had a crew of 2: A Pilot seated in front, and an RSO seated directly behind the pilot. The crew had to wear pressurized flight suits just to keep them alive. The flight suits weren’t that different then astronaut space suits. They fly so high they’re practically astronauts, . . .well, almost – topping out around 85THOUSAND feet and “space” starts at around 300-ish thousand feet. Well,. . . even though it’s not technically space, the views I’m sure the views were QUITE spectacular. The SR-71 Blackbird served from 1964 to 1998. She flew over 17,000 sorties with over 53,000 flight hours - 11,000 of those hours at MACH 3. Over 4000 Missiles were fired at the SR-71 – she was NEVER shot down.

Prints are now available and to see more modern day aircraft artwork, follow the link or go to https://www.davidcollinsonline.com/modern-age-aircraft.

The Mustang is a Praetorion Class ship with the sole purpose of patrol, combat and short term scouting missions. It's the StarFleet version of a "gunboat." In MY Star Trek universal theory, the Federation always had and always will have a Navy-based Military section of Starfleet. The Starfleet Navy operates much like the United States Navy of today in the form of small fleet of ships; a Main StarFleet Ship and several support ships.  This Starfleet Navy Group usually has at least 2-3 of these Scout/Attack ships. The Mustang herself serves with the USS Robert Lee Scott. Prior to entering a section of space, the Mustang and a unit of Starfleet fighters scans and patrols that area. Once safe conditions have been cleared, "The Scott" drops out of warp. I think I'll produce video on this soon. Otherwise, here's where I'll post updates on the work of the USS Mustang. 

9-October: Many have asked about the size of the Mustang vs the The Scott so to clear things up here's a quick comparison render. The Mustang Docks nice and snug in to the bottom of the saucer section.
11 April 2020 Update
11-April-2020: I'm gonna go ahead and say the "design" phase is done as I can change it and change it until the tribbles come home so here's the physical layout of the Mustang. I want the Mustang to be a very small, powerful and fast ship meant to be a localized to system defense such as the Terran system, and multi-ship Fleet Missions. Similar to US Navy Carrier fleet operations. A deep space exploration fleet can consist of at least 2 or 3 Mustang class vessels. Prior to the mission fleet arriving to a certain location, as many as three Praetorian class vessels will arrive prior to scout and reconnoiter the system. Should the ships be attacked or witness hostile factors, they will either suppress/eliminate that threat or exfiltrate to report on the situation.  In combat situations, the Praetorian class is very suited to attack missions and defense missions. Usually, many to most command level Stafleet academy graduates are initial stationed on Praetorian Class starships. The shorter missions and localized stations mean new command officers can gain quick experience before moving on to larger vessels. Many young officers will get "the chair" time as officers as low as Lieutenant can command the Mustang Class vessel for short missions. However, some officers choose to make this class of vessel their entire careers. Many officers are more suited to the military, scout and defense side of Starfleet. Although Starfleet's main function is exploration and humanitarian missions, Starfleet will always have a main core meant for militarized defense and war-making.

Check out the images below of progression of my Apollo project. Enjoy, . . . soon I'll be getting Artwork prints, Videos and even T-Shirts. Follow along with me as we return to moon to celebrate America's achievement of landing a man on the moon on July 20th, 1969. 

To date, I’ve completed three projects for them to great result.

The first project I worked on was a profile artwork poster of the P-51d of Colonel Don Blakeslee of the 4^th Fighter Group. Col. Blakeslee also served in the RAF as a volunteer prior to the United States entered World War II.

The second project was the spotter plane “Rosie The Rocketeer” flown by Major Charles Carpenter, better known as “Bazooka Charlie.” Major Carpenter piloted the low and slow Piper L-4B, a recon plane of prewar design and covered in fabric and helped report back enemy troop and armor positions. Major Carpenter, not just satisfied with recon, mounted bazookas on his plane and soon racked up several confirmed kills, including 6 tanks.

The latest project was for a beautiful twin engine Aero Commander L-26b. This was primarily used for short trips of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and has the distinction of being the smallest plane ever designated Air Force One. Himself a pilot, Eisenhower was known to take the controls from time to time.

I’m looking forward to producing more great aviation artwork for HAPS as well as others that can appreciate the aviation artwork I’m producing.

“David Collins has been doing a fabulous job creating and delivering quality art for our projects.   He is responsive and very pleasant to work with.   I love his creations.”  

As groundbreaking as 2001: ASO was,. . . what really blew me away was 2010: The Year We Make Contact. A more traditionally narrative driven film, 2010: TYWMC, was a solid sequel to it's predecessor. My Pops took me to see this movie, and as a 9 year old, I was amazed at the visual FX of the film, although a "Few" of the FX shots didn't age well, BUT!; Those models. By 1984 - Industrial Light and Magic had some great experience and made some great practical models and it's a great example of visual fx done right prior the CGI.

One thing of note is I have not ready the books, I am simply inspired by the movies. Although I plan to "read" the books via Audiobook. Soon,. . . ish. 

In honor of the 50th Anniversary of 2001: ASO, I've re-imagined a new USS Discovery III to set a course back to EUROPA in the year 2030 - minus the homicidal Operations Computer. My Discovery is slightly larger, faster and most notably, has a centrifugal ring for added crew health and comfort. Many design changes were considered such as solar panels to reflect more modern day tech, but I went with a simpler the better approach to keep the look and feel of the Discovery III. In addition to the habitat ring, the engines were slightly redesigned with bigger, beefier engines, although I don't know how beef with help with the propulsion. As a result, it's a much faster ship; getting to Mars in as little as 60 days, and to the Lucifer system (former Jupiter) in a matter of months. 

I hope you all like my artwork inspired by these Science Fiction classics. Posters and prints will be available soon for all those scifi fans out there. Who knows, I may be inspired to write and make a short film one day. LOL!

At first, I had a huge smile on my face. I thought it was cool and I was pretty excited, but then I started thinking about some of the details and now I'm not so happy about it. Right away I noticed a couple of things. First thing is they didn't ask me to use my image in their video. Secondly, I noticed that the image they used did not have my watermark. Now I have 2 pages where the artwork appears, obviously my own site, and my ArtStation page. On the Artstation page, there's a logo-watermark on the artwork, and on my site the artwork does not have the watermark. So, I can only determine that they took a screen-grab of the image on my website, because I don't allow downloading, and used the image in their video. 

I contacted the page via YouTube and asked them to possibly give me a credit and website link in the video description - no answer for days. So today I sent them another message asking for credit and whether or not they were going to even acknowledge the issue. 

YouTube has a rule called "Fair Use" and I'd imagine that's the shield the channel in question will use. I am not wealthy by any standard so filing a lawsuit is not an option. The best I can do is right about it and make people aware that using an artist's artwork without permission is not professional and it speaks highly of the personal and professional nature of the individual(s) involved. 

So, what to do? Basically, if they do not respond and or give credit where it's due, I have decided to file a Copyright strike against them. Why? It's MY artwork. They took it without permission. And their videos are monetized which means they are making money off of my hard work. It's unacceptable.

I was recently hired by the Museum of Aviation to cover their 3rd Annual Jamfest. This is a fun concert to help raise funds for the museum and it's one helluva-night!! Through the whole evening, I used the hell out of the D500. It captures spectacular video and it's DSLR shooting speed is almost on par with the Nikon D5. Check out my video to see how the evening went.

When one of my favorite clients needs a quick turn-a-round video done to help sell their programs, I decided to just go epic. The Museum of Aviation in Warner Robins, Georgia has some of the best STEM programs in the country and even works with NASA to engage the next generation workforce. They had a banquet to welcome the Lt. Governor to work more closely with these foundation programs. I was tasked with simply making a video about the program,. . . and I said, "No, we need to make this EPIC!" So I did. The Museum director Chrissy Miner and the rest of the Museum staff loved the direction to help them with this program! My goal was to make them look as good as possible, and I think I can say I reached that goal. Enjoy!

"Everything had to be invented. Everything." Kelly Johnson once recalled. The requirements for this aircraft necessitated new technology be invented; new engines, new skins and paint, even new ways of manufacturing all had to be developed to bring this aircraft to life. The SR-71 Blackbird set so many records for manned flight, that many still are held to this day, . . . that we know of. 

David's most recent art releases featuring the SR-71 can be seen on his MODERN AGE page of his website. Multiple print sizes and products can be purchased directly from the website. It's David's hope that any and all aviation enthusiast enjoys this artwork as much as he enjoyed making. 

SR-71 Afterburner at Sunset

SR-71-002A highly stylized, top-down poster of the iconic SR-71 Blackbird designed and built by the Lockheed Skunkworks group.

The USS ROBERT LEE SCOTT. NCC-81500
Every once in a while, I like to take a break and work a project where I am bound by nothing other than what I want to do. While not a huge fan of Star Trek shows and movies, they’re enjoyable enough, I LOVE the design and production of the series. I eat up all the behind the scenes production, designs and FX, especially the starship designs. I buy Star Trek design, production and concept art books. So one day I had an idea of a Federation Starship design pop in my head and I decided to start a model.

Now, there are rules I did want to follow. The design rules set by Matt Jefferies’s original design concepts; a saucer connected to an engineering hull, and 2 warp engines. This is such a basic recipe that there’s been so many variants of these established design concepts that similar designs are inevitable. It’s how one slightly changes this recipe to be as unique as possible – but staying within the Start Trek universe.

Now, I grew up mostly with the TOS era shows and movies. I remember watching TOS as reruns growing up, but I was blown away when I saw Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, not necessarily by the movie, but by the Enterprise herself.  So you can say I’m an “old-school” Star Trek design guy.

Then, I saw the USS Kelvin and was equally drawn to the old-school, nuts and bolts look of that ship in the JJ Abrams reboot. Unfortunately, the rest of the film continued after the Kelvin scenes to make it seem that Apple designed Starfleet.

So,. . . my design. My ship, the USS Robert Lee Scott ( a World War II general) follows more of the old school nuts and bolts look. I like hard edges, right angles and flat surfaces.  Notice, along the spine of the main extrusion from the saucer, are very greebley, exposed technology. This follows my love of exposed technology, like a how a hot rod engine is exposed from under the hood. This design philosophy follows my concept that the tech is still large and instead of squeezing the tech inside the ship, it’s simply applied along the spine. Think of it as modern cell phones, once large and unattractive bricks, they are now slick button-less tech. Technology gets smaller and more powerful. So my idea of this ship is that this class of Starship is 20-30 years older than the Constitution Class Starship.

It’s also a VERY large ship compared to the Constitution class Starship. Some would say this shouldn’t be the case as some attribute size to power. Nope, the Constitution class is a more powerful, more advanced ship. Think of it as a 21^st century navy vessel, like a battleship or cruiser, being more powerful than a World War II aircraft carrier.

“The General” as it’s crew calls it, is a large multi-mission vessel that is modular. The current configuration you see in the work-in-progress renders has a Tactical Fighter and support section. This is a hull that supports a Tactical Fighter wing, support craft and a small, but powerful, cruiser vessel. It houses the fighters, technology, crew and shuttle-bays to support the mission. It also is newer technology, so it’s a system supported by an older system. You can compare the sleaker, more rounded design versus the straight, hard-edge design of The General’s main engineering hull. I like how this shows that Tech Design is continuously evolving in the Trek universe.

This is an ongoing project that will take a while, I will update and continue progress as I have time, so check back often for updates.