Downloadable production art, interviews and . . . . stuff. ; )

[Triple F]

Well. As I’ve been spamming countless forums over the last month or so I guess that just leaves this one, now that I ain’t doing it anymore. ; )

The really cool bit is the ‘likes’ on the facebook page only represent a fraction of those who have downloaded a copy for themselves (a tadge over 5,000 the last time I checked).

Most here already know of the site, and presumably have a copy if they so wished, but for those who don’t and any visitors who might stumble over this thread, here’s the blurb. ; )



After contacting Ron Thornton, to find out who designed one of the ships on Babylon 5, one thing led to another, and a quick exercise in learning how to code up a web page turned into a unique reference site. (5 years, 15 FX artists and one producer later). Among those contacted included Steve Burg, Everett Burrell, Eric Chauvin and Kevin Kutchaver.

The site isn’t going to stay up forever, It was just a hobby, a one off, so I made it downloadable for anyone to keep – no strings, popups, adverts or anything else attached. Just a lot of frank, revealing, wide ranging and occasionally funny interviews from a bunch of artists with enough Emmys between them to field a couple of football teams (that answer a lot of questions and bust a few myths) and a fair bit of previously unreleased concept art, like this.



It’s not so much about the show, but the artists, the art and the technology. Steve Burg (who recently designed the Prometheus for the Ridley Scott movie) described what we talked about as the most in-depth examination of his methodology and approach to design ever carried out. Which, considering Steve’s career, came as a bit of a surprise.

This is a link to a facebook page highlighting the site.

http://www.facebook.com/B5Scrolls

The idea behind that is it can act as a semi-permanent signpost to the site – with having enough likes, anyone doing a “babylon 5” search should find it. It’s far from ideal (a lot of folks aren’t on facebook), but it was the best idea I could think of to let as many know as possible, before the site disappears.

If anyone’s interested, and ain’t on facebook, here’s a link to the website itself. Though if you can ‘like’ that Facebook do-da, that would be helpful in letting others find the website a month from now.
http://www.themadgoner.com/B5/B5Scrolls/B5Scrolls.htm

Cheers
Tom

[Joe Nazzaro]

Thanks for taking the time to put all of this together. It's a wonderful resource for people who want to know more about B5 from a technical but extremely important area, one which has rarely had the attention it deserves. I don't think one can overestimate the importance that Babylon 5 had on the use of digital technology in television. This was all unknown territory when it began, but within a relatively short period of time, that technology had already become an integral part of other genre shows such as Voyager. And since the silence of people on this site seems to be deafening at the moment, let me also say thank you for providing this wealth of material to the fans. As somebody who's spent more than a decade trying to cover Babylon 5 in as much depth as I could, I can certainly testify for all the hard work you've put into this project.

[Triple F]

(Rudely ignoring the fascinating post by kyolive123)

Yeah, a fair bit of it was simply down to being in the right place at the right time. But someone had to be first, I guess, and there was a LOT of far reaching technical innovations taking place in and around the show.

Cheers. But I only did it for as long as it was fun. ; ) Though I swear, and you’ll know this far better than me, I’m sure some of the buggers in “the business” enjoy being chased. Between that, mutual work commitments and other real life stuff - for a quick learning exercise it sure dragged out a bit longer than expected. ; )

As a quick aside. Way back in the day I found a whole pile of Bruce Boxleiner Magazine interviews, some of which you carried out. Don’t know if most folk have read them, but here’s a link on the off chance anyone is interested. Following the index link at the bottom brings up a fair few other related goodies.

http://www.maestravida.com/weinwalk/BBLibrary.html

[OmahaStar]

Originally Posted by Joe Nazzaro

And since the silence of people on this site seems to be deafening

Perhaps some of our mothers taught us that if we have nothing nice to say, we should refrain from saying it.

I know I have nothing nice to say, in any way, where Trip F is concerned.

[Jan]

I may not appreciate his attitude most of the time but I *very* much appreciate the great reference Triple-F put together.

Jan

[Triple F]

I forgot to mention. Thanks to anyone here who is on Tumblr and was involved in passing a couple of the things on the FB page around a few of the blogs. Looking through the FB page’s insights, I noticed a number of the ‘likes’ were generated through that, and no doubt a few more downloaded it as well. ; )