The VFX of Babylon 5: artist interviews and artwork

Tom Smith, a fan of Babylon 5, has put together a great archive of VFX content from the artists who worked on the show. You don’t have to be a fan of Babylon 5 to appreciate the ship designs or the effects, or this labour of love website…

As Tom writes on The Mad Goner: “This site started out by simply listing a few of the computer generated ship designs that appeared in the Babylon 5 television series. More by accident than design, it now contains information on a number of subjects relating to the CGI and VFX in general, like this:

• Who developed new techniques while moonlighting on B5 and introduced them to his day job at Industrial Light and Magic?
• How producers quietly set up a new FX group before letting Foundation Imaging know their services were no longer required
• What was the true inspirations behind the design of the Starfury and what it has to do with the movie Terminator 2
• The reason why the CGI wasn’t produced in widescreen and why the widescreen conversion for the DVDs turned out so badly
• Why the weapons officer for the Liandra appears to be having a screaming fit in Legend Of The Rangers
• And basic stuff such as who designed the Omega destroyer

The site features previously unreleased artwork plus wide ranging and frank interviews with 16 FX artists and one producer

Find out more at Tom Smith’s website or visit the Facebook page

The main image here is a low-poly model of the (Steve Burg designed) gunship from GROPOS.

Babylon 5 characters, names and all related indicia are trademarks of Time Warner Entertainment Co.
All other images used are the property of their original creators and no claim to ownership by this site is inferred by their usage.

Posted on Wednesday, June 27th, 2012 at 4:17 pm under Features, Making of. You can subscribe to comments. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

Tags: artwork, Babylon 5, concept art, The Mad Goner, Tom Smith, VFX