It's rare to have the opportunity to re-create an icon in your own image. Just ask Peter Mitchell Rubin, digital art director for Lost in Space. "I really feel lucky," says Rubin, who recently designed the Lewis & Clark spacecraft of Event Horizon, and who will now be known as the man who helped reinvent the Robinson's runaway spaceship, the Jupiter 2. But just what exactly is a digital art director? "I got that title because that's pretty much the way I work I do 2-D and 3-D design and some animation on the Macintosh, using Form Z and Electric Image."
Director Stephen Hopkins, production designer Norman Garwood and visual effects supervisor Angus Bickerton approached Rubin's company, Production Arts Digital Inc., about doing some previsualizations of key LiS effects sequences, which led to Rubin creating various spaceship designs, including that of the Jupiter 2. As they discussed the look of the Robinsons' spacecraft, there was some debate about just how closely they should adhere to the look of the original saucer-shaped craft. Ultimately, they arrived at a solution whereby they could have the old Jupiter 2 and a new one to boot. "There was a terrific sequence in the original script in which the Robinsons blasted off in a rocket ship, which dropped away once it was in space to reveal the second stage, which was actually a flying saucer," Rubin recalls. "That got modified a bit and we wound up using the classic version of the [TV series'] Jupiter 2 as the launch shell, which we called the Jupiter 1. The shell breaks away once it enters orbit, becoming a sort of launching station for the second-stage, redesigned Jupiter 2."
The new Jupiter 2, which Rubin describes as a "this very modern, elongated, saucer-shaped ship," was the result of sketches by Garwood, Bickerton, Hopkins and, of course, Rubin, with a dash of 1960s comic-book style thrown in for good measure. "[Director] Stephen Hopkins loves the comic art of Jack Kirby, so we looked at his work as well as that of other comic-book artists for a lot of inspiration in terms of our approach," Rubin reveals. "I then took everything everyone had done and, guided by Norman, synthesized it into a final shape, which was initially based on the flying saucer profile of the Jupiter 2 from the TV series. I rounded the edges and kept some of the elements from the original ship, then stretched it out so it became this ovoid saucer shape with various blisters on it."
While it only took Rubin and company a few weeks to get the overall shape of the Jupiter 2 worked out, there were a number of large- and small-scale iterations before the design was finalized. "The last design was version number 30, " Rubin says, "although some of those changes involved very minor adjustments. We wound up using elements from earlier designs; at one point, we'd beefed up the size of the rear engine, only to end up using an earlier version which featured numerous rear engines, which were actually very small relative to the size of the ship. Because the Jupiter 2 was designed completely in 3-D, I could often take a chunk out and put another piece in digitally, although sometimes I had to step backwards to re-create the shell of the ship before we cut into it in different ways. It's a terrific way to work, and Norman and Stephen enjoyed it, because instead of looking at just a 2-D illustration, they could quite quickly see not how the ship would look from all angles."
Many of Rubin's design iterations were inevitable because the Jupiter 2 envisioned by the creative team "has got some surprises. It's very smooth and sleek to begin with, but it does transform. We designed a sequence where the ship goes into hyperspace, and we see it transform from this sealed, perfect flattened egg shape into something that looks almost scarab-like. These elongated irregular shaped panels extend out horizontally from the sides of the ship, retaining the curved shape of the sides as they come out, and exposing the inner machinery of the ship. Then various panels pop out from the top and the back, generating an energy field that coalesces around the ship to send it into hyperspace. I hope it'll be a pleasant surprise."
After designing the Jupiter 2 with the assistance of Production Art DigitalÕs Dan Slavin and Anthony Longman, Rubin and company continued doing animatics and various other design concepts for LiS — including those for the terrestrial Launch Dome and the derelict Proteus spacecraft. He left the production as his wife was about to give birth to their daughter.
While Rubins is thrilled to have had the opportunity to contribute to LiS, heÕs less than thrilled with the title of digital art director. “IÕm not crazy about the term, frankly, because I donÕt think it necessary for there to be a distinction. Eventually there wonÕt be any distinction. My work is my work, regardless of how I accomplish it.”