Gorram!

I've received some very nice letters regarding my post about the Serenity blueprints.

Hee hee...little did I know that I was working on a holy relic. I must have been possessed by the divine spirit (Joss)...although I thought at the time it was a touch of indigestion.

Best, Geoff

In case you haven't checked your relic recently, Geoff Mandel is one of the people involved in making The Shiny. I took the opportunity to ask him a few questions, and he was nice enough to reply:

I basically drew the blueprints from scratch using the set designs created by Tim Earls, the set designer, and the CG model created by Zoic. The airlocks had to go where there were airlock doors on the CG model...that's why there are airlocks outside of the crew quarters. There's another hatch at the bottom of the bridge and above the dining room, so airlocks had to go there as well. I doubt the escape pods even work anymore...one of the SoCal Browncoats suggested that a family of raccoons may live in there. The shuttles were a real problem...they ride much too high on the CG model for the hatches on the catwalk of the cargo bay to work, and that's why I had to add that extra stairway and airlock. It's obviously more convenient to access the shuttles from the dining room than the cargo deck, but without drastically changing the outer appearance of Serenity by lowering the shuttles, there was little I could do. Originally, I had another crew head/shower off the dining room, but the shuttles take up so much room on that level, I barely managed to fit the dining room in as it is. The "Serenity Brain Trust"...fans Brian Wiser, Chris Bridges and Ben Mund...reviewed all my early drawings and made lots of helpful suggestions (for instance, putting in Kaylee's dress and hammock). You should have seen how complex the shuttle airlocks were before Chris and Ben weighed in!

Wow. Pretty heady stuff! And then I got another nice letter from Andy Gore, the Director of Marketing for Quantum Mechanix Inc:

Just wanted to drop you a note and say "thanks" for the wonderful post. We've gotten a lot of nice feedback from Browncoats, but I think yours is my personal favorite. In fact, I think yours may be the team favorite – it was Geoff Mandel who pointed me to your blog in the first place!

Team favorite? Oh my. *fans self* Ah do declare, ah feel a mite faint....