He’s had his hands in all three Stargate television series. If you have a favorite prop, set piece or creature from Stargate SG-1, Atlantis or Universe, there is a reasonable chance it was conceived on his desk. James CD Robbins joined SG-1 in Season Six as an illustrator, and he went on to be Art Director and Production Designer, with involvement in all three shows. In this special Dial the Gate pre-recorded episode, we examine the “language” of the design of the Ancients, earth space ships, and much more.

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Timecodes
0:00 – Opening Credits
0:32 – Welcome and Episode Outline
02:08 – Guest introduction
03:00 – Stargate: An Epic Project
05:01 – Design Process
07:41 – Quality of the Designs, Props and Production Timeline
11:47 – Kull Warrior and Atlantean Suits
14:05 – James’s Origins of Creating
18:37 – How much is Talent VS Repetition and Refinement
21:00 – People James Has Worked With
24:25 – Visual Style of Stargate from Show to Show
28:01 – Which artists have pushed you the most?
31:27 – Longevity of Props, Designs, and Their Details
34:20 – Repurposing Props and Sets
37:08 – Comparing Concept and Design Process to Other Projects
39:44 – Did you ever speak to Ken Rabehl?
40:53 – Accuracy of Production from Design
44:04 – Language of the Show, and Communication Stune
45:36 – Sci-Fi Providing Inspiration
50:11 – SGU Gate Design
51:07 – Favorite Ship Design – Destiny
53:26 – Do you have a set amount of time to do certain drawings?
57:16 – Favorite Prop – Ronon’s Gun
58:36 – The Art of James CD Robbins (Art Book)
1:01:22 – Charcoal Designs
1:03:10 – Prometheus – Function Before Form
1:06:25 – The Ori Supergate
1:08:55 – Evolving the City of Atlantis
1:12:23 – Ancient Drone Design
1:13:51 – Destiny Design Iterations
1:19:40 – Current Projects
1:22:11 – Thank You, James!
1:23:17 – Post-Interview Housekeeping
1:27:02 – End Credits
1:28:00 – Bonus Scene

***

“Stargate” and all related materials are owned by MGM Studios and MGM Television.

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TRANSCRIPT
Find an error? Submit it here.

David Read:
Welcome to Episode 47 of Dial the Gate. My name is David Read. Thank you for joining me. This is a pre-recorded episode this weekend, which is why it’s dark in this room. It’ll soon be light in the next few moments here when we bring in James CD Robbins, production designer and art director. This man is a wealth of production knowledge and designs. We’ve included a number of his pieces for this episode as we go through the conversation, and really hope you enjoy this discussion. We’re really hoping to have him back later on because his information just keeps on going. For this particular episode, we had fan questions submitted in advance. So, don’t run away, we’re still going to be having the live chat at youtube.com/dialthegate as always, and that’s only going to be available for the first run of this episode. So, go in there and hang out with your friends and see what’s going on with them. Then afterwards, we’re going to be showing off some Stargate art from the fan community and talking up Dial the Gate’s new merchandise portal. I really appreciate your help with that. Without any further ado, I’m gonna go ahead and bring in James CD Robbins. Once this episode is over, after the end credits, there’s a little bonus at the end when he first came on and saw all of the Stargate things that he basically helped design. So, stick around for that at the very, very end of the episode. James CD Robbins, everyone. Enjoy.

David Read:
Art director, production designer, James CD Robbins, welcome sir to my parlor of your lost toys, your island of lost toys. Thank you so much for being here.

James CD Robbins:
Thank you for having me, David. It’s a pleasure.

David Read:
It’s a tremendous pleasure to have you. I could just go on and on with all my little toys here.

James CD Robbins:
“Whispers”.

David Read:
There’s “Whispers”. And can you name this one?

James CD Robbins:
Ancient Tablet…

David Read:
Exactly, name the episode.

James CD Robbins:
…is the name on the drawing.

David Read:
This was “Chimera”, and I don’t know if you’ll recognize this one.

James CD Robbins:
Kino? Maybe.

David Read:
What was it…

James CD Robbins:
Just don’t ask me episodically, I really suck at remembering the episode.

David Read:
Exactly. You got “Whispers”? That’s pretty darn good.

James CD Robbins:
I love that doll.

David Read:
What was it like working on such an epic project for such a protracted period of time? Stargate, it’s one of those anomalies in the industry where it lasted well over a decade. These projects, they are out there, but they are few and far between. What was that like?

James CD Robbins:
Peaking early? Stargate was literally my first union job. And I’d done some design work previous to that as a production designer on some independents and movies and stuff, and I put my information into the union, and they categorized me as an illustrator because of my proficiency with a pencil. So, I was a little actually taken aback. It’s like, “Well I’m a production designer, guys.” And, “Oh no, no, no, you’re an illustrator,” because I hadn’t done anything in their world.

David Read:
Geez.

James CD Robbins:
Exactly. So, I put in my union thing and I got my category, or categorization if you will, and promptly went back to work doing exactly what I was out doing at that time, which was more television commercials and indie work. And heard almost nothing about it until a year later. It was almost time for me to redo my permit status, and I got a phone call from Richard McGuire saying, “Did you wanna come down and have an interview?” So, I went down. “Stargate? Wasn’t that a movie?” I had no idea that there was a series whatsoever. So, there they were going into Season Six and… “Wow, you guys got some history already.” Which became quite the hurdle that I had to vault over.

David Read:
Crash course, more like.

James CD Robbins:
Getting up to speed. The first two days was just me watching videos trying to get a sense of the show and a sense of the incredible layered history that they’d already put together in the first five seasons.

David Read:
And I want to talk about the lead-in to your arrival. It’s just an impressive body of work, truly. I mean, the amount of stuff that you were expected to put out on a weekly basis, I really don’t know how your head didn’t fly off your shoulders. Especially…

James CD Robbins:
Honestly, honestly, David? It was the best thing ever. I went home after a couple of days and, “Oh my God, they just want me to draw. I can’t believe it. And they’re gonna pay me.”

David Read:
That’s true. But 40 episodes a year for three years, James?

James CD Robbins:
Oh, we did a bunch, man. And quite honestly, they brought me on as illustrator in Season Six. I was art directing in Season Seven, and for the next few years until I got the production design gig again. But I retained the position of illustrator. I felt that’s part of my whole design process, is to put a pencil to my hand to do the drawings, and what comes out on the page, half the time I don’t even know what it’s gonna be when I start.

David Read:
Really?

James CD Robbins:
That’s the whole process. I mean, I get a script and it’s like… There was one that was actually quite funny. Paul Mullie, I don’t remember the episode.

David Read:
Just give me information. It’ll come.

James CD Robbins:
It might have been part of the whole Bola Kai thing and “Missing”. It was shot in the same location, I know that. Latimer. But there was this creature, which was described in the script as something a cross between a squid and a gopher. And I’m like, “What the hell does that look like?”

David Read:
And Teyla’s supposed to eat it.

James CD Robbins:
Exactly. So, I drew this… You had to skewer it with a spear and the whole bit. So, I drew this laughable drawing, which Paul Mullie actually found so entertaining that he pulled it out and he put it on his wall in his office. But it was ridiculous. It was this large-eyed sort of gopher thing with squid-like tentacles coming out of its head.

David Read:
And a big mouth on it.

James CD Robbins:
It was ridiculous. So, obviously… And that was one of my learning curves in this, was that no drawing is unwarranted or a bad drawing because they all lead you closer to what it is that you want to be…

David Read:
That’s true.

James CD Robbins:
… arriving at. So, even if it’s, “No, this is not it. We didn’t want this. We wanted…” And then you get more input and you get more direction that way.

David Read:
I sold that creature at Propworx years later, and let me tell you something, it was still slimy and fresh.

James CD Robbins:
No best before date.

David Read:
The thing that blows me away about your work, and it’s a testament to that whole production team that they had going for them, and the production process, is the quality of some of this stuff. The metal, this is metal. The engineering that it takes to create some of these things. You guys had a whole fabrication department that–

James CD Robbins:
Everything was set up and in-house. I walked into that, and that was a beautiful thing. And then over the first five years that I was on the show, Atlantis came along. Infrastructure increased. We had to find new lockups, just for storage of all the stuff that we were producing. But the model shop, Gord Bellamy and company, oh my God. Water-cut, CNC, you name it, they could do it all. They had a 3D scanner before anybody was even talking about that kind of thing. So, to have those, there was nothing that I could draw that they couldn’t produce.

David Read:
And the fact that you draw it and within… And I wanna talk about the timeframe as well. Within weeks or months, it is willed into solid reality. I think if there is a single mind-blowing thing… Martin Gero and I talked about this as well, if there’s a single mind-blowing thing about that process is that the writer and you think it and then it exists. How do you ever get over that? That is so cool.

James CD Robbins:
I never have, and I hope I never do. I’m like a kid in a candy shop when I… They bring me these things, and 99% of the time it was either exactly what I’d drawn or they had to make certain slight changes in order to make it work in the real world. One of the first things that I drew when I was brought into the show as an illustrator, there was this device that was being fired into the gate at the SGC from another planet…

David Read:
“Evolution”.

James CD Robbins:
… and I had to draw these things with all the… Exactly, “Evolution”. And I’d draw these things that Bridget described to me, and the whole bit. Then she goes, “OK, now at this end, they need this EMP generator, electromagnetic pulse…”

David Read:
To fight back.

James CD Robbins:
“… EMP generator at this end. And that’s gonna be in the gate room as the protective shield at the end of this thing, and that’s how they’re gonna shut down this device.” And Bridget goes, “OK, draw something up for that.” So, I drew up something as an illustration. She goes, “Now can you draft that out so they can build it?” And I’m like, “What? Illustrator, hello? One year of drafting in high school 30 years ago.” But she goes, “Oh, you’ll figure it out.” And she wasn’t wrong. All I had to do… Everybody left the art department and I’m pulling drawings out of drawers and looking at them and trying to refresh my memory from the tiny amount of drafting experience that I had at the time. And the effects guys, Wray Douglas, rest his soul, and company were gonna build this thing, and what I’d done is I put something that spins in opposite directions on the same axle. And for them to figure out how to do that I guess was quite a brainer, but they did it. They made it work. So, it was very cool. And then that became the flow of things from there on in. There was nothing I could draw that they couldn’t build, and I didn’t look at that as a challenge because God forbid, I actually did draw something they couldn’t build. And then where am I?

David Read:
Part of me would think, “What can I possibly draw that they won’t be able to create?” It’s unlimited.

James CD Robbins:
And then there’s almost nothing. There’s nothing. So many smart people. And that’s the main thing. A show like Stargate had such talent in every corner of the production that we were able to produce incredibly high-end stuff all the way through on micro time frames compared to what you should have. Now there were other times when I got tons of heads-up like when we did the both the Kull Warrior and the ancient Atlantean suits. I did a lot of…

David Read:
This guy here.

James CD Robbins:
Exactly, your little friend in the back there. I had heads-up on those. Rob Cooper came to me at the beginning of the season and said, “We’re gonna do this Kull Warrior,” in Episode 10, I believe it was. And that’s how much lead time I had. He told me right at the beginning of the season. So, I was playing with drawings for that, and I actually wound up doing a clay maquette because I sculpt as well. So, we were able to refine that in a decent sort of amount of time. So, you have time to look at it and say, “Well, more like this,” and make some changes rather than run through it and wind up as something at the end that’s kind of like what you wanted, but not really.

David Read:
Some of this, you just have to find your way. It’s not… Like Atlantis, it’s not a straight line. I remember a lot of your earlier concept art, and I want to get into this in a little bit, but Brad said, “Snowflake,” and it’s like, “Oh, then this way.”

James CD Robbins:
And it’s funny because this whole snowflake thing, and I didn’t recall if it was Brad or Bridget, but regardless, we started down that road when we were putting Atlantis together, but I’d already done illustrations of The Lost City at the Antarctic, and it had a very different feel to it than what Atlantis wound up being. So, honestly, I would have to go back and look at final vis[ual] effects to see if there was any kind of reverse engineering into that specific look. ‘Cause it was more spires. It was like turret-style roofs and things like that in the original concept for Antarctica.

David Read:
I remember it being much more organic and then Atlantis, the series was Frank Lloyd Wright.

James CD Robbins:
Yes.

David Read:
I’ve gotta stop myself here ’cause I need to go back and set up some of these pieces in order. I’d like to know who, what your interests were as a young person? Where are you from, and how young were you when you really started crafting? So, I imagine three, but I’d like to hear it from you.

James CD Robbins:
No, it wasn’t as early as that, the Wayback Machine. 14, I think. I was 14 when I made the decision that art was gonna be my thing, probably because I really wasn’t very good at anything else. Very, very quick story. My sister, for Christmas one year when I was probably around 11, got a Jon Gnagy How to Draw book or kit, and it comes with a pad and then how to draw the covered bridge and all that stuff. She got it and promptly put it away. She did nothing with it. And I used to sneak in and get this thing out, and I would draw Jon Gnagy‘s course and have it, but I shared it with nobody. I just put the drawings upside down in the bottom of the box so hopefully nobody would find… She never used it, so that was fine. And then my mother came along one day and went to my sister and said, “Wow, you’re drawing really good. I thought you were using the… ” She’s like, “What are you talking about?” And that was when, I guess the family first realized that I had an interest, but I felt like I was stealing my sister’s stuff. So, I was very much on the QT with it. And then by the time I was… I quit the football team in school, so that I could go to art classes that happened on Saturdays, which is the same time as our football…

David Read:
Matches?

James CD Robbins:
Yeah, matches, and practice…

David Read:
Practices.

James CD Robbins:
… and stuff like that. So, I had a note from my mom because there were nude models and I was only 14. So, she said yes, and they drove me to this thing every Saturday, and that was when I really focused on this as the path that I wanted to take. And when I was 17, my parents… My father was a banker. We spent our life, you know, following him around from bank to bank to branch in different cities. And he was always getting transferred and so never lived anywhere longer than about five years. And I’m from Windsor, Ontario, originally. There’s a little town outside Windsor called London. My dad came home one day and goes, “Well, I’ve been transferred again.” We were in Winnipeg at this point. I was starting grade 11, and I’m like, “Oh. Where to this time?” And he’s like, “London,” and I’m thinking, “London, Ontario” or something. “What did you do wrong?” And he goes, “No, no, no. London, England. “My ears just went ding. They had one branch of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce in London.

David Read:
He was going.

James CD Robbins:
He was going there. He and my mom pulled up stakes, threw me into an apartment, and they moved to England. And I was 16.

David Read:
What an experience.

James CD Robbins:
I did my last two years of high school, living on my own in an apartment… My sister was with me for a while. But then she took off. As soon as I finished high school, I moved to England as well, and I sent my portfolio over. And my mother was kind enough to go to a couple different universities and drop my folio with them. I was actually invited to attend three different colleges over there that I applied to and wound up obviously choosing one of those. And I spent the next four years living in London and doing fine art every day. It was so great because if I’d gone to University for Fine Art in Manitoba, for example, which was the way it was looking prior to my father being transferred, I would have been doing art history and art as related to math and all this other stuff that has nothing to do with learning to be an artist. And instead, I wound up with an intensive course, which was just all day, every day, hands-on drawing, painting, sculpting, printmaking, you name it. There was photography, the whole bit. So, I just did all that stuff instead of having to take unrelated courses that really wouldn’t have had much influence on furthering my artistic skills. So, it was a very fortunate time.

David Read:
James, how much over these years would you think that your process and what you’ve created is talent, and how much of it was repetition and continuing to work and continuing to refine?

James CD Robbins:
Personally, I think it’s interest rather than talent, because I look back at the drawings I did when I decided that this was the path I had chosen, and I wonder why I chose this path based on that work. It was awful. But I had an interest, and that’s what leads you to… You do anything 1,000 times and you’re a pro, or whatever they say. It’s repetition. It’s learning your art form from the ground up. And I was so fortunate to go to England at that time, and really just develop my craft. And it’s repetition. I think honestly, anybody can learn to draw. People go, “Oh, I can’t draw a stick figure.” I go, “Well, how much time have you ever really spent trying?” If it’s not in your wheelhouse, if it’s nothing that interests you, then you’re not gonna keep it up. You’re not gonna follow up.

David Read:
That’s right.

James CD Robbins:
You’re not gonna become good at it. So, if it’s important to you, you develop the skill sets. I’ve done over my 1,000 drawings now, so I consider myself professional. I think I did the 1,000 drawings the first three months of Stargate. ‘Cause literally, I would wind up there before or around 5 in the morning. Boyd Godfrey… Boyd used to be the early one, always, and then I sort of bumped him out of that chair. I’d be there at 5 AM, and I would do my 12 or so and go home at 5 or 6, have a bite to eat, and then I would work until midnight or so, or whenever I couldn’t focus anymore, and then get up and do it over again. But I loved it. It wasn’t like, “Oh god, I gotta go home. I gotta work all night.”

David Read:
No, you were in your element.

James CD Robbins:
I relished it. It was, to this day, the best gig I’ve ever had. I don’t think potentially I’m gonna be able to repeat that anywhere, because so much of this was about the people as well. I mean, having the infrastructure and having the ability to do the things we did was great, and I love the fantasy, sci-fi aspect of it, which has kept my creative juices going constantly. But ultimately, at the end of the day, if you gotta spend 12 hours plus with people every day, and they’re not nice people, then you’re not gonna be enjoying your world. And what we had there was some of the best, some of the most talented. It’s gonna be a hard scenario to reproduce ongoing. I’ve been trying to get the band back together on different occasions, and different shows since then. And I do work with some of the same people from time to time, which is always wonderful. I always love the tie-back to that time, I guess, is really what it comes down to. I did The 100 this past year, right before COVID. We finished up just, we were actually the last people shooting, I think. They had an extension. They shut everything down on the Friday, and we got an extension to shoot for two more days, and then they shut us down. So, one more day, rather. We were supposed to have two more shoot days, and we shot every Saturday. Brought an extra camera, finished it all up. But I had Tedd Kuchera, who was the decorator for Universe and some of Atlantis theme. He was there with me throughout that, and Kenny Gibbs was prop mastering with us.

David Read:
Good ol’ Kenny.

James CD Robbins:
So, touchstones. These are the people that make the day as enjoyable as it can be, quite honestly.

David Read:
Absolutely. Now I’ve lost count of the number of people who have said, “Rick and Brad and Rob and Jonathan Glassner,” earlier on, “they set the tone for the environment.” And if people weren’t willing to have a good time and take a little ribbing here and there, you weren’t gonna make it. You have to for the number of hours that you have to put in. And for 17 seasons.

James CD Robbins:
You work hard, and then when you can, you play hard too.

David Read:
Exactly right.

James CD Robbins:
That was the other thing too, because of Brad’s penchant for golf. That was a disease I developed fairly early in life too. I learned to golf at 14.

David Read:
Then you were in the club. Pardon the pun.

James CD Robbins:
Not immediately. I had suffered some car accidents, and when we first started the show, I was on morphine all day every day for about the first ten years I was on the show. Just ongoing problems. Back problems and stuff. So, managed to get all that fixed up, but yes. I was late to the club, but it was so awesome. Went to Vegas. We went to Phoenix. You were in Phoenix, were you not?

David Read:
Yes, sir.

James CD Robbins:
Brad had a place in Phoenix. Mark Davidson and myself and Andy Mikita, Paul Mullie, John Smith. They put together these golf trips, and I have never experienced anything like it before. And the camaraderie of these people was spectacular. Brad was always the most fantastic host possible. We ate very well. We drank very well, and some of us golfed very well. I tended to be a bit streaky. That’s how they called it.

David Read:
Oh, really?

James CD Robbins:
I’d have my moments, and then it’d be like, “Oh my god, he just shot 112.” Whatever.

David Read:
In addition to the people, you are creating a visual style that is very much a language. I mean, we have this in Season Seven, and there is a line that goes indirectly from this to something like this. I can’t imagine what that process would be like to discover that language and interpret that language, iteration over iteration from show to show. Using… because they’re both… Both of these things are the same race, but they’re different eras out of that race. What was it like sitting down and figuring that out, who these people in particular, the Ancients, were, from 100,000 years ago to, quite possibly, several million years ago, you know? That had to have been extremely daunting and exciting at the same time.

James CD Robbins:
I’d say more exciting than daunting. There‘s a lot of people that go into making the decisions as to what the look for any given race is. And now mind you, we’d go to new planets, and I’d get to go, “OK, what’s this gonna be?” But it became sort of automatic. I would sit down. If I had to do something Atlantean, then I knew what that was, and if I had to do something Ancient, then it added a different feel. And I didn’t consciously go, “OK, well, I gotta do this,” but you just fall into… ‘Cause once you know what the look is, what the feel is, it just comes off the pencil. It does for me, anyway. Less daunting, more just, “OK, where are we gonna go with it now?” Once you have the rules… I would draw shapes. I would draw the gate and your little friend behind you. Started out with shapes and developed the look of the armor. You can use color as a great way to join things together visually as well. So, Universe wound up having the color palette that exists on the little fellow behind you, is generally the overall color scheme for the show right there. We had our golds and bronzes and brasses. And developing the interior of the Destiny, all the metals and stuff that we developed through the paint department to represent kinda the same things. Even down to the bed sheets and stuff on the beds, I had Ted make sure that all the fabrics that we used had a sheen to it, so they looked like there was almost a metallic aspect to that as well. You just… You find your design theme and extend it as much as you’re able to, pushing the envelope to try to keep that visual into all aspects of things, which is why a kino and a tablet, at the end of the day, feel like brethren.

David Read:
They are in the lore of the show, and it’s… They also come from you and from all the other people that put them together, so there is that design aesthetic that carries through and magically, you know, materializes on screen. Which artists, James, have pushed you the most? Either those in your life or those you have known by their work.

James CD Robbins:
When I was in college, I was looking at Edward Hopper’s work quite a bit, American painter, early 19th century [sic]. His paintings were all about light, and really, really, that’s what any painting comes down to at the end of the day, or most paintings come down to at the end of the day, is light. ‘Cause obviously, you have nothing on the canvas if there’s no light shining on your subject matter. So, I liked Hopper’s work. It was so difficult to choose, though, because being in England at that time, I could go to so many different galleries. I went across the pond, or the Channel, if you will, and went to Amsterdam and saw the Rijksmuseum, and saw the Van Gogh Museum. And it’s like, “There’s a prolific guy. Crazy? Sure. But prolific? Wow, the amount of paintings.” So, tons of different influences. I love the drawings of Heinrich Kley, a master with sort of fantasy drawings, animal stuff. Backtracking slightly, one of the things that interested me strongly as a youth was wildlife work. And I used to do pen-and-ink drawings where basically I’d be building an animal like a lynx hair by hair with a crow quill pen-and-ink setup. And I thought that potentially that was the road I was gonna go down, was to do the wildlife things. But instead, I wound up incorporating them into these drawings that are very much like Heinrich Kley, who I didn’t know at the time, but just putting animals into human situations, and bad puns. I remember doing one drawing called ‘a wolf in chic clothing’, which is cheesy. Cheesy but fun. At any rate, so I would say that there’s no one artist that sort of defined or led my direction. I was inundated with so much, especially, like I say, living in England at that time. You can’t move for landing in a museum or an art gallery over there.

David Read:
That’s true.

James CD Robbins:
It’s spectacular. You look at the exterior of Selfridges, which is just a department store, and it’s got all hand-carved cornices and sculptural work, and I’m like, “That’s a department store? Wow.” Back when artisans were populating the Earth. Now they’re fewer and further between and it’s all done with CNC, and the human touch is removed to a large degree.

David Read:
Taken right out of it.

James CD Robbins:
Which is why I love the ability to do things, make something from nothing. I guess that’s the main thing that drives any artistic process is to, just out of these elements you produce something 100% different that hopefully will have a voice of its own.

David Read:
And that has a quality that holds up and still lights up 17 years later.

James CD Robbins:
Exactly.

David Read:
It goes to show, you put the right elements in, the right ones come out. The thing that blows me away is that the stuff… A lot of these pieces appeared for seconds on screen. And I guess it comes down to the budget and the time that you guys were allowed to put in was, “We’re not gonna create it so that it falls apart right after it’s done because we may need it later.” “And you know what? We’re gonna do it so we’re gonna go big or go home.” So, “We’re gonna make it right, and we’re gonna make it feel heavy and weighted in the actors’ hands and it’s gonna help them create the performance.”

James CD Robbins:
And then I think that’s a big thing for artists. Robert Carlyle told me that the detail in the Destiny set, the interior, he came back to me and went, “It looks fantastic. This is fantastic. It allows me to really believe in the environment.” And even if it’s little nuances, like we had rivets that we made that were our own. We didn’t wanna use Earth-based screws and things like that. So, those were little plastic plant-on things that were molded and put throughout the ship, and then the lighting on the front of the stairs coming down into the gate room, that was one of the things that Carlyle mentioned specifically.

David Read:
The dry ice.

James CD Robbins:
There’s that, and when I built the Destiny, I built the whole thing three feet up off the floor, so there’s basically a crawl space underneath which allowed us to access the floors both to put lighting in, to run special effects through like steam and whatnot, the little blasters that went off after the gate closed. My idea. But it wasn’t a great idea in the long run because number one, it was very costly to run the CO2 every single time the gate shut down, and the noise factor that it put out. They had to go around and give people the option if they wanted to wear hearing protection, and then makeup had to go in there and paint those things skin tone so they’d disappear on whoever was wearing them and…

David Read:
And then the ADR. If there was dialogue.

James CD Robbins:
Nobody says anything when that’s happening, and you don’t hear a word.

David Read:
There you go. Just let it do its thing.

James CD Robbins:
But that attention to detail. I mean, I learned early on on this show that that’s just how they rolled. I mean, they were not producing stuff quickly and cheaply. They had a very, very strong model shop department that, as I say, can produce anything you need, and quality was the name of the game. ‘Cause as you said, you don’t wanna break it down in an actor’s hand, or you want it to be available to you three episodes down the road potentially. And you may not know that right now, so we do everything…

David Read:
Or repurpose it to something else.

James CD Robbins:
We did everything full on. There wasn’t as much of that going on on Stargate quite honestly. With the exception of the village in the [inaudible] special effects stage. That had to facelift every three weeks basically. But we’d have to wait for that period of time and have some episodes that were lighter to justify the cost of going in there ’cause it was three stories tall in places and both sides of the road and 100 or more feet long. No matter what you’re gonna go in and do to it, even if it’s only paint and minor upgrades, there’s a chunk of money that has to go behind that. They would… The writers were obviously very, very smart and knew how to sort of pace these things within the budget so that it’s like, “OK, well, we know that we can go back into the village and redo it in four episodes,” which also gave me the time necessary to go in and effect the changes in the first place.

David Read:
I remember seeing that place and the cave and just the different facades that you guys had, especially with the village where, if one was from this kind of era, another was from this kind of an era, and then I… When I had gone, I think Avalon 3 had already been done at that point. But, I mean, you got the ones where you’re gonna use the entire set, so it had to be more uniform because you’re gonna go straight down that whole pathway to the big double doors in the back. It was just marvelous, and I had remembered that Brad was talking for years about wanting to set something up like that because the team comes to a village and it’s like, “Oh boy, here we go. A village.” It’d be much better to have that existing set, which you guys got in Season Nine of SG-1 and Season Two of Atlantis and just opened up all kinds of possibilities.

James CD Robbins:
Well, when we took that stage over, they also had… Blade: Trinity had finished shooting in there and we took the Blade set and turned that into a good portion of Atlantis as well. So, which was great and also problematic because if you wanted to effect any changes on the village itself, you had to hope that you weren’t gonna get bumped out because they were actually physically shooting in the other end of the stage. So, then you’re either working on the bell or you’re waiting until they’re not shooting. But we worked around it.

David Read:
The rumor that was… I’d really like to know the answer. The Blade sets, were those transferred to you guys for $1? Is that true?

James CD Robbins:
You know what, I’m not gonna solve your riddle. I’m sorry. I don’t know the answer.

David Read:
OK, there we go. That’s fine. You were mentioning the process that you would have on Stargate versus some of the other projects that you’ve done. Was the concept and production design process on Stargate in any ways unique from others that you’ve worked on? From a time perspective, allowed to do stuff, from a quality perspective, in terms of the detail that you were allowed to put in?

James CD Robbins:
I think every show wants that amount of detail. A lot of the time it’ll come down to, are you physically given the time by writers? On Stargate, they were exemplary, and they had most of their scripts or at least outlines in hand at the beginning of the season, and we were never sitting around waiting for them, or very, very, very rarely waiting for them to give us things, so we would have time to do this. Now, other shows that I’ve worked on since then, not always the case, and there’s been more than one occasion where they’ve said, “Well, we’re gonna need this thing.” And I’m like, “Well, that’s great, but you got 10 minutes.”

David Read:
Jesus.

James CD Robbins:
And they’re not literally 10 minutes, but it’s like you need…

David Read:
It’s like that.

James CD Robbins:
You need lead-out time. If you want a quality prop built, you need to put the time behind it to manufacture it properly. And unfortunately, either the inner workings of the show weren’t allowed, or the writers weren’t on the ball enough to get it early to us so that we could produce these things properly. And there’s been a couple of occasions when stuff has come to camera and I’m like, “Oh boy.” It’s like, “Oh, I have to catch a plane right now.”

David Read:
Well, hopefully that didn’t happen too much on Stargate.

James CD Robbins:
No, no. That actually, it was not a thing on Stargate at all. And as I say, this is something that, once again, we had the infrastructure there. Everybody knew everybody. I mean, you could almost do this by telepathy or osmosis because we just worked so well together after that amount of time. It was a family. It really was a family on Stargate. And at the end of the day, 10 years later, that’s really what… I do all the other aspects of film for other people and other shows and stuff like that. Nothing I’ve ever done has equaled Stargate and… I attribute 90% of that to the people that are there. For the Brad Wrights, the Rob Coopers, Paul and Joe. It’s led from the top down by very, very high-quality people. Not just talented, but high-quality people. So, I was very fortunate to have my time there.

David Read:
You took over for Ken Rabehl, correct?

James CD Robbins:
Yeah, I guess he would have been there in five. I’ve met Ken since 1995.

David Read:
I was gonna ask if you ever spoke with him.

James CD Robbins:
Who? Richard Hudolin…

David Read:
Yes.

James CD Robbins:
… was brought in at one point. I don’t know what season I was in on Stargate, but…

David Read:
Season One.

James CD Robbins:
No, he was brought in later after he left the show. And I’d been on Stargate for a while and then he got Painkiller Jane as a show. And he actually called me and said, “Hey, I’m short. I haven’t got… I can’t find anybody to do any illustrative work for me.” I said, “Yeah, sure. Sure, I’ll come work for you.” So, I went and worked with Ken and I look at Ken’s drawings, I’m amazed because you could build something from his illustrations ’cause he puts every nail in the boards, the detail is ridiculous. I’m there singing his praises for that and he’s turning around going to me, “God, your work is so loose but it’s so descriptive.” We were a mutual admiration society. It was quite lovely. Ken was a great guy.

David Read:
The thing that you mentioned earlier that blows me away, I’m privileged to have a few of your pieces, and the accuracy by which 99% of them are duplicated. When they’re willed into solid reality. They took the time to make it almost precisely what is on the page and in some cases, precisely what is on the page. They’re just magicians, those fabricators.

James CD Robbins:
And that’s just it. And that’s why I say, there’s nothing I couldn’t draw they couldn’t build. And I wasn’t getting stuff back that was kinda like what I drew. I was getting back what I drew. And this leads back to that very early comment you made about, it’s like Martin Gero said, I never get over the glee, the little-kid glee at seeing something that I’ve drawn made into something you can either walk around in or hold, or what have you. There’s a big charge that I get out of that and hopefully that never goes away.

David Read:
Were you gifted anything when the show ended, any of this stuff that you designed?

James CD Robbins:
No. I had a thing of the Destiny about that big, which was one of the first little blanks that they put out at the model shops just as a maquette. I did have the original cast from The Kull Warrior. But I gave it away to a guy in town here who runs — it was sitting in my basement — a toy shop here in town that has very, very strong sci-fi. The guy does his own dioramas in the store. It’s quite amazing. But I said, “Hey, you got any interest in this thing?” He’s like, “Are you kidding me?” He couldn’t believe it. It was his birthday when I dropped this thing. It was unfinished and had one of Boyd’s little tattoos that we were eventually gonna put onto the finished piece that had been laid in as a test. But for me, no, I don’t really have anything. I got the little gate they gave us all as mementos, the Atlantis gate. But other than that, no, I didn’t take anything away. And as I told you, actually, I’m still getting data recovery people to check into it, but we had that flood and I lost two towers that were sitting on the floor in the basement and right next to them were, unfortunately… What’s that saying about eggs in one basket?

David Read:
Exactly. Don’t get…

James CD Robbins:
The hard drives that I back things off onto were also down there. They all got damaged in the floods, so I’m hoping that a percentage of it will be able to get back. But I still have almost all my original hand drawings and my sketchbooks and stuff like that. The only thing I ever handed over, because I was under contract to do that, was the final digital versions that were used to create or go into the show itself. I didn’t think they wanted all my little scribbles and half-thought-out ideas and stuff like that. So, all that stuff’s still taking up space in my garage.

David Read:
It’s the language of the show, from season to season was so consistent in terms of the design language. You have something like this that was created for a clip show, with a remarkable…

James CD Robbins:
Not just any clip show.

David Read:
That’s exactly right, with Homer frigging Simpson.

James CD Robbins:
That’s it.

David Read:
And it becomes a core component of all three series. When you were given the opportunity to design this, I doubt they told you, “OK, we need you to design a little plastic piece that looks like a stone that’s gonna be the methodology for much of our storytelling for the next seven, eight seasons of the franchise.”

James CD Robbins:
No. They had no idea at the time. So, it came in and that was for “Citizen Joe” and that’s potentially where it was gonna live and die, and then they, I guess, liked the ability to use it potentially as a plot-forwarding device, that…

David Read:
That’s what it comes down to.

James CD Robbins:
… as much as anything. And that’s what they called the PFDs too, the little things that they used on Atlantis, those portable Walkman things.

David Read:
The PalmPilots. The Game Boys.

James CD Robbins:
Which were referred to as PFDs or plot forwarding devices in the meetings and stuff.

David Read:
They’re Tricorders.

James CD Robbins:
Exactly.

David Read:
It’s the nature of the beast.

James CD Robbins:
Something’s gonna show up on this that’s gonna take us into the next scene.

David Read:
Exactly right. Theresa wanted to know, “Are there any sci-fi series or shows in particular which provided you with inspiration over the years?”

James CD Robbins:
I gotta go back to my two favorites. One director, Ridley Scott. You get to pick the two. Go ahead, you tell me.

David Read:
Then, if it’s Ridley Scott is one, then George Lucas?

James CD Robbins:
No, no, I’m just saying, out of his work. Alien.

David Read:
Alien.

James CD Robbins:
And Blade Runner. Alien and Blade Runner.

David Read:
Absolutely. Absolutely.

James CD Robbins:
And that’s, those two shows are basically the premise for almost every sci-fi thing that’s been done since, as far as I’m concerned. I mean, there are people who’ve found other creative ways to represent stuff, but I mean, when I was doing the Destiny, there are some homages to Ridley…

David Read:
To Peter.

James CD Robbins:
…in there. Having the central communication room with five corners going off of it. They don’t look anything like his, but the idea of that layout is… It’s so smart because it allows you to confuse the audience so easily into where you walk them down here, you turn a corner, “Oh, they go out there,” you turn a corner, you don’t know where you are anymore. And it really spoke to being able to make the Destiny with one, basically one set and one stage, and I filled the stage to feel like a ship that just goes on and on and on and on. And Ridley was largely behind that sort of feel. And Andy Mikita, in the very beginning of “Air”, did that move through the ship up through the floors and everything. I was just… I was watching that and I’m getting chills and going like, “Oh, this is so cool.” And it looked monstrous, like there was just… You could just go on to the different areas in the whole place.

David Read:
From a viewer perspective, I would never look at Destiny and say Nostromo. I would say Nautilus. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. But from a production design standpoint, in terms of layout and everything else, you’re right. It is Nostromo. In terms of how you move through that set.

James CD Robbins:
Yeah. And I wasn’t speaking to his, I wasn’t speaking to his design aesthetic. I was speaking to just how clever he had been with putting that ship together. I mean, the one area that I love the most in the alien ship was an area where it was raining inside where…

David Read:
The interior.

James CD Robbins:
…he went to look for the cat and there’s all the chains, and condensation because the ship is so big inside, you get a, “Oh my God, that’s brilliant.”

David Read:
Absolutely.

James CD Robbins:
And, you know, when we did the seed ship, the ones that were… The one that our little aliens were living on, that…

David Read:
Yes, the Ursini.

James CD Robbins:
Yes. The Ursini. Thank you, thank you, Mr. Database Central.

David Read:
Not always right.

James CD Robbins:
No, no. You’re gonna get 90% right, compared to me. My memory for that kind of detail is not what it should be, perhaps. But that ship being just a mechanical ship, that was fun for me. Because I could create spaces that people weren’t supposed to theoretically be in, and they were just really…

David Read:
It’s a factory.

James CD Robbins:
…tight, cold. Exactly. And then setting up that one shot of the gates being built into… That was something I really wanted to do. I did a map for them. They weren’t sure they were gonna have the money to be able to afford the digital work for that particular scene. But at the end of the day, they acquiesced and put it in. And it was so funny too, because they pulled out Volker and I think it was Volker that pulls Rush into that room and says, “Look,” and thought he’d be…

David Read:
Hear this.

James CD Robbins:
…all excited. And Rush is like, “Yeah, whatever.”

David Read:
I’m going to be perfectly honest with you here. I’m grateful that we got that shot, but the sequence was a letdown for me. Because I was wanting to see the gates being assembled. And it had nothing to do with the episode, so I can understand why you guys wouldn’t have had the budget to do that. But at least we got to see the space. That was really cool.

James CD Robbins:
Well, that’s where I was on the same page as you, David. Absolutely on the same page as you.

David Read:
This is the chance.

James CD Robbins:
I would have loved if this thing was still digitally automated. So, you could’ve seen, you know, pieces going together and doing things. But just to have that one thing where you can see the gates off in the distance…

David Read:
Yeah, exac… you can see the assembly line.

James CD Robbins:
Tells the story.

David Read:
Exactly right. Akos wanted to know, and this goes back to the Universe gates, “When you designed the Universe gate…“ This is esoteric but I think it can lead back into the larger conversation in terms of aesthetic. “When you designed the Universe gate, the oval shapes on both sides of them, were they deliberately or unconsciously, perhaps, meant to be a connection to the terminal that these attach to?” I mean, was that all the same design aesthetic?

James CD Robbins:
No. In a word, no.

David Read:
OK.

James CD Robbins:
No, it was done with just… If there is a feel, it’s what we talked about earlier, and it’s just developing a visual language for things. If it’s ancient, it’s got a certain feel. I never at any time said, “I could use these elements from the communication stones and put them in there.” So, no, that was just a coincidence.

David Read:
OK. Interesting. What ship design over the seasons was your favorite?

James CD Robbins:
Come on, really?

David Read:
I had to be fair to ask.

James CD Robbins:
It’s the Destiny. That, not only… There it comes. Here it comes.

David Read:
So, we’re gonna duplicate the shot from the opening episode. No, I’m kidding.

James CD Robbins:
There you go.

David Read:
A fan created these.

James CD Robbins:
I’m sorry?

David Read:
A fan created these.

James CD Robbins:
Oh, really? Nicely done.

David Read:
And it has the scorchings from the impacts. It’s…

James CD Robbins:
I saw. You had a shuttle with it too, right?

David Read:
Yes. They’re up on, not on here right now. But they’re separate. And also one of the Nakai drone ships as well.

James CD Robbins:
Nice.

David Read:
You have inspired so many fans.

James CD Robbins:
That was one of the things that I truly did love about the show, is being able to design all the vis effects as well. From the point I started on the show, I don’t think there was one vis effect that I didn’t have a hand in on some level or another. Obviously, I would start things, and they didn’t necessarily work out exactly as drawn in the vis. Sometimes it was cost issues. I know there was a drawing that I did, oh Lord, SG1, way back, and it was a space graveyard. And I did this rendering. It took me an inordinate amount of time because the amount of detail I put into it. And it was like, which kind of ships were they? Asgard ships, I think. All alone and floating in space, and I did this ultra-wide thing picturing that they’d be able to do sort of a move through the matte a little bit. Brad comes in, he goes, “I’m sorry, we can’t.” And that’s like a $50,000 vis-effects cost to do that as a 3D element. And I went, “All right.” I told him I was gonna wear a black armband for the rest of the week. But that was one of the few that I knew of that I’d done that wasn’t gonna go through. But I still love that drawing. It’s very cool.

David Read:
I would love to have a look at it at some point.

James CD Robbins:
You’ve probably seen it.

David Read:
I’ve probably seen it.

James CD Robbins:
It’s out there.

David Read:
I would think that you would have an idea for, “OK, if you want this, it’s gonna take this number of hours for me to produce a selection of drawings to create that.” I would think that you would be able to say, “OK, my creative output…” You probably can math it out pretty well, I would think. That you would have to be able to… You would say you would come in at 5:00 in the morning, leave at midnight, and have put out X number of pieces. Do you have a specific output rhythm, or is it just piece to piece in terms of what’s going on?

James CD Robbins:
No, every drawing is its own thing.

David Read:
Is its own thing.

James CD Robbins:
Every work of art, everything that I do. I can’t sit down and say, “OK, I’m gonna need three hours to finish this.” I might have a ballpark in mind, but, like I say, some drawings, you’ll sit down and they’ll just flow. And it’ll be done in a couple of hours. And other drawings… you’ll find either physical issues like perspective or scale or things like that, that if you’re not getting them right, that’ll bug me, and I gotta keep at it until it looks like I kind of intended to, or it looks believable. So, the time frame varies hugely, I would say.

David Read:
What was the most time-intensive prop or costume that you put in on the franchise? Ideally one of each. And, Rob, you were saying with Cooper, you were given heads-up on certain pieces, so that would probably lean towards them. But I’m very curious as to what you would recall.

James CD Robbins:
The Kull Warrior was one of the first. When it comes to character design, I did the Ori Warriors, and the Priors, concept and development for scarification and everything else, their look, Julian Sands, his whole build. The Kull Warrior itself is one of the biggest ones, because it was the first one we put through. I think that came through at $80,000 for the first prototype that Dan Payne wore. And that was, I was going to the model shop every other day to see what progress there was and deal with issues on the shoulders, the firing weapon, the codpiece. So, “What’d you do today, hon?” “Oh, never mind.”

David Read:
“It has to get done by someone.”

James CD Robbins:
Exactly. But our little friend behind you, that has two different incarnations.

David Read:
Yes.

James CD Robbins:
You’ve got the Atlantean version there. The original version, which was in Asgard, I believe, had a different helmet. That’s all they did is redesign the helmet, and I think they might have touched the paint differently or something, but…

David Read:
The V’s here on the sides, those were a part of the original too? ‘Cause those really look like chevrons.

James CD Robbins:
Yeah. No. Once again, I think that’s probably more coincidental than anything.

David Read:
Oh, OK.

James CD Robbins:
Once you see something, you can read into it. But character design was always fun. And I don’t look at them as being like one was more difficult than the others. Each one had its own set of problems to solve, and fortunately, after I did the drawing, I didn’t have too much to do in a problem-solving standpoint because, like we’ve said, the varying departments were just so good that they handled it. And I would go in and say, “Well, this maybe needs to be a little more like that,” or, “Can we finish this a little differently?” Stuff. But for the most part, it just followed a process rather than, I would say, being difficult. And as far as props go, one of my favorites was Ronon’s gun. I had a lot of… I went up to him first and I met him. And Jason’s like… I’m 6’3″ and I’m looking up at him. That’s not a feeling I’m used to. So, I was like, “Well, I gotta design this weapon for you,” and the whole bit, so I got a sense of his scale. I’m like, “This is gonna have to be a really big gun.”

David Read:
It is.

James CD Robbins:
So, I went back. And actually, then I worked off of a Peacemaker for that…

David Read:
Oh, really?

James CD Robbins:
…old revolver. Yeah, that was the initial step forward. And that’s somewhere that I’ll try to use real-world reference because these are things that have to work on whatever level, whether it’s just, how does a hand grip work in your hand? Same thing with swords and stuff. God, I did so many swords over the years.

David Read:
You did. You did Excalibur, for crying out loud.

James CD Robbins:
And [inaudible] Tyre’s sword and bunch of other… and the Wraith General’s sword… and the whole bit. And oddly enough, it led me to an interest in forging which I haven’t done myself yet. I’ve done a little tiny bit but not making weapons. But it’s something that’s on my bucket list for down the road, is to build myself a little forge and make myself a couple of big swords.

David Read:
Any chance… I know that a design or a treatment was sent over to MGM for a potential art book of yours. Any chance of your Stargate art coming out? Because they have the assets.

James CD Robbins:
It was a different time then. I wrote 100 pages of a book, fully illustrated with all the drawings and descriptors and, you know, which episode and what it meant and the whole bit. And I went down and I met with… I was almost at a point where I was gonna start pushing through, and then Sony came in and became partnered with MGM. And when they did that, apparently Sony has a book division. MGM didn’t care. They were like, “Yeah, go ahead,” pretty much. But Sony came in and was like, “No, no, no, no. You wanna proceed with this, you gotta pay us $50,000 for licensing.” And I’m like, “Well, how about you let me produce the book? We’ll put it out and I’ll pay you out of the proceeds, and then everybody wins, and we can actually make a few bucks here and put out a decent product that speaks to the show.” And they were very adamant about money first. So, that…

David Read:
Such a shame.

James CD Robbins:
… died its own little unnatural death. It is. Especially since I’d spent two and a half months, I think, working on it, getting it to the stage it was at, and had Paul Brown assisting me at the time, Legends Memorabilia. I don’t know if you met Paul. You know him?

David Read:
Mm-hmm.

James CD Robbins:
So, he was intrinsic in moving that forward to that point, but as soon as, you know, they put down the $50,000, you know, pay-to-play, that just all sort of folded up and…

David Read:
Makes me sick thinking about it.

James CD Robbins:
And like I say, though, it was…

David Read:
And it was cool.

James CD Robbins:
… a different time, David. Right now I could go online right now, type in “Stargate artwork James Robbins,” and fill the screen with almost every drawing that would’ve been put into the book anyway. So, I don’t know that there’s even that much of a need for it, if you will.

David Read:
But they’re the images themselves, they’re not your…

James CD Robbins:
No, they don’t have my take on it.

David Read:
They don’t have your roadmap.

James CD Robbins:
No, not yet.

David Read:
And your roadmap is key. So, the roadmap is what makes it interesting.

James CD Robbins:
I think so but, but like I say, if it’s about just the artwork, anybody can view…

David Read:
That’s true, too.

James CD Robbins:
… almost everything I did at any time online now. ‘Cause in preparation for this I was trying to remind myself, I go, “What was episode, did I do that?” And I went, and I’m like, “Holy crap. Here’s my portfolio.”

David Read:
Exactly. I wanna talk a little bit about your charcoal pieces. I remember you saying that charcoal was your, I think you said it was your favorite medium to work in. What were some of your favorite charcoal pieces from Stargate?

James CD Robbins:
It’s my favorite from a development standpoint, let’s put it this way. I love all mediums. I’m actually a, the thing I love to do the most is oil painting but, obviously, there was no time for that kind of thing, to develop the concept work that way. So, it was charcoal drawings, because they’re largely forgivable. I can go in with charcoal and do a drawing, and I can erase back with a kneaded eraser right back to the page and it’s like it was never there and adjust and amend. If you’re working on pencils, which I did as well, the work tends to be tighter. Unless I’m working on a huge thing, the work tends to be tighter and there’s less room for error, if you will. So, yeah, I mean, it just became my methodology. I could do something nice and big, I was using 30 by 40 inch drafting vellum to do the drawings on, and I had a drafting table, and I would just micro, you know, use the drafting dots on the corners and put my drawings up and work on them. Then I could photograph them, turn around, put them in the computer, and start working out the color and the texture and the lighting and the mood or whatever it was that that particular thing had. Putting in, you know, space effects and whatnot onto, you know, drawings of the Prometheus, for example, when I first did that.

David Read:
I remember you created in “Enemy Mine”, you created a landscape of ruined Jaffa armor, you know, that the Unas had cannibalized…

James CD Robbins:
Yes, yes, on the beach, the beach shot. That was a fun one.

David Read:
There was some fun stuff there. Prometheus.

James CD Robbins:
Yes.

David Read:
It’s our first Earth spacecraft. You know, aside from the F302, which is a fighter. Our first carrier. What were your inspirations for Prometheus?

James CD Robbins:
Basically, I was given my inspiration. It was to be a ship that had alien technology in it, but we didn’t see that alien technology. And the mandate was that it felt utilitarian, function over form, and that it was more like an Earth-based battleship or something along those lines. So, it’s not a pretty ship. I mean, I don’t even think it is, quite honestly, but I did like the front end, sort of had that bird of prey sort of drop and then turn.

David Read:
It’s got a swoop to it, yeah.

James CD Robbins:
But, I mean, it was a short-lived ship.

David Read:
Three seasons.

James CD Robbins:
Yeah. But I, quite honestly, Peter Bodnarus came up with the Daedelus, and I think that was a much sort of prettier…

David Read:
You did not come up with Daedelus?

James CD Robbins:
No, Daedelus is not me. No, that was Peter Bodnarus. I think that was… He ended up doing three. He did a couple ship strings for Space Race as well, I believe, ’cause there were just so many ship designs were needed in that. But the Daedelus was Peter.

David Read:
That one was an interesting leap. We basically took the top off the ship and shrunk it a little bit and widened it. I remember thinking “turtle” the first time I saw it because we see it kind of overhead, from behind. I’m like, “Ah, they got themselves a turtle ship.”

James CD Robbins:
I was curious… It reminded me almost of an aircraft carrier. Because it was so much flat deck over the top. I’m like, “Oh, maybe that’s where you keep your fighters.”

David Read:
He’s got ’em on the sides.

James CD Robbins:
Lock ’em down. Find the space.

David Read:
So, I’ve got the fan creations of these things, that back there, 7,000 pieces of styrene.

James CD Robbins:
My God. Wow.

David Read:
He said 7,000. I don’t physically know how he did it. But it’s just amazing the artistry that you guys helped encourage in the fan community. I’m sure you’ve seen some of this stuff out there floating online, the care that has been put into so much of the work that you guys created. They wanted to echo, and these little guys right here, they wanted to echo it.

James CD Robbins:
The reason that the show went 17 years, it’s not a surprise. It’s the fan base. You guys are… In the same way that Stargate is its own beast, the fans of Stargate are their own beast. So, dedicated. I mean, here we are, 10 years later and I’m still talking about it. And I guess, potentially, there’s something in the loops for the fourth incarnation.

David Read:
I’m hopeful. SG4 for the win.

James CD Robbins:
That’d be pretty awesome, I think. It really would.

David Read:
What about the Supergate?

James CD Robbins:
What about the Supergate, David?

David Read:
Very, very different. It’s almost like a collection of chevrons.

James CD Robbins:
Which is exactly… All those pieces apparently, and my memory of this particular build and time is not great. I know that we were given the mandate that each one has to be at least the size of a cargo ship because they were gonna put a cargo ship into it as a missing piece and stop them from finishing the Supergate. So, basically that gave us pseudo scale and then obviously it had to be large enough to allow one of the Ori mother ships to come through as well. And those things were pretty big in the final version.

David Read:
The super gate from “Beachhead” is not the scale of the super gate that exists in “Camelot”. When you look at it, it’s almost like they created one super gate and then got the bigger pieces, because Sam has to stand on one of the pieces in “Camelot”, and she is dwarfed by it. So, it’s almost like they created one super gate and then got those pieces through to create a bigger super gate. It’s a great design.

James CD Robbins:
Possibly. And honestly there wasn’t a whole lot of — that I can actually admit to this — was a whole lot of design aesthetic to it. They needed to, obviously, be able to repeat all the way around. Each piece was… I’m trying to think that they were typical. My memory says that I basically created one piece in 3D, and I do some 3D modeling as well, and a lot of the props, smaller props and things like that, I do in 3D. So, I gotta have the talents. If I just worked with a pencil, dude, I’d be a dinosaur so…

David Read:
No, I understand.

James CD Robbins:
… I had to get a little bit of the digital skills going. But, like I say, I recall rendering that I did with one of the pieces sort of flying in, the gate almost fully assembled. I’m guessing this was the last piece that I had drawn and then there’s a cargo ship…

David Read:
Shoved into it.

James CD Robbins:
Teal’c was in the cargo ship?

David Read:
Vala was.

James CD Robbins:
OK. There you go, Vala. See, my memory.

David Read:
That’s all good.

James CD Robbins:
But I did remember there was a cargo ship there. What do I get?

David Read:
Yes, you win, for sure. How long did it take for Atlantis to evolve? I know we talked about it a little bit because the first iteration of it was going to be in a base in Antarctica, “Rising”, and then meeting Anubis’ fleet and then probably blowing them all to hell. And then it got moved to the Pegasus Galaxy. The design radically changed from “Lost City” into “Rising 1 and 2”. Tell us about that whole process a little bit more if you don’t mind?

James CD Robbins:
I can tell you certain amounts about it. That was Bridget’s show to bring to a reality as a designer, and obviously I did a lot of the illustrative work that led to some of the finishes. But the set was all Bridget for the first three seasons, and I finished up the last two seasons. And I kinda reinvented the Wraith a bit. I invented the Wraith anyway because those were my babies, bringing the character concept and design to life. Which I think, for an alien race that was prosthetic, really worked beautifully. There’s a lot of times you’ll see aliens who are guys in rubber suits, and it’s like, “Hmm, hmm, I’m not buying it.” Which I think was also what led Brad to the decision to have no prosthetic aliens in Universe and to go with fully realized visual effects versions of our aliens.

David Read:
You’re out there on the fringes of practical reality. Nothing is going… The excuse in our galaxy and in Pegasus was the Ancients created all of us, so we all have kind of the basic design template. Whereas on the edge of the universe, nothing out there looks like us.

James CD Robbins:
New rules.

David Read:
And the technology had obviously gone far enough that you could then pull those kinds of things off on a reasonable budget for a television show. Really cool.

James CD Robbins:
And what was it? Rob came to me with the idea for blue space aliens. You’ll know the race.

David Read:
The Nakai…

James CD Robbins:
The Nakai. See?

David Read:
… which were never actually named on screen. They were fishlike and they were cool as hell, man. It was…

James CD Robbins:
Fishlike because they were based on a thing called the barrelfish, which is a real thing that doesn’t look like it should be a real thing. It’s got this, I don’t know. You can look them up online. Look up barrelfish later on when you get a second. But they’ve got a clear dome for a head that the eyes float inside of, and Rob brought me this drawing. He goes, “Yeah, it’s something like that.” I went, “Wow, really?” And I used to get… There was a tsunami at some point during Stargate, and I had four different people… It basically had washed up all this stuff from the bottom of the ocean that you’re not used to seeing.

David Read:
Supposed to see.

James CD Robbins:
And I had all these people sending me pictures of this stuff going, “Oh, dude. You gotta check this out. This is the stuff you draw.” And sure enough, the barrelfish is a very, very strange anomaly. But you also get into creatures that light up on their own and stuff like that, so…

David Read:
They have to create their own light.

James CD Robbins:
We have an alien landscape in our oceans that… It certainly helped with the Nakai’s design, I would say that.

David Read:
Cool.

James CD Robbins:
And then the ships and stuff like that, all the different ship designs. Those are always fun to do.

David Read:
The Ancient drone, you designed that, correct?

James CD Robbins:
Correct.

David Read:
The number of pieces that went into that, ’cause I sold the prop, and you have the head on top of it that looks like this. Then you have the bulb underneath, and then the veins attached to the sides, and then the tentacles on the back. Every single link to that, you know, had to be fabricated on its own, because they shrink as they go down. That was just a marvelous design. I can’t fathom what that took to create.

James CD Robbins:
Once again, I totally take my hat off and bow deeply to the incredible talents of the people in the model shop who are able to, ongoing, produce spectacular results. And, you know, vis effects were able to also take the renderings and really bring those things to life too. So, yeah. That’s what I say, David, I’ve never found this level in any show since. I’ve done a few over the last decade. As I said, I peaked early. This was a fantastic place to start, but it’s certainly a high bar to set to ever hope to get back to. And I’m just so thankful that I had a chance to spend a decade of my life in this world.

David Read:
How many designs did Destiny go through before Brad said, “Chevron,” and shoved that napkin in your face?

James CD Robbins:
I probably did 20 or more different renderings. And a lot of them never really got past basic shapes. ‘Cause that’s what we were talking about, I think there was a large push for it to be disc shaped initially. Yeah, something more like the Independence Day ship, if you will.

David Read:
The motherships.

James CD Robbins:
And there were three or four iterations of that at least, and then some other ones that were longer. One of them looked… The images that I sent you the other day from that…

David Read:
There’s one in there.

James CD Robbins:
The very last one is a charcoal drawing, and you can see that the front is still the disc. It actually sort of looks like NCC from the side angle. If you got to… Once again, you gotta rip somebody off. We’re established players. But then it had more of the long rod ’cause we had two camps. One was wanting something longer and one was wanting the ring thing. And then all of that just went out the window when Brad said, “Here, look at this.” And there was this little sort of swoopy design that I played with. And honestly, as soon as he gave me the shape, I think I did two more iterations and that was it. That was pretty much the Destiny. I mean, we had to flesh out details as story ideas developed, like where is the observation room in relation to the big dome room where the glass had broken out, and where Park winds up getting…

David Read:
The… for plants and everything. I can’t think of the word right now.

James CD Robbins:
Exactly.

David Read:
And then the shuttle, and down in front.

James CD Robbins:
Exactly, and we wanted to be able…

David Read:
Shuttles at the side.

James CD Robbins:
… but they wanted to be able to see the shuttle taking off from the observation deck as well, and those things obviously led to the physicality of the space. And then I developed interior… Before we did the actual layout of the ship, I had developed corridor concepts for how they ran through the ship and stuff. And then I worked backwards from those into the physical set. But I did learn a very, very valuable lesson from Richard Hudolon after the fact. He had done the SGC in Stage Five and it was a 28-story facility on one floor which is… And for how many years did they keep that suspension of disbelief going?

David Read:
Long time. From a design from a movie in the ’90s.

James CD Robbins:
Exactly. But the main thing that I learned was, he used every square inch of the stage to the point where the entry doors to the stage were finished so that they looked like part of the SGC. That door that swings out at the end, it says, “Emergency Only” or something, whatever it did, leads out to…

David Read:
To the offices.

James CD Robbins:
… the world, everything else.

David Read:
You go down for people listening, the control room, you go down and then take a right. That corridor…

James CD Robbins:
Correct.

David Read:
… led to outdoors. And to Atlantis if you kept on going.

James CD Robbins:
And the same thing with Destiny. So, when I built it in the stage, obviously I couldn’t use standard doors, but I went wall to wall in there as much as I was able and utilized every square inch. And like I say, by the time… the actors would get into it and then they’d finished blocking a scene or something, and they’re like, “We’re gonna go back to their trailers,” and the number twos get in and they set everything up. They’d be, “OK, now how do I get out of here again?” It’s… Seriously, they would get lost in the set.

David Read:
What a compliment.

James CD Robbins:
And I’m like, “Perfect. If I can get them lost and they’re here, then the audience doesn’t stand a chance.”

David Read:
The audience doesn’t. No, it was… I was lucky to have seen all three shows’ sets, and it was absolutely marvelous. And when it got canceled, man, we don’t have to get into that very much, but you guys were intending to amortize that over five seasons.

James CD Robbins:
We built with steel. We put in the basic substrate for the set after the floor; the floor is all wood and little pony wall style builds. But everything else that went up and held up the second level was all structural steel.

David Read:
Was it the same set from One to Two?

James CD Robbins:
So, you don’t do that for short-term.

David Read:
This is true.

James CD Robbins:
Yes.

David Read:
Because Stargate command got moved at one point.

James CD Robbins:
Stargate Command became the bridge– and we moved the shuttle out of stage two into stage five, and what I did there is the shuttle door had that big working wheel and gears, and you’d push it in and it’d make this clanging noise, and it would rise up. So, I put the bridge entry directly above the shuttle and used the same door. Except now it’s cool, the door actually can drop into the floor, and that is when Rush…

David Read:
That was so cool.

James CD Robbins:
… when Rush first found the bridge, he’s like, “Well, how do you do that for real?” This is how.

David Read:
It’s at the top of the ship, part of me is thinking, “Where’s the door gonna go?” It’s gonna go down.

James CD Robbins:
Exactly, and because of the fact that we already had it built, I’m like, “Wow, this gives me the perfect opportunity.” A little bit smart because there was this door drops down, those doors open.

David Read:
They’re Ancients. They did everything wild.

James CD Robbins:
Exactly.

David Read:
They don’t make any sense. But they do.

James CD Robbins:
Yes, yes they do.

David Read:
Raj had asked the question about, “Did you create any other designs for Destiny?” So, thank you, Raj, for submitting that. And last but not, certainly not least, James, anything that you’re currently working on or that’s gonna come out soon that you can share with us?

James CD Robbins:
I did the last season of The 100 which has already aired. After six seasons, I guess I’m a show killer. Or they bring me in at the end. Killed Universe. Killed Atlantis. Killed SG-1.

David Read:
Killed Atlantis. No, not true.

James CD Robbins:
Killed The Wonder.

David Read:
And SG-1 got DVD movies, so…

James CD Robbins:
There you go. I did a Disney movie as well, which is a remake of a 1979 kids movie, which was very… It was more intensive than I certainly had anticipated at the beginning going into it. There was a… Disney has a very large level of oversight and approvals.

David Read:
Not surprising.

James CD Robbins:
To the degree that it was, it was a little surprising to me, but now I know.

David Read:
Really? OK.

James CD Robbins:
Yeah, they kept me pretty busy. But it was also very fun, and I’m not gonna go and say too much about it because it’s still in production. But there was an Egyptian element to this that, when I was going in and getting the gig, I’m like, “Dude, Egyptian? Hello?”

David Read:
“Here, let me show you …”

James CD Robbins:
It’s been 10 years of that.

David Read:
“… a thousand pieces.”

James CD Robbins:
“What do you want your mothership to look like? Oh, I’m sorry, Earth-based Egyptology, got it, got it.” But we actually had an Egyptologist checking our homework on this.

David Read:
How cool.

James CD Robbins:
That’s all I’m gonna say, is we produced pieces for this Egyptian exhibit. Which are, in my opinion, reproduction-quality. You could put these in a museum in place of the real thing ’cause that’s the level of detail we went to on it.

David Read:
Did you get to see the physical results?

James CD Robbins:
Yeah.

David Read:
How cool.

James CD Robbins:
They look spectacular, and it’s gonna be a great, fun little movie. Our heroes and leads are in the 14-year-old age bracket. It’s very much a Disney kid movie. And it was… it’s called “Under Wraps” and, as I say, it’s a remake of an existing 1979 one. And I will say that our mummy kicked the crap out of the mummy from the original. But I think so did a lot of other things, but that in particular. The mummy’s one of the heroes that you gotta make sure that’s a good character.

David Read:
No, absolutely. That would be a key I would think.

James CD Robbins:
So, it was fun.

David Read:
This has been a pleasure, sir. I had a long list of things that I would like to talk to you about. I would love to have you back later in the year to talk about a few more selections if you wouldn’t mind. It’s been tremendous to be able to discuss some of these pieces with you.

James CD Robbins:
Well, I’m very honored that you included me in your list of people to chat with, and this has been fun, and it’s always nice to ramble down memory lane, especially where it concerns Stargate. I don’t know how many times I go, “Oh, on Stargate, we used to do this. And we used to do that.”

David Read:
It was a quality product. You guys created something that will withstand the test of time and be re-examined generations to come.

James CD Robbins:
I was the lucky, lucky contestant ’cause I was the only one that was designer for all three.

David Read:
That’s exactly right.

James CD Robbins:
How good is that?

David Read:
And thank you for helping me to fill up my house with so many toys.

James CD Robbins:
If you like Egyptology I might have some other stuff for you down the road.

David Read:
All right.

David Read:
Thanks so much to James CD Robbins for making this episode possible. He is one of the original reasons why I wanted to do this show. Didn’t really get a chance to interview him over at GateWorld, and now he was mine, and it was fantastic, so well worth the wait. Thanks so much to James for that. If you really enjoyed this episode, I appreciate it if you’d click the like button. It really makes a difference with YouTube’s algorithm and will definitely help the show grow its audience. Please also consider sharing this video with a Stargate friend, and if you wanna get notified about future episodes click the subscribe icon. If you plan to watch live, I recommend giving the bell icon a click so you’ll be the first to know of any schedule changes, which will probably happen all the time, and that’s what we have there. We still have a giveaway. You still have a few minutes left to submit depending on your time zone. One of these communication stones is a screen-used prop, the other is screen-accurate, it’s a replica. And for the month of January Dial the Gate is giving away the replica. To enter to win you need to use a desktop or laptop computer and visit dialthegate.com. Scroll down to Submit Trivia Questions. Your trivia may be used in a future episode of Dial the Gate. Please note the submission form does not currently work for mobile devices. Get this to me before February 1st, Eastern Time, so New York, East Coast US, and we will make sure to add your name to the list of people that we’re going to submit for the drawing for this. I’ll be notifying you in the next couple of days if you are the winner. We have fan art. Age Old Traveler by Jetfreak-7. This digital art was designed by Jetfreak, the model’s Chilli Trek, background by Sewer-Pancake, there’s probably a story there, and Atlas. So, thank you for the submission. And Dial the Gate now offers merchandise. We’re brought to you every week for free and we do appreciate you watching, and if you wanna support the show further, buy yourself some of our themed swag. We’re now offering T-shirts, tank tops, sweatshirts and hoodies of various sizes and colors for all ages at RedBubble. We currently offer four themed designs and hope to add more in the future. Please note that the word cloud designs, there’s a version with a solid white background and another version that is transparent behind the letters. So, just be selective of those when you’re picking. The solid background is typically used for when you have darker colors, as with our Event Horizon background here, so that’s why that’s used on the right. But we wanted you to have options, so be on the lookout for that. Checkout is fast and easy. You can use your Amazon or PayPal account. Just visit dialthegate.redbubble.com and thank you for your support. And thank you for tuning in for this episode. We really appreciate it. And this has just been terrific to have James on. Little snippets of the very beginning of our conversation before we started rolling coming after the end credits. Up next, Gary Jones interviews Coleen and she’s gonna tell you about her teddy bear story. I appreciate you tuning in. I’ll see you live next weekend. Yes. Before we do that, let me show you who’s gonna be coming along next weekend. Where are our guests? David DeLuise, Pete Shanahan, Sunday February the 7th at 11:00 AM Pacific Time. Followed by Corin Nemec. We have rescheduled him for this Sunday, February the 7th at 1:00 PM Pacific Time. That’s what we’ve got heading your way. I’m David Read for Dial the Gate. Thanks so much for tuning in, and we’ll see you on the other side.

David Read:
Good day. How we doing?

James CD Robbins:
Not too badly. Yourself?

David Read:
I am well, sir. This is so exciting.

James CD Robbins:
Nice decorating you got going on there. I feel somewhat responsible.

David Read:
Dude, it’s so funny. It’s one of the reasons that I wanted to do this show, was to sit down and have this conversation with you. And partly, because so much of the stuff that is in my house came out of your head.

James CD Robbins:
Apparently. I see a few things in the background there that I had a hand in, definitely.

David Read:
It’s quite the menagerie.

James CD Robbins:
CGM, Dusty.

David Read:
Yes.

James CD Robbins:
It is.

James CD Robbins:
You got some nice toys. Is that a Telchak device you’ve got? Oh my.

David Read:
It is. That’s the one from 200.

James CD Robbins:
OK.

David Read:
Because that one actually lights. That one has the little selection of the little set of triple A batteries in the side of it and generates the little thing. I need to change the batteries. 2004, it still lights, James.

James CD Robbins:
Oh my god.

David Read:
Isn’t that something?

James CD Robbins:
That’s a very functional battery. What do you got, a ZPM in there?

David Read:
I think so.