James CD Robbins joined the Stargate team as an art director, later becoming a production designer on the franchise. We are excited to have him join us as we go through his art from his initial two years with SG-1!

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0:00 – Opening Credits
0:32 – Welcome and Episode Outline
2:10 – Welcoming James CD Robbins
3:04 – Joining SG-1 in Season Six
8:47 – The Usage of Photoshop
10:47 – Art from Redemption Part 2
21:22 – Art from Descent
26:29 – Art from Frozen
28:10 – Art from Nightwalkers
31:20 – Art from Abyss
34:32 – Art from The Other Guys
39:40 – Art from Allegiance
41:18 – Art from Cure
45:22 – Art from Prometheus
48:07 – Art from Unnatural Selection
52:59 – Art from Sight Unseen
55:07 – Art from Paradise Lost
59:31 – Art from Metamorphosis
1:01:40 – Art from Forsaken
1:02:45 – Art from The Changeling
1:03:43 – Art from Memento
1:07:27 – Art from Prophecy
1:09:07 – Art from Full Circle
1:14:56 – Art from Fallen
1:15:32 – Art from Fragile Balance
1:17:42 – Art from Orpheus
1:20:27 – Art from Revisions
1:22:11 – Art from Lifeboat
1:25:28 – Art from Enemy Mine
1:26:06 – Art from Space Race
1:29:11 – Art from Birthright
1:29:32 – Art from Evolution
1:35:30 – Art from Grace
1:37:12 – Art from Chimera
1:39:12 – Art from Heroes
1:40:30 – Art from Resurrection
1:41:55 – Art from Lost City
1:49:04 – Looking Back on Stargate Production
1:53:04 – Financial Restraints on Stargate
1:56:33 – Thank You, James!
1:56:59 – Post-Interview Housekeeping
1:58:27 – End Credits

***

“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 206 of Dial the Gate: The Stargate Oral History Project. My name is David Read. Thank you for joining me. In this episode, we have James C.D. Robbins, who started off as an illustrator, then went into art director and production designer on Stargate SG-1, Atlantis, and Universe. For this episode, we are covering Season Six and Seven concept art, and we have 150 episodes, or excuse me, 150 images to go through with you. So, we’re going to get into this pretty quickly here. But first, if you enjoy Stargate and you wanna see more content like this appearing on YouTube, do me a favor, click that like button. It really helps the show get noticed and will continue to help us grow our audience. Please also consider sharing this video with a Stargate friend, and if you wanna get notified about future episodes, click that subscribe icon. And clips from this episode will be released over the course of the next few weeks on the Dial the Gate YouTube channel. This is a pre-recorded interview with James so that we could move through the content at our own pace and figure things out. So, the moderators will not be taking questions for him, but we do have a great deal of assets to show you, things that I didn’t know were part of some of his images too, little Easter eggs along the way. I’m hoping you haven’t seen most of this stuff, so you’ll find a look at Season Six and Seven in a way that you haven’t before. So, enjoy. James C.D. Robbins, art director and production designer on Stargate SG-1, Atlantis, and Universe. James, it is a privilege to have you back, sir. You have no idea how long I have been looking forward… You may have some idea how long I’ve been looking forward to this. How are you?

James C.D. Robbins:
I am well, David. It’s very nice to see you, and thank you for inviting me back.

David Read:
Your work is such a tremendous part of what made this franchise great, and I have been looking forward to going through much of it with you. Earlier in the show’s run, I went through Ken Rabehl’s artwork from Seasons One through Five, and then he passed the torch in Season Six to you. So, I think it’s only fitting at this point to talk about what was going through your mind when you first came on in Season Six in terms of the projects that you had taken on before. How big was it and how enormous was it compared to some of the stuff that you worked on before? How daunting was it? And did you, how did you feel you were going to fit yourself into this world? ‘Cause a lot of Ken’s stuff was drawn. Yours, you obviously draw, but this was much more Photoshop in terms of content that you were submitting. Tell us about some of the challenges in coming in to Season Six.

James C.D. Robbins:
I think the biggest challenge was the show’s canon. The fact that I was coming in in Season Six and not Season One and beginning developing all the looks for the various things. Obviously we had a feature that set the bar for exactly what the show was to be, and then they carried on from there and enlarged their universe as it were. I spent days after I first got there doing nothing but watching episodes… to put myself into where they were at visually, as well as from a story standpoint. Because honestly when I was called in for the interview, I had no idea it was a series. I watched the original movie and was totally taken with it. I thought it was a great film, but I was off in my own world. I was doing independent film at the time. I was doing a lot of commercial work internationally, and to come back and to get into something like this. I’d done a couple of small features as well, independent work, and so I was production designing at that point. And then union in their infinite wisdom, decided that because none of that work had been done within the parameters of the union itself, they assigned me as an illustrator/graphics person.

David Read:
That doesn’t… seem right.

James C.D. Robbins:
They just ignored all that stuff previously, and I’d actually applied in the union as a designer, and they said, “No, you’re a graphics/illustrator guy.”

David Read:
So, I am, am I?

James C.D. Robbins:
Apparently.

David Read:
Geez.

James C.D. Robbins:
In whatever level, there’s a compliment in there somewhere, because obviously my portfolio that I submitted was full of my artwork and drawings, and that was apparently what was strong enough to get me in the door. They needed someone to create the visuals for them, and I still recall at one point, very shortly after I started, that I was like, “Oh my God. I’ve been designing, I’ve been doing everything right. And now all of a sudden it’s like… just have to draw? Really? That’s all they want me to… cool, I’m down for that.” I started in and it was a wonderful thing, because it’s what I love the most out of everything. I’m a trained artist. I went to fine art college for four years in London as a youth, and graduated from that and started working in television in Toronto, CFTO TV, and Winnipeg at CKY Television. I was doing everything from court drawings to doing storyboarding for in-house production and everything else in Winnipeg. And then finally made the move out to Vancouver after my parents passed and started my life anew. And really never looked back.

David Read:
Wow.

James C.D. Robbins:
It’s been wonderful. And honestly, the 10-year run at Stargate, little did I know at the time, has proved to be probably the best 10 years of my professional career.

David Read:
Could you have guessed that going in to this little show that had moved to Syfy Channel for a sixth season?

James C.D. Robbins:
You say little show.

David Read:
Little show.

James C.D. Robbins:
Perhaps little in the grand scale of things. It was the largest production I’ve been involved with, and the most heavily monied and the most resilient as it turns out.

David Read:
That’s the word.

James C.D. Robbins:
My wife is American and we were in the process of getting our relationship up and going at that time, and she decided she’s gonna come up here, she’s from Los Angeles, and she’s gonna come up here ’cause I got this show, year, couple years maybe, and then we’ll see what happens after that. Got to 10 years later, the show finally breathed its last…

David Read:
For the time being.

James C.D. Robbins:
… for that time, yes. Now it’s all magical and potentially coming back in whatever form, which is a testament to the fan base.

David Read:
Really? It’s just a question of when. It’s always been a question of when. It’s one of the reasons that Amazon bought MGM, and we know that because all the trade articles when the purchase was being made were mentioning Stargate. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that they’ve got something of a tiger by the tail here. It’s just a question of how they wanna utilize it. I am looking forward to going through your first two years of content. The biggest change for me was the usage of Photoshop starting in Season Six. Was this the medium that you were working in at the time? Was this something that you suggested? Was this something that Brad and Rob suggested? We wanna see it more digitally rather than drawn? Where did Photoshop come into the picture?

James C.D. Robbins:
It’s just a way that I’ve developed working. I was working on a program that predated, if you wanna go right back, I started doing graphics on an Amiga years before. And then got into a program called Micrographics Picture Publisher, and I was using that as a drawing platform at the time. It was Photoshop, what’s that? I don’t know. I did manage to get into Photoshop, and I’ve been using it for a number of years prior to starting at Stargate. I didn’t ask, nobody suggested. I had this methodology established where I would photograph my drawings, put them into Photoshop, and then create all the atmosphere, texture, color, whatever. On one specific computer. Basically, what I did is I would work at sketch pads and/or on large sheets of vellum that I would attach to my drafting table and work at charcoal, which was very messy, but very fast and very forgiving. If you wanna make adjustments to a rendering, charcoal is probably one of the best ways to go as far as detail and finishing. I wasn’t worried because that was all gonna happen afterwards once I uploaded the images into Photoshop to actually work on the texturing.

David Read:
Let’s go ahead and bring in your content here, best dad ever, and we’ll see what we got. Can you see this?

James C.D. Robbins:
I can see that. It’s the death glider camp.

David Read:
Yes, absolutely. So, this is from the second episode of Season Two, “Redemption Part Two.” We’ve done our best to organize these. Definitely they’re going to be the episodes in sequence, and then inside of that, I’ve tried to organize all the content together. We may do a little bit of bouncing around, but for the most part, this is gonna be pretty locked in here. All right.

James C.D. Robbins:
Once again, two moons. I was sort of playing there. There was nothing designated. I knew that we needed to have the Al’Kesh landed in the background and death gliders lined up. I honestly didn’t know how they looked when they were parked. They just rest on their wingtips for my purposes. But this is really as a nod to our set dec department as to what we’re anticipating seeing, and then the crossover to vis-effects as well. We’re gonna be putting in most of the death gliders and the ships and extra moons, what have you.

David Read:
To be fair, in the feature film, they were on the hill on their wingtips, so you’re good.

James C.D. Robbins:
Someone probably gave me that information. It was one of the details that escapes me presently, but there they were lined up and the cannon towers were something that had been established previously, I believe, and they gave me reference photos for those, so I included those in. And the large light, I think, was probably a misinterpretation of some existing infrastructure that they had already. It’s much larger than anything we actually physically own, but the idea was there. And this wound up being where Teal’c’s son steals the death glider from, to put it in Anubis’s weapon, is my recollection.

David Read:
Now, this mountain range here is very reminiscent of the mountain range in Vancouver.

James C.D. Robbins:
No. I thought all planets had pine trees and mountains. Nope. I knew we were gonna be shooting on location, a lot of the times I would be supplied with location photos too. “This is where we’re doing our camp,” so I would actually be more in the ballpark with the renderings. Whenever possible, I would work that way.

David Read:
All right. Jaffa encampment, the refugee camp from “Redemption 2.”

James C.D. Robbins:
And once again, more of a feel thing for general layout, this was, once again, a location photograph with partial moon in the sky. I think this is a day version. Perhaps the lighting on this has changed, but I did a night version. You can see, actually, the tent with the figure in the background with the walls of the tent are glowing. I think this image may have been brightened considerably. That was something for our decorators to sort of have laid out. And you can see on the far right is the funeral pyre for–

David Read:
Yes, Drey’auc.

James C.D. Robbins:
Yes.

David Read:
How long does it take to develop an image like this?

James C.D. Robbins:
How long is a piece of string?

David Read:
OK. So, they’re all different.

James C.D. Robbins:
It varies incredibly. It’s anywhere between three and four hours and a full day, given whether I had time or not. I do recall that I worked more on the weapon platform that was firing into the Stargate than I did on these particular drawings. ‘Cause that one had to be realized entirely by vis-effects, where this is, as I say, more of a directional rendering for set decorators.

David Read:
McKay’s Folly. Yes, that’s right.

James C.D. Robbins:
Now, this one was a bit of a curveball that Bridget threw me, ’cause I’d been brought in as an illustrator. In high school I took one term of drafting, and that was my full experience at that time with drafting. I really hadn’t done anything else, architectural or any of that stuff. So, after I finished doing one… Another drawing we’ll get to later. Bridget said, “OK, now we’re gonna need this weapon. It should be large ’cause it’s gotta defeat Anubis’s weapon that’s firing into the gate and causing the potential buildup to overload.” So, I believe this is McKay’s concept in the episode. And giving McKay some nods here. He only had four hours and he managed to build this thing. It’s true.

David Read:
That’s true.

James C.D. Robbins:
That’s what I referenced to her. It may not be correct, but I believe you said he had four hours.

David Read:
That’s about right.

James C.D. Robbins:
So, they put this thing together, and then Bridget says, “OK, so draw this up and then draft it so that they can build it.” I’m like, “What?” You better say, “What? I can do a rendering of it, but you want me to draft it?” She goes, “I– you’ll figure it out.” I’m like, “OK.” Soon as everybody had booked it for lunch and I was alone in the art department, I went to the drawers where we keep all our drawings, pulled out a bunch of them, and started going through them and reminding myself. It… Quite honestly, I had a lot better recollection of notation and how it was done than I thought I would. So, within a day, I think, I was able to get this drawn up and drafted from side view, top view, hand view, so that they could then begin building this. And the one thing that I did that caused a little vexation, and I believe the special effects guys built this, was putting two rotating arms on this, on the same axis that went in opposite directions. I’m like, “How are we…” But they did it. I still don’t know how they figured it out, but you can see in the episode that these things are actually traveling. I can’t even do that. It’s like rubbing your head and your tummy at the same time. Anyway, they go opposite directions.

David Read:
So, they actually physically built that?

James C.D. Robbins:
Yeah.

David Read:
That’s wild. For one scene, something so intricate. That’s amazing.

James C.D. Robbins:
And they did an astounding job.

David Read:
They did.

James C.D. Robbins:
Here’s the one I spent quite a bit of time on, quite honestly a lot of the time was spent sort of describing the crumbling nature of this and the understructure. Now, some of this made it into the final, as I recall, but it was nowhere near as, what’s the word, atrophied with this concept that’s opened up to show all the underground workings of the weapon. They took this and then I’d have to do another drawing or close-up of the firing unit itself, which is styled after this. Now, if you look at the unit on the very left frame here, they had built that as a physical piece to be on location. So, that was sort of my jump off to get any photographs of that piece. And then I built the others to have a similar feel to them at least. If they’re not identical, they’re certainly the same family. And that–

David Read:
This has always been a bone of contention with Stargate fans. Why would the Ancients design such a complex weapon simply to dramatically destroy Stargates across the galaxy? And a lot of us have always been, “Well, I suspect it did something else and Anubis just bastardized it to do that.” So–

James C.D. Robbins:
Very possible. I never got those notes and that’s something you would have to take up with one of the writers.

David Read:
Exactly.

James C.D. Robbins:
“I’ll just draw pictures, mate. That’s what I’ll do.” So, once again, there’s your Lower Mainland mountains there in the whole mid focus.

David Read:
All right. Yes, absolutely.

James C.D. Robbins:
So, firing unit, a couple different angles once again. More was obviously an assist to our vis-effect team and making sure that we could see there’s a little bit of it going underground that’s rotted away so we can reveal that aspect of it. And I think that was merely to make sure that once one part of it went, Teal’c’s son takes out the firing unit with the death glider. And then the whole thing goes. So, they wanted that sense of connection.

David Read:
The additional notations, I see them sometimes, and in some, especially in weapons that you’re just… handheld stuff, and other times, they’re not present. Are you left free to input the amount of technical detail for the other departments as you wish? Or is there a certain amount of, “Well, if you’re going to create this on these X, Y, or Z, we do need additional input in terms of height, things like that, that you can go ahead and put on the image?” Where’s the line drawn, pardon the pun, for that?

James C.D. Robbins:
I think once again, it’s something that varies depending upon what it is that I was rendering. Something like this, I put up the height indicators just so they would have a sense of scale because nowhere else does it tell you how big any of this is. Unless you wanna go back to the previous image and then try and scale up the trees, which is ambiguous, but that does give you a sense that this thing is fairly large. In theory, that unit on that, if you go back to the previous drawing real quick, this is a physical 12-foot build on the left. So, above ground was 12 feet.

David Read:
And we have a reference for the size of the Stargate in the pit there. So, the Stargate is 22, 23 feet across. So, this is a big mama.

James C.D. Robbins:
And then death glider, that was for the glider bay, I believe, I did drawings for as well.

David Read:
Yes, this is actually from the next… This is “Descent.”

James C.D. Robbins:
Yes. That was Episode Three, right?

David Read:
Yes, sir.

James C.D. Robbins:
And there’s the glider bay itself. Now, I was very fortunate in that the model of the death glider I found just to my right, about four feet to my right and off the roof in the art department. There was my reference image right there, which I had, and I was able to look at it from a bunch of different angles and then extrapolate and stuff like this.

David Read:
It was folded this way in the feature film and we saw that more realized in the Season One finale and Season Two opener, “Serpent’s Grasp” and “Serpent’s Lair.” It’s fitting that we see it that way. And then we see them also deployed in their flight position as well. Not every glider bay is designed the same, let’s put it that way.

James C.D. Robbins:
And this is my first glider bay.

David Read:
All right. Gotta start somewhere.

James C.D. Robbins:
And underwater with the shield intact as they became a story point.

David Read:
That episode still contains some of the greatest visual effects in the show, period.

James C.D. Robbins:
And physical effects. Was this not the one where–

David Read:
The rings.

James C.D. Robbins:
Jonas was underwater trying to repair this, right?

David Read:
Yep. And the rings and that whole practical effect of throwing a whole tank of water on him on set. And for years, I thought that was a digital effect. And it’s like, no. James Tichenor and I, I think, talked about that one. It’s like, no, that was actually achieved, they just painted out the water until a certain point and then chunk, threw him into it. So, what a sequence though.

James C.D. Robbins:
And we had a set that we actually immersed in a tank at UVC, I believe.

David Read:
Yes.

James C.D. Robbins:
And we had to convert it for the swimming sequence.

David Read:
For Rick and Amanda. Your father’s cutting it a little close.

James C.D. Robbins:
And Jonas actually held his breath for upwards of two minutes doing those takes.

David Read:
Corin Nemec did the whole thing. Joseph Mallozzi said they had to cut because one of the crystals shook in one of the scenes and it was like, “Oh, man.”

James C.D. Robbins:
Like, “Who’da you expect?”

David Read:
They had to cut the take, but he actually had done the whole thing, so we just couldn’t see it in the end result.

James C.D. Robbins:
Another view of the same glider bay. In the final episode, I believe the glider bay was much smaller. There were fewer gliders and it was a much smaller environment. But the notes, the broad strokes are there.

David Read:
Pardon the pun. The thing that I love about Photoshop is the copy-paste feature. You can render so much more detail and spend so much more time on other things when you’ve already got one element created. You can stamp it out and change some of the lighting and little details, and then spend much more of your time creating more content for the image.

James C.D. Robbins:
Mood and atmosphere and everything else. The only thing you gotta watch when you’re doing that is perspectives, because if you keep copying and pasting things in different places, they stop working at a certain point.

David Read:
Correct.

James C.D. Robbins:
And requires another drawing that has to be slightly… But to your point, I believe I just copied and pasted all the gliders from the left and stuck them in there.

David Read:
All right.

James C.D. Robbins:
This was never really realized, in my mind, in the episode. When they got to the console, there was a column that sat inside… There you go. They opened it up and they were working on that, and this was supposed to be this crystalline entity thing outside the window, and it never had the sense of structure that this does. It was more only sort of crystal and thing. But a lot of the time I’ll draw things that become simplified, because for me to draw them is easy, and for vis-effect to necessarily render them, and if they have to become 3D, that equates to money directly. A lot of the time, my drawings, I was rarely reined in very much, but sometimes I was. But they would take what I did as sort of a generalized direction and say, “OK, we’ve got crystalline something out there,” and they… wherever they could, realize it without blowing the bank.

David Read:
The frustrating thing about this shot in the episode is it’s a locked shot, so we don’t get a great deal of perspective. But with your tear-away here, we can see what was envisioned, and it’s cool. There’s almost a crystal animal out there that’s powering the ship. One of my favorites, this is Ayiana from “Frozen,” Episode Four. And you had rendered her in an ancient headdress and necklace.

James C.D. Robbins:
Yes, which did not appear in the final episode. But apparently there was a thing about hats, which I never really got, but for the most part they were not down with people wearing helmets and hats, if it could be avoided, ’cause I guess they look different on everybody, and they weren’t always the most complimentary thing. And also, again, there would have been another expense to put into this, and I know that this was a fairly expensive episode. Even from having to freeze multiple blocks of ice over periods of weeks. Two of them had mannequins in them, and we did an ice gel build for our actress that she laid in, almost the same position. Her hand was up closer to her head with her fingers sticking up, I think, as I recall. But the rough muslin cloth and everything else, that was all realized. And I spent a lot of time playing with the surface of the ice, trying to make it look sort of dirty, and old, and cool, and all of that. And I think the other team took a lot of the nuance from my drawings as best they were able to put in. She was actually almost in this exact position, which is always fun, I know.

David Read:
So, is this Bill Mizel, by any chance?

James C.D. Robbins:
Yes, it is. Actually, this is Crusty Bill.

David Read:
Crusty Bill from Crusty Bill’s Bar.

James C.D. Robbins:
From Crusty Bill’s Bar.

David Read:
This is Nightwalkers.

James C.D. Robbins:
Once again, I was new to the show, and I wasn’t on set a lot. So, I had not actually met Bill Mizel other than seeing him in the hallways at this point. So, Bridget’s like, “I wanna do this, and I want Bill to be the guy in the sign.” I guess this goes back to my court drawing days, when they would bring somebody in on a remand, and I would have literally a minute and a half to do a drawing of somebody before they go, “OK, over to the third for particulars. Thank you. Next.” So, Bridget says, “Come with me. Go down the hall.” I’m with her, and she goes to Bill’s office, and on the pretense they’re talking about something, I’m hanging out in the doorway. And all I’m doing is scoping him, looking at him, trying to get, OK, this, that. And then I went back to the art department and did the drawing, ’cause Bridget didn’t want him to know that we were going to make him into Crusty Bill. So, I took this, I did an original pencil drawing, and then I added the fisherman’s hat, and the slicker and the pipe, and Bill was now Crusty Bill. And this was sent along to the paint department to create the sign for the exterior of the bar.

David Read:
The shadow, is that done in charcoal, or is that pencil as well?

James C.D. Robbins:
This is a charcoal drawing. I think this took me all of 10 minutes.

David Read:
All right. So, this is– you have an empty barn here, and then we fill it with stuff here.

James C.D. Robbins:
Exactly. So, what I did in this particular instance was render the background of the warehouse in 3D program I was using at the time, to get some of the atmosphere and the lighting through the cracks of the boards and all that stuff put in. And then dump the ship into it. And once again, fairly close angle, I believe, on what finally wound up showing up in the episode. I don’t know.

David Read:
It looks vaguely gold in the episode. I think here… was more ambitious than what the ultimate product was.

James C.D. Robbins:
I started out without knowing what the location was. I was, “It’s got some size to it.” Look at the little people down at the bottom. It was deemed to be too large for the storyline, so this is all the townsfolk being subjected to symbiotes that got them. This is closer now, this one. I think still a little over-scale, but I used that drawing and scaled it down to fit into the warehouse that we had.

David Read:
So, some of the assets that you’re gonna see have the Propworx watermark on it. Propworx was the company that I worked at where we sold a lot of James’s art, and a lot of these assets I preserved before shipping the physical asset off. So, you’re gonna see them occasionally here.

James C.D. Robbins:
That’s fine. I was gonna say, I don’t remember putting up Propworx.

David Read:
You definitely did not.

James C.D. Robbins:
This is the gravity well from… “Abyss?”

David Read:
This is “Abyss.” That’s correct.

James C.D. Robbins:
Hey, I’m doing pretty good so far.

David Read:
You’re doing good.

James C.D. Robbins:
It says “Abyss” right there. OK.

David Read:
But you didn’t look at it though.

James C.D. Robbins:
This was a set that I had done a number of both illustrations and concepts for the well itself that R.D. had got stuck to while Ba’al has his fun with him. And this went through a number of different incarnations. Some of them were too busy. They didn’t want it to detract from either being able to see the forced perspective gravity well that built behind this grate. We wound up with a simplified version, and then the guys at the metal shop produced the structure, and then put the finer stuff over top of the structure, ’cause it had to be strong enough to support R.D. flying around it.

David Read:
The ceiling of the torture chamber.

James C.D. Robbins:
Yup, same room. That’s the light. I did not draw up the light itself, I don’t believe, but I did a rendering from someone else’s designs as they went on it. This is to sort of see how it would be illuminated.

David Read:
I’m almost seeing Atlantis stained glass beginning to form in this.

James C.D. Robbins:
A little bit of something going on there. The designs for these windows came to me from other drafts people, and I just put the color in them, basically. They’re sort of pretty straightforward. There’s an overall view, which we may or may not have. There we go. And you can start to see how it all played together. I scaled everything, put it in. This is accurate right down to the bases of the columns and central bias, and it wound up being very representative of each set.

David Read:
I remember watching this episode and this shot is basically, and then Ba’al is here, O’Neill’s here. This is a scary episode. When Ba’al comes out, we don’t know what he’s capable of.

James C.D. Robbins:
We see Ba’al for the first time here, did we not?

David Read:
No, this is his first solo appearance. We were introduced to him in “Summit” and “Last Stand” in Season Five.

James C.D. Robbins:
I didn’t think O’Neill knew who he was.

David Read:
O’Neill did not know him before. Daniel had met him, but this is their first introduction to each other.

James C.D. Robbins:
Gotcha, and that had been in Season Six, I would say.

David Read:
Season Five.

James C.D. Robbins:
See, filling in those little gaps that I missed. Bridget wanted a prison here that had no bars, non-traditional prison. So, I drew this with the uplights and the beams, and I’m trying to remember, but Mr. Menard was our DP on this episode, but it was a little bit of a trick for them to get lights to focus in this way inside of these walled builds that are all made out of wood. And you put very, very bright, very hot lights in there, and they… I guess there was some consideration as to whether or not it would burn the place down. Had a little faith.

David Read:
Now, when you’re creating this, the likenesses of the characters are pretty darn faithful, all things considered. Is it just a question of where do you draw the line… I find myself using all these puns. Where do you draw the line in terms of, “OK, so we have an idea who these people are,” or, “No, that’s basically them?” In terms of the fidelity of creating this.

James C.D. Robbins:
By process of elimination, that’s Jonas sitting with his back to us. There’s no likeness there or anything. Obviously, we have no lack of photographs of our main actors in and about the building. So, I was able to pull references and do drawings. Portraiture is one of the things I really do love on this planet. So, whenever I have a chance to try to utilize that, I will. The speed at which I was required to do these drawings didn’t really allow for concise portraiture, but I could get it in the ballpark. The colonnade on the mothership?

David Read:
I think it was the mothership, yes.

James C.D. Robbins:
This is from Episode Eight. This is the next episode.

David Read:
These are all “The Other Guys.”

James C.D. Robbins:
“Other Guys.”

David Read:
The prison and this, all the same show. That’s here…

James C.D. Robbins:
The column had opened up to reveal the thing when Felger and Coombs.

David Read:
Coombs, that’s it. You’re better at this than I am.

James C.D. Robbins:
Once again, it was on the drawing.

David Read:
OK. I’m not reading. I had another one. I’m not gonna find it. OK, I guess this is it. This is the wider shot of them reviewing the… And these Ha’tak elements were taken previously…

James C.D. Robbins:
And once again, that was just to show that there’s a screen there, that they’re supposedly doing diagnostics on the mothership to open and close different portals and do things. And this was the reveal of it opening and the light coming on. Once again, they don’t look like the characters at all, except one of them was wearing glasses…

David Read:
There you go, and decked out in Jaffa gear…

James C.D. Robbins:
And decked out in the Jaffa gear.

David Read:
And the exterior.

James C.D. Robbins:
This is Khonsu’s planet. This is where we first find the episode opening, I think, when they were working with the rings. That was the other thing that was drawn up, the ground rings. We did not have dimensional rings. We had vinyl rings that they laid down on the floor. So, I drew this up in a 3D program, and they built this physical structure from these drawings.

David Read:
I think this is the first instance that we see the ring platform, that it’s not underneath the floor. In previous seasons, they always faked it. It was a holographic floor, and the rings would come through. But now, in this episode, this is the first instance where we get the platform here itself physically. So, I love this design.

James C.D. Robbins:
And the reason for that needing the dimension was primarily for what you’ve got on screen right there, so we could physically open up a little crystal box that Felger messed with and said, “Yep, we’re still in range, let’s go.”

David Read:
And you guys used that throughout the rest of the show.

James C.D. Robbins:
We used it where it was convenient to use because they’d already established the vinyl ring inside the ships on the floor. There’s zero trip hazard on that. They probably didn’t wanna use this unless it was on a location sort of environment. Now, I’m not saying that that was absolutely the case, but that’s what I recollect.

David Read:
This was used a lot on the cargo ship.

James C.D. Robbins:
The physical one?

David Read:
If I recall correctly. ‘Cause O’Neill, in “Lost City,” O’Neill’s got it opened up, and he’s reconfiguring it.

James C.D. Robbins:
That’s what would predicate its use, is whether or not they could use it.

David Read:
OK. There we go. There’s the answer. All right. You don’t want your actors tripping, for sure. So, the Ashrak assassin knife from “Allegiance,” Dan Payne’s knife.

James C.D. Robbins:
Just had some fun with it. I had to do a knife. Honestly, once I’d seen the final episode, I thought it was a little too ornate and pretty for what it was supposed to be, but I didn’t have that information when I drew it. So, a lot of the time we’re working far enough ahead, obviously, to get these toys built that we don’t have fully finished scripts every time. So, I drew up a knife that looked pretty wicked and dangerous, a lot of sharp pointy bits, made it a bronze or brass sort of finish, which is probably not the best material to use. Maybe it’s an alien version of it.

David Read:
You had an Ashrak reference here, and there was an Ashrak ring that was built in Season Two of the show, and you are evoking it in these shapes here. I don’t know if you can see my mouse, but…

James C.D. Robbins:
Absolutely.

David Read:
And that’s where that’s coming from…

James C.D. Robbins:
And I get that that’s where it’s coming from, but still, at the end of the day, it felt more like an ornamental knife than something that an assassin would be using on a daily basis. If I’d known that, I might have changed it a bit, ’cause God knows I’ve done enough swords and knives.

David Read:
So, the queen, Egeria, and here we have a lot of notations in terms of direction for this.

James C.D. Robbins:
And that’s all me. I drew her up. She was supposed to be this dying thing. I think I got a note that she was to be bloated and on her last legs. So, I tried to get as much detail as I could for the VFX people and/or model shops. At the initial stage, we weren’t sure how it was gonna work.

David Read:
She was ultimately a digital creature?

James C.D. Robbins:
So, 100% digital. And then I had to draw up the tank that she went in as something that we could physically build, and they did that. They changed it from a silvery tone to a brass tone to show under. And then the aftermath of her once the Tok’ra girl had taken the queen and assimilated her. Believe that sloppy goo was a physical piece that we had lying on the floor with the symbiote. I’m not sure if you can see it.

David Read:
You got the symbiote and you got her birthing sac, and that’s it…

James C.D. Robbins:
So, there’s the drawings to build from. So, once again, in the interest of time and ease, I believe I did all of this in a 3D rendering program. And then once again, here’s one for the books. Bridget’s like, “OK, we wanna do these ruins on location and make it feel like Machu Picchu.” And I’m like, “Like what?” Like… Machu Picchu. And I’m like, “OK? That’s a thing?” I’ve been around it quite a bit, but honestly, this one had escaped my radar up ’til this time, so I researched it a little bit. This is what I came up with as our version of a Machu Picchu.

David Read:
I love it.

James C.D. Robbins:
It was fun. It was fun. Didn’t get quite enough time to finish some aspects of it, but that’s OK.

David Read:
Pangar itself.

James C.D. Robbins:
So, that’s the waterfall house by Frank Lloyd Wright on the left, that I modeled from as a rough sort of guide or reference. And as it was called the Waterfall House, I’m like, “OK, let’s give it a waterfall.” And this beautiful view down to… I’m sorry, is that Rio?

David Read:
Quite possibly.

James C.D. Robbins:
That’s where I started.

David Read:
I like your… dirigible back here.

James C.D. Robbins:
We needed some floating airships in there, so I’ve got the Goodyear blimp and that one. For game coverage, you gotta have a dirigible.

David Read:
Stargate’s really good about doing dirigibles. We just watched on Wormhole X-Tremists, what was the episode? It was in Season Three, and they had airships as well. So, they pop up from time to time, and later on, we’ll have more of that in your art here.

James C.D. Robbins:
The Tagrean planet.

David Read:
That’s it. See, you got this. You don’t need me for anything.

James C.D. Robbins:
Anyway, I quite enjoyed that particular map, and I believe it was really, really closely represented in the final.

David Read:
They did a pretty good job.

James C.D. Robbins:
Once again, this is the ruin and the Machu Picchu environment that they were working on to translate. Ultimately this told them that the symbiotic thing that gives it power.

David Read:
Here lies Egeria entombed for all eternity. Ra used to live on Pangar. Ah, Probie.

James C.D. Robbins:
There she is, there she is, X-303. In her slightly unfinished state on her first maiden voyage.

David Read:
Was this the first render that you did of this ship?

James C.D. Robbins:
God, I did so many, David. Probably one of them. I also have one of it when I was trying to give it its own look to the hyperdrive. Riding the rails instead, that came out of the port nacelles there, I suppose. But this is pretty much it. Once again, all 3D, which I thought was probably the best way to go, from having to do variations or permutations, it would have been a lot quicker if I have a 3D model. And what really helped me on this, or helped the show, was I used wire frames from the images that I generated, instead of generating with the texture. All of these were just the wire frames for the actual 3D models, and I’d throw things like the coils and other details into it. And it was trying to give it sense of scale and everything else.

David Read:
Now, if I recall correctly, you indicated that Prometheus was much more function over form. Is that correct?

James C.D. Robbins:
Yeah, I was instructed that it was to feel more like a standard modern-day battleship or aircraft carrier from a finish standpoint. So, it’s not about pretty, it’s about how is it gonna work? And the one thing that I really did like about it is it looked bulky, it looked heavy. And even more so than in my drawings, the realized versions, when it comes out of the ground, when it’s being stolen, in the actual show, they do a side view of it just rising up past camera angle.

David Read:
It’s enormous.

James C.D. Robbins:
Oh my goodness. It looked like a monstrosity. It was huge. So, that was some of the concepts of the top opening up. I think it slid away. You saw that only from the bay that it was in. They opened the roofs and you saw it starting to go, and then we cut to the side, and it’s just rising. It was just the back section of the ship that was in shot, rising up.

David Read:
In hindsight, it’s a great introduction to humanity’s entrance into the space age with our ships. ‘Cause once we… we don’t un-ring this bell. Now we have ships for the rest of the franchise.

James C.D. Robbins:
Reversed design technology from the Asgards. Is that–

David Read:
Yep, absolutely.

James C.D. Robbins:
This changed remarkably. Other than the fact that the foreground, with all the replicator chips forming the featureless planet, that was in. I think Carter kneels down and she goes, “Uh…”

David Read:
She brushes it away and says, “We’ve got a problem.”

James C.D. Robbins:
And then the building, I had done a separate drawing for the building. There you go. This is where the Asgards used to live?

David Read:
Yes, it’s the only thing that really was left on the planet’s surface.

James C.D. Robbins:
I don’t know if I related this somehow to Asgard…

David Read:
They ultimately went with, if I recall the episode, a couple of spires that were folded in on each other.

James C.D. Robbins:
Two thirds of the cross like this instead. Which, honestly… personally, I was like, “That’s great.” But when we got inside, it was all columns and linear. So, I was a little bit surprised that they changed the matte, because it really didn’t marry well in my mind with the physicality of the set, which is something we always try to do. You want the inside to feel like the outside, if you can.

David Read:
This is one of the few examples, in terms of my recollection of viewing this, where you did one thing and then they went off and did something completely different. Now, what’s the politics like that on sets, if you don’t mind sharing?

James C.D. Robbins:
I am not in that loop on set. Those decisions are made between Brad and the writers or whoever was the producer for the show. They would go through it and decide what they liked and what they didn’t. The drawings that I did were approved, probably sent to post, to biz, and whatnot, but at the end of the day, they changed a few of it. That also happened with Wraith ships.

David Read:
As an artist, I would have to think that there would be a certain number of drawings that I would have to submit that they would completely change before I would be like, “OK, do you guys like any of my stuff?” But obviously, more often than not, they used your stuff. But I would think that, for me–

James C.D. Robbins:
There was a process. Every time I did a drawing, I didn’t just do it and then send it out. When I’m at the early stage usually, before I spend all the time working the drawings up, I would take my charcoal so many times. Covered in charcoal, it’s on my face, it’s all over my hands. Walking down the hallways going, “Excuse me, excuse me.” With a huge 30 by 40 sheet of paper covered in live charcoal, that will brush off on anybody’s… I go by. And that’s what I would walk into the offices with. “What do you think of this? What do you think of this?” And I had a pretty good hit and miss ratio, I think. Certain days were better than others, but I would say my initial concept success rate was upwards of 70%.

David Read:
Considering how… You can clearly see as the show went along how much more in the direction of their work your work was going as your experience with them began to meld even more and more…

James C.D. Robbins:
And the fact that as the years went by, I had more responsibilities and more on set world. Brad has even told me in hindsight, he goes, “Like, I had a lot of autonomy on the show,” isn’t that… ‘Cause I’ve now gone off past Stargate and worked on other things, and it’s like, “Oh no, it’s gotta go through 19 layers of whatever.” Whereas, it was me and Brad, or me and Paul, or whoever would get it done very quickly. A lot of the time, stuff went straight through. So, it was great. Time dilation device. Everybody should have one. All the notes and stuff on there. I don’t think… I don’t know that I ever saw her load any CD into it. If that was covered–

David Read:
I don’t think so. I think we saw her interacting with the clock.

James C.D. Robbins:
And I think she was doing some stuff in the episode. I would have to go back and look at it. But this was supposedly they wanted a nice, low-tech thing that they put in there, and this was to be our jumper that went in on top of it, because the time dilation device wasn’t made by us.

David Read:
No, it was Asgard, and this was…

James C.D. Robbins:
By the Asgard?

David Read:
… melding of that technology. So, with Thor’s notes, we brought this thing…

James C.D. Robbins:
This was our hacker box, if you will, that we wanted to put in to restart the timer. Ooh.

David Read:
“Sight unseen.”

James C.D. Robbins:
Critters. I did a number of renderings. That last one was the stairway going up to their level, and I got a couple of Bugs interacting with each other. ‘Cause I thought that was interesting too, is that the Bugs never really did anything to people other than make them feel like they’re crazy or scare the crap out of them. I was all about, “What if they hunt each other? What if these– this other international world is…” None of that made it through, I don’t think. There’s a whole bunch of drawings I did. Do you wanna flip to the next one?

David Read:
This is a great sci-fi idea, where these creatures are from Earth, but… we just never perceive them.

James C.D. Robbins:
We’re here all the time. Exactly. Except this one showed up on some guy’s front windshield. Which could really mess your day up, I suppose. I would have drifted off the road. I don’t know what happened to our guy. There again, the same thing developed that we saw earlier without the background. And this one wound up being in. I think vis-effects had come back to me and said they wanted something that flies, like a dragonfly or something like that. So, I did this very strange hoverfly. The teeth are a little ridiculous. I like the spikes on the back end, but I might have gone back and redone the mouth on this thing, given an option. You can see where I worked from. I have electron microscope shots and things like that of him. Smaller critters, critters, bond those smaller critters, and played with them. Once again, this one was never in. That one I don’t think ever made the show. It was just those two we just saw, the slug and the dragonfly thing. That’s my recollection. I liked this one.

David Read:
He looks like he’s having a bad day.

James C.D. Robbins:
This is actually a pencil sketch that I’ve done. The whole drawing is probably pretty big.

David Read:
“Paradise Lost,” Nirrti’s–

James C.D. Robbins:
Nirrti’s Palace, yes. Once again, the map for this one, I’m gonna guess it was an expense thing, but this became a very distant shot of Nirrti’s Palace. You can still see that it kind of had the spires and whatnot, but–

David Read:
You’ve got the Eastern influence, for sure.

James C.D. Robbins:
a little visit to Istanbul.

David Read:
No, wait a second. “Paradise Lost.” No, I think… No, this is–

James C.D. Robbins:
Yeah, Nirrti’s Palace.

David Read:
But “Paradise Lost,” this is the episode with O’Neill and Maybourne. So, I think that this one was mislabeled because it’s “Unnatural Selection” that Nirrti’s Palace appears. But we’ll get back to that.

James C.D. Robbins:
That’s weird because those are the original… Go back again? That’s the original title block from the show. Strange, that’s July 10th. Go to the next one again. June 17th. All right. Huh.

David Read:
Maybe it just wasn’t updated in Photoshop.

James C.D. Robbins:
We have an anomaly here.

David Read:
We do? We’ll go back to that. This is the Furling transportation arch room, or the Furling Gate room, as it were, and we’re gonna do a little bit of bouncing around here. But this is where Maybourne tries to get away… to the moon.

James C.D. Robbins:
This is the diary that O’Neill finds, and Bridget didn’t want to do a book. She wanted something a little more elaborate, and I think she might have done a thumbnail for me of that device or the way that they stack it and the little sheets that are in the wood frame. And they did a great job building it, and then I came up with all the iconery and whatnot that’s supposedly the storytelling and what’s, as you said earlier, cut and paste. I drew probably 30 different little figures and then cut ’em up and put ’em back in all the way around.

David Read:
We don’t see O’Neill doing a lot of investigating, and he definitely does in this episode. He doesn’t have Carter there to do it for him.

James C.D. Robbins:
That’s it. Exactly. Probably missing her right about then.

David Read:
So, the ruin’s on the moon.

James C.D. Robbins:
This is Minakata, I believe, which is an area. Once again, I had a location photo and I had to build the arches and the signs of this long-defunct village that they come upon. But that’s our beautiful backyard here in British Columbia.

David Read:
We never got to see this guy rendered.

James C.D. Robbins:
No, he was in the episode, but he was never–

David Read:
He was?

James C.D. Robbins:
Yeah, but he was never rendered like this. He became pretty much like a human pig. I don’t know if they found stock footage of a pig and tried to upgrade it a little bit, but it was a very fast rushing–

David Read:
This is the pig that we see real quickly.

James C.D. Robbins:
That was supposedly this, and it lost all of its scale. I mean, I picture this as being really large.

David Read:
Me too.

James C.D. Robbins:
Once again, I did not put any scale markers on it, so whatever scale they came to, I think it was driven probably by stock footage, I’m gonna guess. I don’t know that for a fact, but none of the details that I have in this drawing were really on the final one. I might have added a couple extra tusks, but certainly none of the coloration. Bridget asked me to put the purple and the orange on his belly.

David Read:
So, this says Trimodian boar. Does that come to you on a note or are you allowed to name stuff?

James C.D. Robbins:
No, this one Bridget named, and she gave me a little Post-It note with a scribble and some of the things, like she wanted porcupine quills on the back and whatnot.

David Read:
Got it.

James C.D. Robbins:
Other than that, I think she might have also included a recipe. That one, “Metamorphosis.”

David Read:
“Metamorphosis.” That’s the one not on “Unnatural Selection.” These are Nirrti’s patients. So, we have a whole series here of transformed humans.

James C.D. Robbins:
The hand there was used. Our gentleman on the left was not. That one didn’t make it. They started looking sideways after I did that. Not so much for that either. This one, I think, there was a version that was done.

David Read:
Alex Zahara.

James C.D. Robbins:
I don’t recall if he still had the eye patch on that side or not. I kind of like the idea of once you show off horror, it’s less horrifying. What the audience imagine what’s underneath that.

David Read:
This poor guy has no skin.

James C.D. Robbins:
I know. But he’s very muscly.

David Read:
He is.

James C.D. Robbins:
Variations on these people that she was playing with, and then I don’t know if you actually had an image of the final. There was one more image that I did of what became the actual hero one. Gentleman who had an eye at the side of his head.

David Read:
Ah, yes, Wodan.

James C.D. Robbins:
In the drawing, I had the eye on the side of the head, but his ear and whatnot actually morphed it to be almost like a nose. So, I was trying to make it look like there was a total second face happening there, and that if we could get the intelligent gleam from this when the guy’s face looks like a drooling idiot, it’s like you’ve got… he had trapped inside this body. Regardless, that’s the one that they decided to go with. Todd Masters built the prosthetic based on my designs and it actually won a Leo for best design. Which went to Todd. It’s like, “Hello.”

David Read:
“Forsaken,” the Seberus.

James C.D. Robbins:
Seberus. This is a funky set. This vessel had crashed and had an angle. So, we built the set at like a 30-degree angle or something like that, which was cool. That’s why we had stuff hanging in there, so it paid for the fact that nothing is straight up and down and vertical. But it caused a very strange problem with people being in the set for any length of time. They’d start to get sick to their stomach.

David Read:
‘Cause the orientation would be off.

James C.D. Robbins:
Vertigo, which was totally unexpected. Notes for everybody, what they’re doing in there. And then a final finished color version. I think Boyd changed the standard yellow caution to a green caution to make it a little more alien. But other than that, this is pretty much what we got up today.

David Read:
“The Changeling,” Kresh’ta, the ambush of Kresh’ta.

James C.D. Robbins:
That’s Mr. Judge’s script, I believe. So, I had to do a battle zone. If you look hard enough, there’s a few little rats crawling around in there too. There’s one on the left. Go left. Hey, guys.

David Read:
Never noticed that.

James C.D. Robbins:
Go down, there’s another one. I don’t know how long ago this battlefield had occurred. But obviously in my mind, it was long enough for the rats to come and start chewing things up. And yet the fires are still burning. But you can see I’ve atrophied that guy in the foreground quite a bit. He’s [inaudible].

David Read:
Absolutely. Teal’c was laying there for several days with Bra’tac, so…

James C.D. Robbins:
No, if you’re dead in the sun for several days, I guess this could happen.

David Read:
Exactly.

James C.D. Robbins:
But it was fun.

David Read:
Tagrea.

James C.D. Robbins:
My self-portrait.

David Read:
You’re in there?

James C.D. Robbins:
Way down to the little red slash. Way down. Who’s that in the door?

David Read:
Is that you?

James C.D. Robbins:
That’s me having a smoke.

David Read:
I never knew that. That’s funny, James.

James C.D. Robbins:
Silly, silly details, but I took the time to do it, so I thought I’d mention it. I like the industrial nature of this. I could see this radiating out from that center core building to every direction…

David Read:
When you guys create episodes and you create new civilizations, you create script for the species. Now, that happened repeatedly throughout the show as it does in many shows. Especially when we see computer displays and things like that, who’s responsible for converting these into fonts?

James C.D. Robbins:
Not all of them are converted into fonts per se. Boyd Godfrey was our graphic god on Stargate and he was amazing. He would just come up with different scripts with different feel, seemingly at the drop of a hat. Now, I know it was years and years and years of experience of him as a graphic artist that enabled him to do that. But I would have him send me sheets of, “We need a new language for this thing,” and he’d send me sheets of it. And I would either use what he sent me or do hand-drawn versions. I think some of these were done by hand over and over again. Jumping off from what he had already provided. And then if there are any places where we see signage, then it ties in with what we’re doing there. Like I say, not all of them have an alphabet assigned. You can’t decipher a lot of these. They’re just gibberish symbols.

David Read:
The Ancient One is font transposition throughout the show. You can see Made in China on some of them.

James C.D. Robbins:
But it becomes a headache for production because then you actually have to make it say something every time. It’s just being able to put up a bunch of symbols. You gotta be careful there or you can get caught. So, this is the first versions of the Tangean fighter, pardon me. And then the word dirigible came back and they wanted this attached to a dirge so I altered it and put the dirigible in. And then I think they went back again and wanted it free floating. So, this was the final one. And once again, there’s some of Boyd’s symbols across the ship. And that is one thing that I do love is signage. In our universe, on our world, the real world, we’re inundated. Everywhere you go, you see signs. And to have ships and elements from different planets that actually incorporate that, to me, brings up the level of realism.

David Read:
I just love your detail here though. Note, craft represented has fired two of its front missile loadout, which is why you have these holes.

James C.D. Robbins:
Otherwise, they’d be like, “What are those?” It’s like, “OK, I don’t have to answer that question.” And 20% larger than a Death Glider.

David Read:
For scale. “Prophecy.”

James C.D. Robbins:
The mining camp.

David Read:
Lord Mot.

James C.D. Robbins:
They did a pretty similar version of this, a little more detailed than mine, I think. This, for whatever reason, I believe I was pretty rushed when I was doing this one, so this is as far as I was able to take it. But I’ve said that to you before, that was always the biggest vexation, is that I’d kind of get into doing these drawings, and it’s like, “Oh, damn, I got 19 more to do, I’m in a little bit of a bind.”

David Read:
Time is money. You only have so much.

James C.D. Robbins:
To realize these images and these environments to the level I potentially would’ve liked to was not an option on an ongoing basis. There were some that I could stop on and spend more time depending upon the load, because there’s also episodes where they really didn’t need much from me. So, those ones would give me time to work on other episodes that did.

David Read:
Typically, how much time were you working ahead of them going to camera?

James C.D. Robbins:
Once again, that varied quite a bit. I would say we’d get our scripts usually four weeks or so out. To the point where they were solid enough that we could rely on them. But there were other elements. The super soldier, I had two months, I think, to develop that. And then by the time we ate through the first month of doing drawings, and I did sculptures for it we’re probably gonna come to that.

David Read:
“Full circle.” Season finale.

James C.D. Robbins:
“Full circle.” This became a very, very well-recognized prop, this one and the obsidian tablet, I think. People like tablets. So, I did this one. There you go. It’s got some ancient writing on it. Boyd gave it to me. I made it look like it was inset in stone or carved in stone, and then.

David Read:
This was just Styrofoam, wasn’t it?

James C.D. Robbins:
Probably a hard foam of some sort.

David Read:
A hard foam?

James C.D. Robbins:
Because this was not done by hand on the final thing. It was set on there. There’s the barcode lettering that Boyd had come up with for Ancients.

David Read:
The Eye of Ra.

James C.D. Robbins:
Eye of Ra. This was a beautiful prop, actually. It was. And it never really played the way it was meant to, I don’t think. This is supposed to be a piece that went into another existing prop base from earlier shows. I might even be guesstimating where the base came from. Maybe it’s in one of my other drawings. How’d you get that?

David Read:
I was in the right place at the right time when it was sold. I think that there were two of these that were made. The other one has the metal ring around it.

James C.D. Robbins:
I’d like to buy that.

David Read:
I know the guy who has it though. This is one of my favorite pieces in my collection. Based on the Eye of Tiamat in terms of the shape from Season Five. So, they brought these back. Very, very cool.

James C.D. Robbins:
It may have been based on that, but mine wasn’t. Mine was based on Egyptian. I went straight to the source.

David Read:
This metal, the ring that goes around it. the principle of that kind of technology.

James C.D. Robbins:
But the one on the right was detailed from references that I found from Egyptology. And then I guess the rest of it with the star, the sun, or whatever, so as you say, more modern additions to it.

David Read:
So, this was a radical different design for Anubis’s mothership.

James C.D. Robbins:
This was never used. There’s probably a really good reason for it. I had no idea at this point the scale of how it was to play or anything else. So, I did. And this is the thing, a lot of the time when I didn’t know, I would do something. And I would take that something down the hall, and what that would do was spur better direction. “No, not that. More like this.” And then I would get more information as to what it is. “Oh, it has to be able to do this,” and yada, yada, yada. So, there were a couple of these, I think they may have been reused or slightly changed and reused in “Space Race” or another show. So, nothing’s wasted. And there you go. I hit on this, and the idea of being able to dock a Ha’tak, or several Ha’taks at this, so it’s almost not just a mothership. It’s like a space station.

David Read:
A base.

James C.D. Robbins:
And then the ability of it to actually extrude and extend and open at the top to reveal the major weapon. And I like the fact that it was black against space, ’cause it was even more evil, if you will.

David Read:
The death flower.

James C.D. Robbins:
That was one idea for the interior to be all gold. I was playing with visuals, but the black version is what we went with. I like that.

David Read:
Got some Asgard ships here. Now at that point, did you not know what the enemy was going to be, or?

James C.D. Robbins:
No, I had a note, “What if Anubis’s new mothership destroys the Asgard?” So, I’m guessing that somewhere in there they took the Asgard on. I don’t recall.

David Read:
Anubis took the Asgard on at the end of Season Five.

James C.D. Robbins:
There you go. But he didn’t have this set.

David Read:
Correct, and this is taken from something that we saw in Season One of SG-1, so I’m wondering if this prop existed.

James C.D. Robbins:
This is it. What we were going to do is repurpose this base so that the Eye of Ra that you have in your hot right hand there would go down into the center of this and other crazy visual effects things would happen. That all got thrown away before we got to camera. They said, “No, we’re not gonna go on that,” and it was their idea. It was brought to me that they wanted to do it this way and then for whatever reason, once they had the Eye, they decided that that’s not how it was gonna work. Don’t believe we resurrected this base.

David Read:
No, but it’s still cool to see the thought process that went into it.

James C.D. Robbins:
There’s so much thought process that never makes it into the series. Have to find it.

David Read:
Do you wanna take a break for a minute or do you wanna move on to Season Seven?

James C.D. Robbins:
Let’s keep going.

David Read:
All right, let’s look at Season Seven.

James C.D. Robbins:
I’m good. So, you need to take a step away for a minute? OK.

David Read:
Nope, I don’t want to impose on you more than absolutely necessary here.

James C.D. Robbins:
Managed to find me at a time when my schedule was fairly open.

David Read:
Season Seven. So, this is the end of the first episode, “Fallen,” where Jonas has been taken by Anubis.

James C.D. Robbins:
And held in this pillory and I wanted… this is like the stocks that they put you in in town square and throw tomatoes at you, with a little variation. We lined the inside of this with felt, I believe, so it didn’t hurt our actor and worked like a charm, looked pretty cool.

David Read:
He’s comfortable while he’s being tortured.

James C.D. Robbins:
You have to be.

David Read:
Fragile balance.

James C.D. Robbins:
Loki’s ship. Yes.

David Read:
Interior.

James C.D. Robbins:
Once again, an illustration just to show. All the other elements were designed by our drafts people via Bridget. That big window to space was a physical build.

David Read:
This was from Season Three and then this was from the end of Season Three, and over here was from the end of Season Three, and then you’ve got this back here from the end of Season Five with Heimdall. You’re basically incorporating all of the Asgard elements that have been established at this point, many of them into one set.

James C.D. Robbins:
And I think that’s what drove the set, from a cost standpoint. It’s like, “OK, what do we got in the lockup? What can we bring in and put together that’s supposed to be this small renegade ship that Loki’s taken and is messing with people?” That’s not my drawing. It’s a very good one.

David Read:
So, this is the exterior of Loki’s ship.

James C.D. Robbins:
And there’s the little window.

David Read:
Right down the front there, absolutely.

James C.D. Robbins:
Apparently, that room is right inside that raised section. And I think it was fairly close to this at the end of the day. I was trying to lean into… the swoopiness of the back and those raised sections at the rear with the fin, because that’s really all I knew of the Asgard.

David Read:
It’s a lot of apple-core shapes, like that kind of cutaway.

James C.D. Robbins:
And then I put this thing together for them that became a pencil steel bill that hung over their heads, which was supposedly…

David Read:
Like a dissection device.

James C.D. Robbins:
Yeah, exactly. Little details on tools themselves to have fun with. It’s fun drawing metallic surfaces for whatever reason.

David Read:
All right. Orpheus. So, the Goa’uld ring transporter. So, this is something that was introduced in the feature film and you brought back to life here.

James C.D. Robbins:
See, this is the weird thing, where I’m trying to remember now.

David Read:
It’s on the gauntlet.

James C.D. Robbins:
But was it not taken… I’m trying to remember. I’m thinking of different episodes. Where I was going back to when our Ashrak was our assassin. I thought he’d stolen one of the GDOs. That’s why we didn’t want him to go through the Stargate. And that’s why it made me wonder if I was doing something small to adapt this and it was already a pre-built prop. Don’t remember. At any rate, there you go. This word.

David Read:
Quite possibly. I’m a little fuzzy on the details myself.

James C.D. Robbins:
And that’s why it made me wonder if I was doing something small to adapt this and it was already a pre-built prop. Don’t remember. At any rate, there you go. This word.

David Read:
Orpheus. We’ve got a Goa’uld mothership being built in atmosphere.

James C.D. Robbins:
Anti-grav dry dock. And we did something to disable the antigrav and the whole ship crashes. There it is laid in over our location. We were probably too small. More in another location.

David Read:
You guys filmed in pretty much every pit in the greater Vancouver area.

James C.D. Robbins:
And now they don’t exist. So, it was a good time for us to be able to do these things. Got a little work to do to finish that one. Another one of those, “Well, time does not allow, therefore…” You can see, kind of cut it out around the trees and I’ve not had the ability to go back and clean those areas up here, but it was the idea of showing one of the… antigrav pods exploding. And I don’t think… I don’t know if it exploded in the final, or if it turned off.

David Read:
It explodes, I think, behind the hill. At a certain point… where can you get comfortable with it yourself, where it’s like, “OK, I’ve achieved the gist of this to communicate the idea? It may not be as clear as I’d like it to be, but they’re going to get the direction that I’m going with this.”

James C.D. Robbins:
Exactly. This could have been close-up on the corner, except that, what is it? So, you gotta go wide enough to show that, OK, it’s the ship and it’s that part of it that’s having a problem. So, it says what it needs to say. Whether it’s strong enough to be direction, I don’t know. But now we’re onto “Revisions.”

David Read:
“Revisions,” the link.

James C.D. Robbins:
Did a bunch of these little things, whole bunch of different designs where we finally… I think it was the second from the bottom that became… That one’s not quite right. There. That was the final version, I think.

David Read:
You get measurements and everything, the batteries, and that they made this thing light up even back then. That was still mind-blowing to me.

James C.D. Robbins:
On the model shop.

David Read:
Man.

James C.D. Robbins:
Gord and Paco and all the people they have there were so smart and able to put together pretty much anything I could dream up. I was never able to stump them happily.

David Read:
Some of this technology that you guys have designed is prophetic, with Neurolink and everything else. It’s a little wild. I forget who I was talking to. Oh, David Hewlett, science fiction is our dream phase.

James C.D. Robbins:
It is. Our art emulates reality or the other way around, whatever it is. But go back to Flash Gordon. Spaceships going to the moon. How fricking ridiculous is that?

David Read:
Not so ridiculous at all.

James C.D. Robbins:
Cut to… Or Star Trek, the original… with the communicator device, which now everybody carries around with them.

David Read:
There’s a reason that the iPad is called the iPad Personal Access Display Device from Next Generation. Steve Jobs wanted one. He designed it before he designed the iPhone. It took him a little bit longer. That’s what that is.

James C.D. Robbins:
Really? So, the language comes from the show. I was not aware of that. That’s cool.

David Read:
There’s Michael.

James C.D. Robbins:
There’s Michael. So, this is one of those cases where I tried to hit the mark with the likeness enough that we knew who it was with an explanation. And then this headset, which he never actually wound up wearing, I think they used some sort of temple. Almost like the ones you put on when they’re monitoring your heart. I don’t know what the decision was on that, whether this blocked too much of his face, possibly, but regardless, it was a fun build.

David Read:
It’s cool. And you can see the echo in terms of the Galaran memory technology later on in the show when you had the little blue diodes that you guys put on everybody… on their faces.

James C.D. Robbins:
And that was supposed to be a little sweetheart inside one of the pods. Didn’t go well.

David Read:
Nope. Mummified pod occupant, quite possibly their leader considering all of the nice…

James C.D. Robbins:
Headpiece.

David Read:
I don’t have a very clear shot of this one.

James C.D. Robbins:
A ruined corridor. It had been holed out, damaged, whether that was part of what caused the crash or that happened in the crash. I know I’d done versions of the crashed ship. There’s the corridors that sort of go on forever. I’m not sure if we used green screen to extend the sections of corridor that we had, but they were not that long. And there it is. I did two versions of this. One of the versions I did looking the opposite direction. There you go. And I like the idea of showing this big swath that had been cut when it landed or crashed, but this was too damaged for Brad. It’s like, “No, we need people to flip through this.”

David Read:
This reminds me of Pitch Black.

James C.D. Robbins:
They went back to something closer to the first drawing for the final rendering of this effect. And another person in the pod, obviously not finished and worked up. The pod design was done by our drafts people. That’s why the pods are easily finished ’cause I got their renderings. And then this.

David Read:
Is this the ship being assembled? Like a vision?

James C.D. Robbins:
yeah. It looks remarkably similar to that ship with the outriggers. But I have a feeling this may have also been one of my roughs from “Nightwalkers.”

David Read:
Season Six? “Nightwalkers,” OK.

James C.D. Robbins:
Could have been one of my two or three stabs at what the ship looked like.

David Read:
If you’ve got something good in the back of your mind, we can probably bring it to the foreground later on, like “Space Race.”

James C.D. Robbins:
If some of them work, then there’s no wasted drawings, as I say, because they either set you in the right direction or they’re something that you can repurpose down the road. And this is for this.

David Read:
This is from “Enemy Mine.”

James C.D. Robbins:
I don’t recollect the context of these builds.

David Read:
Unas have taken over this planet. You did one in charcoal as well.

James C.D. Robbins:
I remember doing the drawings. I just don’t remember the specifics of the episode, what the story was, how it played.

David Read:
Unas rebelled against their Jaffa slave masters and took over the planet. All right. “Space Race.”

James C.D. Robbins:
“Space Race.” That’s the drone? The killer drone? Now those actually were rendered fairly close to what I presented them with and once again, asymmetrical shapes like this, so quickly done in CD. And the ships themselves, I reverted back to pencil works.

David Read:
They introduced seven or eight different pilots, and each pilot had his own ship. This is our bad guy.

James C.D. Robbins:
Jarlath? Yes.

David Read:
Jarlath.

James C.D. Robbins:
I don’t think that one made it through the race.

David Read:
Yes, it did. Oh, not through the race, into the production, yes. It definitely didn’t.

James C.D. Robbins:
Into production, but not through the race.

David Read:
No, definitely not.

James C.D. Robbins:
A bunch of different concepts and stuff. Some were used. I believe Mr. Bodnarus supplied a couple for us as well.

David Read:
Reminds me of Independence Day.

James C.D. Robbins:
Yes, perhaps. Had that movie come out at this point?

David Read:
Yep.

James C.D. Robbins:
OK. I had ten years of not being able to go to the theater. I had back problems from a car accident that would not allow me to sit in a chair that long. So, many of these movies, people are like, “Oh, well, you should see this. You should…” I was like, “I haven’t seen any of that stuff.” Oddly enough too, I’m gonna totally sidestep. When I did Universe and I started doing designs for the doors on the Destiny, I had a whole bunch of people going, “Oh, that’s just the door from X-Men.” Well, to all those people, I had never seen X-Men before. For what it’s worth, we almost have similar designs, if in fact they are similar. I still asked.

David Read:
I can see the echoes of Cerebro, but I think that yours is… I wouldn’t have made that comparison. You have a circular twist in a lot of different doors.

James C.D. Robbins:
It was a necessity. Here you go, there’s some more. Etan Mayo. Shield generators. Hellfire pulse missiles, you gotta have ’em.

David Read:
And the Seberus.

James C.D. Robbins:
You need a range. Seberus, of course, which is the interior we saw earlier in the graph.

David Read:
Hebridan. You had the humans and the Serrakin, and some of them were interspecies offspring, hybrid Hebridian.

James C.D. Robbins:
As I recall, the strongest portion of this drawing that made it into the final vis-effects was the pyramidal building foreground. I believe that’s in the map.

David Read:
And the rails. I know that Rainmaker did this shot.

James C.D. Robbins:
Raised highways? That’s not mine.

David Read:
This is not yours? From “Birthright?”

James C.D. Robbins:
Think so. “Birthright,” what year was that?

David Read:
That’s Season Seven. This is Christopher Judge’s episode with Jolene Blalock.

James C.D. Robbins:
I think this was drawn by others. That one I did.

David Read:
“Evolution.”

James C.D. Robbins:
Loved this episode. I had so much to do in this episode. It was a good episode. There you go, the waterfall, that which was their clue to where the Telchak Device is.

David Read:
Telchak Device. This is Honduras.

James C.D. Robbins:
Where’s the poisonous frog in the program?

David Read:
You didn’t often create Earth content.

James C.D. Robbins:
No, I did not, but it was fun. It was fun to do this. I liked getting into the texture. It felt like painting… which is my first love. Shackle drone, a little design for our illustrious Jaffa super soldier being held. This did not make… There’s elements of this that went into the final, but this was not really what they looked like when the story was done, especially the shoulders and head. Rear view, I guess that’s pretty similar. Created all the patterning that was to go on.

David Read:
Circuitry.

James C.D. Robbins:
Theoretically, that’s what’s inside these things. They all look similar and we had prosthetics made for Dan Payne again. And he played their Jaffa warrior. Not an attractive bunch. That’s with the plate on, the breathing thing on. It was removed. And this is the plasticine sculpture that I did over a weekend. I did it at home and brought it in. So, that set a lot of the feel for the sculpting of the helmet and the armor, what have you. We lost a nose ring. They didn’t like it. For a couple pounds of plasticine, huh? Robert Cooper goes, “Can you sculpt too?” “You can start to do art stuff.” Variations of removing the gear to reveal the man underneath, the drawing underneath.

David Read:
So, you had this a couple of months ahead of time to develop?

James C.D. Robbins:
The concept for the suit itself? Yes. And that took me four weeks to get all this stuff done and the sculpture done, and then four weeks, I believe, beyond that to build it. Four weeks and roughly $80,000.

David Read:
$80,000. Man, I’ll bet–

James C.D. Robbins:
That number might be off, but it’s pretty close.

David Read:
Dan Payne said, because it was molded to his body, that neoprene suit and then the pieces over the top, “It is the most comfortable thing he had ever worn.”

James C.D. Robbins:
Until we took him out on day one in 30-plus degree heat. And he almost went down from it. he literally took off a glove and pulled… it went back down. We had to sit him down, crack open the back of the suit, and put ice packs all over his back and stuff to rehydrate him and keep him cool.

David Read:
And he wouldn’t complain?

James C.D. Robbins:
No.

David Read:
“You need to let us know when you’re about to pass out.”

James C.D. Robbins:
Said, “Oh, look, we’ve killed him!”

David Read:
Geez, that’s the thing.

James C.D. Robbins:
I’ll check the rest.

David Read:
I’ve got this on my set. Not this one, but the one from “200.” But what a wild design.

James C.D. Robbins:
It was fun. Once again, all in 3D, didn’t know how easy or difficult it would be to realize this as a physical build ’cause it goes inward from all directions. But once again, model shot, they were the bomb.

David Read:
The one in “Evolution Part One” and “Evolution Part Two,” the effect is always digital. You guys managed to make it practical for “200.”

James C.D. Robbins:
It was fun. And then I once again used my renderings as summaries from their investigating the device. I was told that this wouldn’t be really featured heavily. Little did I know.

David Read:
Extremely dangerous.

James C.D. Robbins:
Very dangerous. Don’t mess with these things, whatever you do, ’cause it gets lighter every time it does something. I was making up silly crap all the time. But for the most part, they allowed me to stay in.

David Read:
Tartarus.

James C.D. Robbins:
Yes.

David Read:
“Evolution: Part 2.”

James C.D. Robbins:
This is where the big gathering of the super soldiers was. I made this one floating. Is that right?

David Read:
Yep.

James C.D. Robbins:
So, I did a bunch of different variations and versions of this, partially for the planet around it, partially to try and redefine the building. But I think it went through pretty similar to this. And there’s the armies.

David Read:
This is pretty accurate to the final shot.

James C.D. Robbins:
They stuck to my stuff quite a bit, as we noted earlier, not always. But they did this.

David Read:
When it works, it works.

James C.D. Robbins:
Pretty similar. And there’s his little floating eyes. He’s addressing them. But we all knew he wouldn’t last forever. There, he’s got the glowing eyes.

David Read:
Looks like a Jawa. All right, more 3D content for Prometheus. I believe this is “Grace,” if I’m not mistaken.

James C.D. Robbins:
Yes. I did a few different designs for the “Grace” ship too, till I came up with one. They needed this stuff for Sam. Sam was trapped.

David Read:
That’s correct, all by her lonesome.

James C.D. Robbins:
Sam was trapped.

David Read:
We never get the name of this species and it drives me nuts because what do we call it? The “Grace” ship? I guess it’s the “Grace“ ship.

James C.D. Robbins:
And there’s the relative scale between them, which I recall they actually made even bigger.

David Read:
I think so.

James C.D. Robbins:
Made it itty bitty about the size of my signature there. Half again what it was, so they doubled the size.

David Read:
It suggests how big our galaxy is, that there can be whole civilizations with massive technological advancements in our galaxy that probably have never even encountered the Goa’uld quite possibly. Galaxy’s a big space. More Prometheus.

James C.D. Robbins:
Couple more of those, which we’ve seen before. But once again, choosing to do this digitally with a 3D program served me over and over and over again. I have no idea how much I’d be able to apply as the wire frame generation. And there’s Prometheus on its rails as I kind of envisioned it. Never happened. It still formed a window similar to what we’ve done with other ships.

David Read:
Break through the nebula.

James C.D. Robbins:
All this NASA stuff’s public domain, so I could use it.

David Read:
Absolutely.

James C.D. Robbins:
Obsidian.

David Read:
An obsidian tablet from “Chimera.”

James C.D. Robbins:
Let’s see.

David Read:
I’ve got one of these. Hang on. There, the model shop’s ability to recreate your content is ridiculous.

James C.D. Robbins:
Looks like something I drew once.

David Read:
Right down to the little damage in the surface. This is a replica. This is what happens when the molds get into the fans’ hands. They start hammering these things out. And it’s one of the coolest things. I would think that for me, and I think we’ve talked about this a little bit, to draw something and then to go down to the model shop and to have them completely realize it in three dimensions has gotta be wild. Martin Gero always said it was amazing.

James C.D. Robbins:
And they did it time and time and time again. And then once I was the designer, I’m walking around in spaces that I drew a couple of weeks before. That’s the real film magic in it, because I’m still involved with that magic. It’s not just for the audience anymore. I get such a kick out of… The first time that I walked into the Destiny set when it was completed. I couldn’t find my way out.

David Read:
And you designed the thing.

James C.D. Robbins:
Exactly. It’s like, “OK, so if I get on this…” And every prop that I would design, they would come out with it, as you say, almost verbatim, if you will. So, that is a testament to the skills of the people that I was surrounded by.

David Read:
All right. “Heroes.”

James C.D. Robbins:
Pokey little bits. That’s from the Goa’uld drone.

David Read:
This guy right here.

James C.D. Robbins:
There we go. I liked him too. He was a fun little build.

David Read:
This is one of the rare examples. They theorize that the Goa’uld have kind of gone in the direction that the humans have and made their own MALPs. So, this is a Goa’uld version of human technology, which is rare that it goes in that direction, but it’s quite possible that they’ve learned from us.

James C.D. Robbins:
Very possibly, but with their own unique design aesthetic.

David Read:
Of course, and theirs has weaponry.

James C.D. Robbins:
Otherwise, you don’t get your MALPs back. It’s all defensive, I’m sure.

David Read:
Even got texture on it here. They were pretty transparent with making that the same. And then there’s an exploded version of it that Sam’s working with that has crystals inside of it.

James C.D. Robbins:
This version, when it was floating and it was just in the air, that was always kind of the same vis. And then once it was shot down, we had bits that we had to go through. So, the model shop created those for us.

David Read:
The Ark, gold ark. I love this. This is so cool.

James C.D. Robbins:
Me too. I enjoyed doing it. How far wrong can you go when you rely on Egyptology for your design aesthetic? It was beautiful then and it’s beautiful now. Repeated it, and then added in a little bit of our own Goa’uld text and language onto it, and our crystal technology, which theoretically was there. But this is… That comes from the brilliance of Dean Devlin and the boys way back when, deciding that this is how the story was gonna unfold from ancient Egypt and being able to carry that aesthetic all the way through it, the Goa’uld ships and everything else like that. It’s just beautiful. Lapis and gold.

David Read:
Absolutely.

James C.D. Robbins:
How can you go wrong?

David Read:
If you turn the beetles a certain way, the scarabs, and it unlocks it.

James C.D. Robbins:
I had a number of notes and scripts as to how this thing was supposed to operate, so that allows me to design and then put in these notes that basically just addresses script elements.

David Read:
Absolutely.

James C.D. Robbins:
And then this one, Bridget built that lower section of claws as a set that I think had a facehugger in it, facesucker, whatever, space runner. And that was all realized obviously as a vis behind. And then once we’re into the set portion, because of that back walls, we could shoot it practically.

David Read:
They go in here. This looks familiar too, from the beginning of Season Six.

James C.D. Robbins:
Bridget wanted to bring a couple of those back and place them in there. OK. So, I created one of them in the drawing. Pretty sure they were there in the episode as well. And this is where Mr. Jackson made his redebut. He was found at the base of…

David Read:
This was “Fallen.”

James C.D. Robbins:
Yes, this is from “Fallen.”

David Read:
Excuse me. All right.

James C.D. Robbins:
That’s OK. That’s OK.

David Read:
We’re a little out of order, folks.

James C.D. Robbins:
It did a straight down shot, and there were ruins and part of an aqueduct in my renderings. I believe they put part of the aqueduct into that down shot.

David Read:
Yes. This is Vis Uban

James C.D. Robbins:
Daniel lying naked, having unascended.

David Read:
Unascended, violently.

James C.D. Robbins:
And then the chair.

David Read:
Now, this is carried for a long time throughout Stargate history. How complicated was this to create?

James C.D. Robbins:
Well, it was a chair, so It doesn’t fly through space or do anything. And I think that’s my first rendering on top left, possibly. I did a few drawings of this. Some of them never made it even onto paper other than in my notebooks, I think. But that was to give them enough to build from, and then they did it once again. And there was a gel, I believe, in the can. They had to force their fingers in to make the connection.

David Read:
Like little Christmas lights or something underneath it. Like little button inputs.

James C.D. Robbins:
Once again, it’s amazing what they can do because they reproduced my drawings very, very faithfully right down to the sort of scooped-out designs on the side. And then it all reclines. I always wondered if there was one of those massage functions in there.

David Read:
I’m sure it had something like that.

James C.D. Robbins:
A lazy boy, you gotta…

David Read:
So, in the original concept for “Lost City: Part 1,” Atlantis was found in the ice, not just an outpost.

James C.D. Robbins:
Correct.

David Read:
So, this is Antarctica.

James C.D. Robbins:
This is Antarctica. This is the ship and this was the first idea for the Atlantis map of the ship leaving. I would have to go back to the episode and see if they stuck to this or if they… I don’t think we were there with anything from Atlantis that was strong enough to model it to what Atlantis ultimately became.

David Read:
The snowflake design isn’t realized yet.

James C.D. Robbins:
Not in this one. So, I’m thinking that that was probably wide enough and empty enough that it left them open to make Atlantis whatever they wanted it to be. There’s the ship taking off, heading back to the Pegasus galaxy.

David Read:
Earth’s moon.

James C.D. Robbins:
And now this is part of a set that was built underground. We built the physical portal piece on the floor from which our drones access and went spiraling up to help in the battle that was happening above the ice. And that’s the final designated design of the drone squids that they sent out. There they are. They’re starting out right there and they go screaming up the tube. There it is.

David Read:
This is so cool.

James C.D. Robbins:
I had fun with it. I like that drawing. I have my favorites too, but this drawing I quite like. It shows the motion, tells the story. These guys didn’t last.

David Read:
No. They had no way of lasting.

James C.D. Robbins:
There’s the rough charcoal for it. That shows the whole process completely if you look at that and you go back two frames or three frames and look at the… There you go. It’s all Photoshop.

David Read:
Wow.

James C.D. Robbins:
Just add color.

David Read:
Just Add color.

James C.D. Robbins:
Results may vary.

David Read:
Little bit earlier.

James C.D. Robbins:
And once again, if you go back one, the initial one had been… No, I’m sorry. Go forward another, to that landscape with the clawed, that one. So, if you look at the sculpture, the head of that is very reminiscent to those blue things that came in from Redemption, from the alien weapon in Redemption.

David Read:
Yes, very much so.

James C.D. Robbins:
So, those were just notes that basically said, “This is Ancient.” According to what we’d established at the time, that Ancient became more of a humanoid form. And then I think in the final mat, they actually took the head off it, so that it really could fly.

David Read:
It was… It had fallen, I think, nearby. The Zero Point Module.

James C.D. Robbins:
I had a few designs of that prior to landing on this one. But this is what it ultimately became.

David Read:
I wish I had the others. This is the only one that I’ve got. But talk about something that you guys got mileage out of.

James C.D. Robbins:
Ever ready bunny, baby.

David Read:
Now, the practical unit, was that mostly different crystals assembled together underneath a lid? Is that how they arrived at that?

James C.D. Robbins:
No, I believe they did an entire mold for the one. So, it was a continuous piece. It looked fragmented and fractured like this, like it was built from a bunch of crystals that had somehow morphed together. And then obviously it was hollow so we could get lights into it and all of our gack to make it work. But that was a fun one. Zero Point Module.

David Read:
That’s it, man.

James C.D. Robbins:
That’s it, that’s all.

David Read:
That’s all of them. James, thank you for that. That was so cool that we were able to go through those together. What a wild assortment of content that you created in just those two years there. Looking back on all of it, can you believe you got through it in the time that you had?

James C.D. Robbins:
You know what? The days were a joy. I would come home most nights and after, you know, show… I hate traffic so I would leave early, at 4:30 AM or 5 AM in the morning, and be one of the first people to get there and work until 5 PM or 6 PM and then go home and then I would work until midnight or so, until I couldn’t see anymore. Until nothing made sense. Then I’d get up and do it all again the next day after about four hours of sleep. I only sleep about four hours a night, so… But that’s perfect for film.

David Read:
That’s true.

James C.D. Robbins:
Sleep is for beginners. That’s my motto. I loved it. And I was very fortunate that I have a very, very understanding partner who allowed me to be immersed to the level that I was in this show. The first two of the best 10 years of my life. I took it very seriously and I’ve never had a work experience like this. And I’m not just talking about the fact that I am able to draw. Surrounded by so many fantastic people, such great options and freedoms. They got to trust me. I earned their trust, I’m guessing, after a while, and I had quite a bit of autonomy in putting stuff together and doing stuff. Everything still went through a process but, as I say, I’ve learned from other productions just how much of a thumbprint others seem to feel the need to put onto things, whether it makes sense or not. And there was very little of that at Stargate. It’s like the egos weren’t there. It’s just like, “What’s the best thing for the story? What’s the best thing moving forward and financially and production-friendly?” All these things. So, it was a learning curve for me at the time. I’d done film for quite a while already, but not to this intensity or degree. And as I moved up, it was now art directing in Season Seven as well as providing and then kept the art directing till I became designer, but always kept the illustration ’cause that’s the only way I know how to design. So, it was 10 years of me being able to draw and create every single day.

David Read:
And the limits are only the limits of your imagination.

James C.D. Robbins:
My imagination and the finances. Obviously it has to work within the film world and that’s where I would be pulled back on occasion. I think I alluded at one point to the Asgard graveyard that I did, and it was this big wide drawing. And I got into intricate details and all the debris fields and stuff, and they couldn’t realize it as a 3D thing. It was not economical to do so. So, that one went bye-bye. But it wasn’t ’cause it was bad or nobody liked it, it was unachievable. So, I’d start to get part of my brain working on that as I’m doing things like, “No, I don’t wanna go there because it’s not gonna be something” So, the more production-savvy I became as I did it, the better I was at getting straight from zero to the finish line because I didn’t have to step around my own mistakes.

David Read:
Did the financial restraints end up, you think, complementing the direction that your work went or was it something you were always fighting against to find that right line? Or was it like, “OK, I’ve got it now. We can only render about this much probably so I’m not even gonna try to go outrageous with this?”

James C.D. Robbins:
I would always try and go outrageous if I was able to and I would get reined in. There would be certain things I’d draw that they’d be like, “Ah.” “Whispers” was one of them where I drew some aliens that are like, “OK now, we don’t want to scare the crap out of people. We just want them to be, it’s not a horror movie.” “OK, OK, it’s still primetime television.”

David Read:
Exactly. It is on cable.

James C.D. Robbins:
So, that’s part of the learning curve, but I don’t think it was me being obstructed by the finance. I think it was me learning to work with the finance more than anything. And obviously, the responsibility for that increased the higher I went in the echelon. So, by the time it came time to build sets, I’m very involved, and “Well, how much money do we have for this and this and that?” So, you develop relationships with the other department heads. “Well, we’ll be weighing in on it.” “Well, that’s gonna be a bunch,” and, “That prop’s not affordable,” or, “We can’t make it do that,” or, “What happens…” So, that’s my safety net. Having those relationships is what stops you from being the guy that is constantly producing stuff that’s not working.

David Read:
But when the time was there and the budget was there, they could pull pretty much anything off. And I imagine, as you moved on to Atlantis and Universe, financially more and more could be realized.

James C.D. Robbins:
Yeah, because there was an arrangement. We had two crews working, or one and a half crews working both shows simultaneously. And we were able to share resources, which potentially frees up more money. But we were paying for almost every stage on the lot. We had the Thomas Effects stage, we had stage one we did later, we had stages five and six, which was all Atlantis, and then Atlantis became the Trinity set in Thomas Effects. And then we had the village at the back of the Thomas Effects stage, which was three stories high, both sides of the road for 150 feet or more. So, you have that kind of resources and the fact that they had the infrastructure over the years, they were able to do all of this in-house and more and more became in-house. All our vis-effects were in-house, the editing was all in-house. We didn’t have to farm as much stuff out to other suppliers and that cuts costs as well. Like I say, it was like the aligning of the planets for that show to even happen the way it did…. I would love to see another alignment in my lifetime. But whether or not I’m involved in that, time will tell. The way things are looking right now, it’s probably unlikely. But I tell you, I would love nothing more than to go back and draw Stargate for another decade. That would be nice. Something else.

David Read:
It means so much to me and to our viewers that you spent so much time with us going through all these different concepts. It is a treat to get inside of your brain and see where a lot of this stuff came from. It means a lot to have you.

James C.D. Robbins:
I appreciate it, David, and it’s been a pleasure as always. Hopefully down the road we can find another season to chat about.

David Read:
I’d love to. I can’t thank James enough for taking the time to sit down with me and go through all of this content. I’ve been wanting to do this for so long now, and I hope that he’s game to come back for more, because this was fascinating. This part of the process is critical to creating these shows that we love. And so much of it makes it on screen and some of it doesn’t. And so going through some of these details and being able to see how some of these pieces are made is just… I have no words. Thank you, James, for taking the time. If you enjoyed this episode, click that like button and it will help promote the show further. We have new episodes coming up on Dial the Gate this next coming week, and we should have them organized on dialthegate.com when this goes to air. This is a pre-recorded show. My name is David Read. My thanks to my moderating team, Sommer, Tracy, Jeremy, Rhys and Antony. You guys make the show possible. And to my producer, Linda “GateGabber” Furey, as well as Frederick Marcoux at ConceptsWeb. He is our web developer on Dial the Gate. I couldn’t keep this show up and running without their help. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate, the Stargate Oral History Project. I’ll see you on the other side.