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The ''Starfury'' fighter is a fictional vessel used by Earthforce, the military branch of the Earth Alliance, in the science fiction television series ''Babylon 5''. The computer-generated imagery (CGI) model was first seen in the opening episode of the first season, "Midnight On The Firing Line" which first aired in the United States in January 1994, and has essentially appeared in every episode thereafter. It also appears in the later, and short lived, ''Crusade'' television series, the special edition (not original) version of the pilot movie, ''The Gathering,'' the TV movies ''In the Beginning,'' ''Thirdspace'', ''The River of Souls'' and ''A Call to Arms'', ''The Lost Tales'' (the first in an anthology series which was to be released on DVD but was aborted due to funding issues), plus a number of written short stories and novels based in the same fictional universe. The Starfury is the main fighter in the Earth-Alliance military. It has extreme agility and is able to do a full 360 turn in under a second. It is the best fighter of the younger races, with the probable exception of the Minbari (who have had spaceflight for several centuries longer than humans have). The Starfury has speed, firepower, and amazing agility. ==Origin and design== Created after Warner Brothers began production of the television series, the initial design of the ''Starfury'' was a collaboration between Steve Burg (a freelance designer on the show) who created a number of possible concepts and Ron Thornton (co-founder of Foundation Imaging) who refined and detailed the Lightwave models. Due to the high number expected to appear on screen, this refining of the potential and final designs was necessary in order to keep the models polygon count as small as possible due to the limited processing power (and memory) of the Amiga computers used for rendering animation sequences during the first season of ''Babylon 5''. Located at the end of each of the four struts (the space-only craft's "wings"), are two large thrusters, one facing forward and one back. Attached to the housing assembly for these are two additional smaller attitude control thrusters. While creating the design it was envisaged that the engines would work in a similar way to those of the Harrier, in that the output could be sent to any one of the four nozzles. The smaller manoeuvring ones have about 15 to 20% of the thrust of the larger Because of the positioning of these 16 thrusters and the use of computer animation, as opposed to using miniatures and more established animation techniques such as motion control, the ''Starfury'' was able to be depicted as an incredibly agile fighter. Unbeknownst to the producers of the show at the time it was an intentional homage to what Thornton and Burg felt was the excellent and under-utilised design ideas seen in the Gunstar from the 1984 movie, ''The Last Starfighter'', which was created by their close friend Ron Cobb.〔 The final shape of the Starfury was also influenced by an earlier (unused) design created by Steve Burg for the movie ''Terminator 2: Judgment Day''. The design was also ideal for demonstrating to the executive producers an idea which Thornton wished to introduce. Namely, the closer adherence to real physics with regards to how human (not alien) vessels manoeuvred in space, and that it could be depicted in an interesting and exciting way. An example of how he demonstrated this can be found in the season one episode "Soul Hunter". Before deploying its grappling claw a ''Starfury'' pilot carries out a complex set of subtle manoeuvres, with careful attention being made to the firing of the thrusters to match the rotation of a damaged alien vessel tumbling towards the Babylon 5 space station. Another example of the more scientifically grounded approach which Foundation Imaging introduced to the series was the weaponry of the ''Starfury'' and other Earth vessels. Ejecting ball bearings into the flight paths of enemy vessels or using regular gunfire was considered, and subsequently rejected, on the grounds of it not being visually compelling. It was supervising animator Adam “Mojo” Lebowitz who theorised that plasma fire would have a similar appearance to the laser fire used in various movies and other television shows, but as it would not travel at the speed of light (as would be the case with lasers), it would lend credulity to the idea of the viewer seeing a burst of light move across the screen The inclusion of nose art on many of the vessels was an idea put forward by series producer John Copeland who had a keen interest in WWII and other military subjects. It also had the advantage of identifying which character was in which fighter. The early designs were created by Ron Thornton and Mark Kotchinski. Over the course of Babylon 5, the subsequent movies, the Crusade series and more recently with the 2007 version created by Jose Perez (a freelance designer working for Atmosphere Visual Effects) that appears in The Lost Tales, the level of detail in the design has increased as computer technology has developed. Some minor variants were also created to meet the requirements of episode scripts, such as those used to escort the presidential vessel known as EarthForce One, as well as more substantial departures from the original design. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Starfury」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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