Hey guys, I wanted to pick your brains on something. This was purely just an idea as I'm always trying to improve these things where I can.
On the screen used prop, the "laser" areas are a mess. The two half moons have a red groove between them going vertically. But horizontally it's just very sloppily painted around the "horseshoe" shaped pieces. Most people (my self included originally) think or assume that they are both grooves, vertically and horizontally. I really think the builder of this prop was trying to convey some kind of cross-hairs or targeting looking thing.
So my thought was to possibly alter my 3D models to slightly idealize this area by making the horizontal stripe an actual groove like the vertical one. It's a very slight change and yes it is technically slightly less accurate to the PROP but I really think it looks much better and is closer in line with what the intended look and design was if this were a real in-universe training remote.
Anyway, Here are a few pictures to explain what I mean
Screen used prop
My current version. I use vinyl instead of hand painting because it just looks so much cleaner. there's a vinyl ring under all of the pieces so that you get the red ring and vertical groove. Then I have two additional smaller red vinyl pieces that go horizontally on top of the half moons. then the horse shoes and wheels are applied on top of that.
And here's a test print of what I'm thinking about. Here I'd make an actual groove going horizontally.
Again this is purely just an idea that I wanted to run past you guys to see if anyone would prefer a cleaner looking idealized version or the one with the "painted" horizontal that is a bit closer to the real prop but looks worse (in my opinion). There are some added benefits to this option other than just the slightly cleaner look. It would also make it much easier to get 100% even and symmetrical alignment on all of these pieces, which is very difficult when you're dealing with these tiny parts on a curved sphere.
Anyway, just thought I'd throw it out there to see what anyone thought.
Do you love it? hate it? Don't care? would you drop out of the list if I did it? etc. Please give me your feedback.