Robert

Hi again friends. On this second segment of LCARS colours, we are going to continue on my set of rules.

2. Understanding the difference between "static" and "animated" LCARS.



Throughout all TNG, DS9 and VOY series for mostly budget reasons, the art department were using mainly 2 kinds of LCARS to dress up the sets: "static" and "animated".
When I say "static", I mean fake. LCARS drawing painted or printed on top of a plexiglass with lights behind them. As viewers we were meant to believe that all these panel "could" possibly change at any time to display any type of information. Obviously they couldn't afford to have TV's or computer monitors of all shapes and sizes placed everywhere. It was a cheap way to make the sets look good, and it worked! With that explained, when I refer to "animated" LCARS, I mean all the other screens which are actually TV or Monitors behind the plexiglass. Theses displays could show many looped animations of scans, analysis, inventory manifest, crew logs and anything else. Now some of you may be asking yourself: What does this have to do with LCARS Colours? Well in one word: Everything!



You see they are two different kind of media. It is almost impossible to reproduce on a TV/ LCD screen or good old fashion CRT monitor, the same colour. Red #FF0000 might visually (to our eyes) look like #C1272D on a plexiglass. And to most of you whom are using LCD monitors I don't think it will be hard to convince you that the colours look a lot sharper on them than they did on our old CRT ones. So even though you do find the actual "official" colours, they might not look anything like they did on the show. Add to that, lighting, shadows, glows, lens flare and all the other things that could modify the visual look of the scheme. The art department was smart enough to not try to match both style of LCARS. Animated would have their colour scheme and static would have their own too. I think this is the most important thing that you should retain from this entire blog. Please do not try to make the colours match. But this is only if you are going for the canon look. If you aren't then please, feel free to try anything you want. To the right I've attached a quick drawing to show you exactly what is what. Everything in color is what I call "Static" LCARS. In the middle you see a black and white screen. That would the monitor containing the "Animated" LCARS. Understanding this will help you to see all the different colour scheme that were used during the series. For example, the Enterprise-D used a more yellow coloured theme for their LCARS, the Prometheus had a purple palette and obviously the Nemesis-era Enterprise-E was mostly all blue. Now with the exception of Nemesis, they only changed the colour scheme for the "static" LCARS. From the later seasons of TNG all the way to the end of Voyager, all the "animated" LCARS kept the same colours. Another important thing to mention is that only the "animated" LCARS changes during red-alert. Obviously for budget reasons again.

Finally there are many, many exceptions to this. And I'll be more than happy to hear your comments on this at the forum. This article is only for your own information and to help you find the right scheme for your own LCARS art. If you aren't sure just go back to rule number 1: Make sure it looks good. In part III we will finally start to define our own colour scheme both for "static" and "animated" LCARS. I can't wait!

Thank you again for reading, and hope to see all your comments on the forum.