Starship Excelsior Background Character Design Submission Guidelines

By Peter Stine, Lead Animator

We Want Your Character Designs

As you may know, Starship Excelsior is working on making our episodes available on YouTube. This involves creating a visual element for each of the episodes. While we have created plenty of visual material for the major characters, there are a great many one-off characters and many “lower-deckers” that do not have much of a description other than basically Crewman #6.

Since the visual element now allows these characters to be seen for the first time, we’re presented with an opportunity. We've always loved Star Trek's tradition of accepting scripts from the general public (a tradition we’ve continued!). Now we would like to extend that to some of our character creation! Send us your background character for Starship Excelsior, and you could see your character design (and a design credit!) in a Starship Excelsior episode! What have you got to lose?

What We're Looking For

We are looking for character designs for many background characters for past seasons of Starship Excelsior. Since Animator Peter Stine uses the character creator from Star Trek Online to create these characters, we would ask that you use this method (if possible) so that the art style is consistent when the various characters are on screen together.

Visually, characters can be any species that is reasonably in the Federation at the time our story takes place (the 2380s) with all the variation therein. Want to create a Caitian? Go for it! An Efrosian? Sweet! An alien of your own creation? Yes! Want to take your crew from STO and put them into Excelsior as extras? Full speed ahead! Your imagination is the limit (though taking the character’s name [if they have one] into consideration is generally a good idea).

We ask that Starfleet characters wear the 2370s (TNG motion picture/late DS9) era uniform for these Season 1-2 episodes. One caveat here: the Marines are wearing a combat uniform. In STO, what our animator chose to go with was an all black Enterprise era jumpsuit with green undershirt and piping though still including the 2370s combadge. (If you don’t own this outfit, I’m fairly certain you can still save it and find it later).

NB: Please don’t put rank on your character (unless the character has a specific officer rank listed), as our animator is using ranks for the enlisted that do not exist in STO. For Marines this is everyone, including the officers.

The list of characters along with the episodes where they appear will be listed below.

What We're NOT Looking For

We’re not looking for versions of the main cast. We already have some talented folks working on them and have some preliminary versions of most of them (even the ones that you haven’t seen yet!). We do take fan art into consideration since if there is a sort of consensus of what a character looks like, then we (usually) try to make our version similar. Feel free to submit those ideas as fan art though!

Please stick with the list that is below for named characters; it will be updated as character designs are selected (though if a character hasn’t appeared yet or is very far down the line, you can still send us an idea). If you want to make a few random characters just for us to use at will, feel free.

Starship Excelsior is a family program, so keep that in mind when you create your own designs.

Submission Process

Sending us the costume file from your STO  folder will give us the most versatility in using your character. Please send that. In STO, those files can be found (if you’re using Steam) at: Program Files (x86)\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Star Trek Online\Star Trek Online\Live\screenshots

If not working in STO, you can send us PNGs of the character (with any background). Peter uses two front angles [facing each way so the character can “turn”], both sides in profile, and a back angle).

You can submit them to this link here. Please name your file with costume_yourname_charactername if using the costume file from STO or yourname_charactername_angle (if used) if using screenshots.

We look forward to seeing your creations! We'll try and keep this list updated as each character is completed.

List of Characters

Turns of Events (1x2)
Marine (F)
Nurse Rojan (F)
A few other background Marines / crew members would be fine.

Wildfire (1x3)
Four of Seven (M) ?
Valandrian Brigadier (M)

Down the Rabbit Hole (1x4)
NB: For the Future Starfleet characters, please use the 2399 uniform. (though I will take AGT in a pinch)
Samwazlau Asii (F, Betazoid)
Random Medical Crewmember #2 (present) (F)
Random Medical Crewmember #3 (present) (M)
Ensign Security Crewmember #4 (future) (F)
Random Security Crewmember #5 (future) (M)
Centaur (ship, not species) Crewman (flashback Chin’tok’a) (M)
Hertzler (future) (M)

The First Two Deaths (2x1)
(Surprisingly… nobody.)

The Investigation (2x2)
Starbase Operations (F)
Intelligence Officer (M)

Her Hardest Hue To Hold (2x3)
Doctor Havaris Laren, Union III (F, Bolian)
Mr. Hertzler (Senior) (M)

The Manchurian Officer (2x4)
(Nobody)

Golden Things (2x5)
Nameless Ensign (M)

The Line (2x6)
Cardiassian soldier(s) (M mostly)
Jem’Hadar (at least 4)

No One Gets Out Alive (2x7)
(Already released)

Every Good Captain Has Admiral Issues (3x1)
Random Crewmember #1 (M)
Random Crewmember #2 Mitchells (M)
Random Crewmember #3 Thelin (M)