USS Franklin production art by Sean Hargreaves

Star Trek Beyond production artist Sean Hargreaves is responsible for many of the most eye-catching designs from the film, and has been sharing some of his work from the production. Continue below for a look at the the USS Franklin, and how it became the ship we now know.

These first few renderings show the more or less final form of the ship as we see her in the film, including what has become quite a familiar image; the first piece of concept art that introduced us to the design months ago.

Here are some nice elevations, giving us a good sense of the ship's form:

But perhaps most interestingly some images from earlier in the design process, when the nacelles used to be under-slung and the ship was known as the USS Pioneer. As you can see, early on the ship has quite a different saucer shape, and apparently it's quite coincidental that the final form ended up looking a bit like the NX class, with the similar shapes happening to line up once the nacelles were flipped.

The Pioneer, before it became the Franklin, in a early script buried in the sand. A different design here somewhat......

There would be panels missing here, but they wanted it to appear airtight and preserved, almost mummy like.

Franklin when it was called the Pioneer, in an early script where it had to lift off vertically. Note at that time the engines and arms were flipped down.......

Here are some bridge concepts (I like the reflection of the saucer hull shape in the bridge floor area).

And here's a later iteration of the bridge, which by this time had input from other designers, Hargreaves stakes a claim to about a third of the final design.

This is the transporer room, as rendered, but not designed by Hargreaves:

And finally the engineering room:

I will be posting more of Sean's work in the coming days, looking at the design of the stunning Starbase Yorktown, and the... ship that appears right at the end of the film (who am I kidding, like anyone reading this needs to avoid spoilers by now!)

To keep track of all the latest information on the film, including other behind the scenes coverage, visit my Star Trek Beyond guide page. And of course, make sure to visit Sean Hargreaves' website; he doesn't have his Star Trek Beyond work up there yet, but you will find interesting production art from many other projects.