Ru ' afo ' s flagship model The script of did not give any description of Ru ' afo ' s flagship , leaving Illustrator John Eaves to his own devices to come up with a design for the ship , a design ethic that suited him just fine . ( ) However , he has described the vessel as being of " the most controversial design I have ever had to deal with on all of the . " Design . John Eaves based the look of Ru ' afo ' s flagship on two main points of visual inspiration . He stated , " " I tried to combine the horseshoe shape with the inside of a piano . You see all the wires , which I thought was kind of cool . " " ( " " , p . 88 ) Though Eaves intended for the motif to be reflected throughout each of the Son ' a vessels , he meant for Ru ' afo ' s flagship to be a particularly strong example of this idea . " " You see a lot of repetitive strings , a lot of repetitive kind of wiring going through the main architecture . And the thing with Ru ' afo ' s ship , you ' ll see that through the interior of the ship . " " ( " The Art of Insurrection " , DVD ) As the first Son ' a ship to make an appearance in the movie , Ru ' afo ' s ship was the first one Eaves addressed . It was made smaller than the and Eaves later remarked that it was " maybe about the same size as the dish of the " Enterprise " . " ( " The Art of Insurrection " , DVD ) The scale of the ship stayed fairly consistent . In February 1998 , Eaves finished up his design work on Ru ' afo ' s ship . " " I drew it to fly with the forks forward , because it looked more aggressive , " " he recalled . ( " " , p . 87 ) However , upon turning it over for appraisal , Eaves soon found out that his designs had been misinterpreted . " " We had a lot of trouble with Ru ' afo ' s ship [ . . . ] When I turned it over to the meeting , they had the impression that it was flying the other way . I guess I made the assumption that I always draw things flying forward and I forgot to indicate that on the drawing . " " ( ) As it turned out , it was Co - Producer Peter Lauritson who had different ideas . " " There was also a funny thing , because Peter Lauritson was our effects supervisor , and when I sent the drawings over , he liked what he saw , he started getting it all approved . And then when we started to do the plan view , he goes , ' Okay , put the engines on this side , make them glow over here , ' and I go , ' Oh , that ' s the front of the ship . ' And so we had this huge kind of a discussion on which way the ship was going to fly at that point . And I had drawn everything with that kind of forward fork motion , kind of carried the architecture through it , and Peter liked the opposite view . And so I remember we went all over that drawing to make it go the right direction , carry the right way , and that was kind of funny . " " ( " The Art of Insurrection " , DVD ) Multiple meetings concerning the design of the Son ' a flagship were held . Eaves remembered , " " They did all their meetings and plans with it flying the other way , so when I got into the detailed identification of the parts , they said , ' What ' s the bridge doing in the back ? ' They understood my point of view , but it was a pretty heavy discussion on which way it was going to fly , and I fought for it pointing the more aggressive way . If you don ' t know you couldn ' t tell , but I still feel that it ' s going backwards ! " " ( ) The discussions to and fro took almost two months , and it was not until April that Eaves presented his final redrawn design sketches with the adjusted flight direction . Years later , Eaves conceded , " " Overall it didn ’ t really make a big difference . That is being that that was over 10 years ago , so my sadness has faded . " " CGI model . Because Santa Barbara Studios was made responsible for creating all the space - bound visuals for " Insurrection " , the construction of Ru ' afo ' s ship fell to that company , which represented the vessel as a CGI effect . The task was not perceived as a simple one , as SBS ' Effects Supervisor John Grower remembered , " " John sent us elevation views and one or two ¾ perspective drawings of each ship , but we had to do a lot of deduction work . The Son ' a Flagship and Battleships had very complex shapes and all of these incredible compound curves , which didn ' t appear in the plan views . They ' re thin in one dimension and very wide and long in the other , kind of like a trilobite . The biggest challenge was that the Son ' a ships didn ' t look the same from one angle to the next , so if we rotated around them a little bit , their profile changed because they had hundreds of compound curves that hooked together to form their shape . Getting it all to flow involved a ton of work and a very long modeling process . " " The model , like the other Son ' a ships , was constructed in software . ( " American Cinematographer " , January 1999 , pp . 41 - 42 )