Hello All,

I happened to find this on ebay.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Voyage-Bottom-of-Sea-Flying-Sub-Production-Painting-II_W0QQitemZ360015777140QQihZ023QQcategoryZ60360QQ tcZphotoQQcmdZViewItemQQ_trksidZp1742.m153.l1262

Voyage Bottom of Sea Flying-Sub Production Painting II

Claims to be used for production of the original studio miniatures. If this is true and accurate, looks like the blue striping may have been added to try and give the miniatures some definition on screen.


I don't know if anyone else ever thought about this, or posted, but I've wondered about the coloration of these miniatures. Not the exact tones, I've read extensively about this in other posts and elsewhere.

But the fact the Seaview was roughly a gray color while the Flying Sub was bright yellow. No match there.

I am guessing Seaview's color scheme probably was based on US Navy ships during the era the film was made.

For the FS colors, I've wondered if the mini-sub Cousteau used might have been an influence since the Cousteau productions I think were going on around the same time and people probably had seen these...From a practical standpoint, the FS is really just Cousteau's mini-sub a little larger, a little fancier and with jet engines for flight...

But then again, it may be fruitless to spend lots of time debating or trying to figure out the logic behind miniatures designed 40 years ago for a tv show...Or maybe I've got too much time on my hands...

Yes. :)

Navy ships are pretty much the same color now as they were in the 60s - battleship gray. Big submarines were and are black or very dark gray. Seaview was an oddity being a gray sub, but she needed to be easy to see on camera under water.

Yellow has always been a good color for small subs so they can be seen by divers and other small subs.

Probably not much more to it than that.