The Design:

The Cardassians had three or four different types of freighters, but as I remember, they were all reused models except one. That freighter was the Groumall, which is a really good design, but I wanted to come up with something which shared more of the Cardassian design themes. The manta ray or cobra head shape was used in their cruisers and shuttles.

I wanted to see how that shape would work on a spacecraft that wouldn't be battle orientated. Below are my initial sketches. You can probably see what I was trying to do, unfortunately my CG skills aren't good enough yet to pull off accurate shapes and proportions. My unfinished model seems to be mostly made up of the front section, and not possessing a huge cargo hold. Not exactly what you want in cargo ship, but hey. I think the model will look prety good when I add some decent textures.

The Model:

I started off with a spherical shape to make the rounded front section of the ship and then extruded the sites out to create the flat sections at the edges, similar to those on the Galor Class. I also added the indents for the warp engines and the protruding front area.

Then made the long sections either side of the cargo modules, which also house the impulse engines.

I flattened the edges more and added the bridge and cargo connecting points before mirroring the model. Building only half a model and then mirroring it is a great way to save time with symetrical objects like this.

All it needed now was the cargo modules and some colour.

Now it's more or less finished as far as the shape is concerned, but it does need a lot more detail and some proper textures added to it. Here are a couple more renders to show it in its current state.

Oh, I'm a pyromaniac at heart...

This page will be updated as the model is.