Talk about weird.
First, a little backstory…
I’ve been a fan of the show Babylon 5 since the pilot aired in 1993. The series — which had a planned 5 year story arc — aired from 1994 through 1998, and several made-for-TV movies followed. In 1997, the software company Sierra Online (now Vivendi Universal) began development of a computer game based on the show called “Babylon 5: Into the Fire”. The game was to feature a story written by the show’s creator and video filmed on the B5 sets with the original actors. Around 1998, some fans of show created a website called FirstOnes.com, which followed the development of the game. Unfortunatlely, in late 1998, the game was cancelled. In 1999, some of the game’s developers attempted to form their own company in an attempt to finish the game. Multiple attempts to save the game failed, but FirstOnes.com remained, becoming more of a general Babylon 5 site. I’ve been a memeber of the site since it was created, and I’m also a moderator on the site’s forums.
A few years ago, Warner Brothers pitched a new B5 spin-off series called “The Legend of the Rangers” to the Sci-Fi channel. A pilot movie aired, but the series did not happen. During the production of the pilot movie, a visual effects artist who was a member of the FirstOnes.com forums posted a message there asking for people to submit ideas for artwork to be used on the computer generated fighters — called Starfuries — in the show. These one-man space ships (see picture) 
were adorned with artwork across the top “wing”. Most of the time, the artwork was similar to squadron insignia found on modern Navy and Airforce fighters, while some resembled the pin-up artwork seen on WWII bombers. The artwork indicated that the fighter belonged to a particular squadron or fighting unit.
The FX artist asked people to submit “wing art” that could be used in the “Rangers” pilot movie, or in the series itself if it got picked up.
At FirstOnes.com, as with any community, many inside jokes and obscure references were thrown around on the forums every day. I came up with a design that incorporated many of these in-jokes, and I used this design as my “avatar” in the forums. Eventually, I started using this image in other forums as well. The image I designed was a green aardvark (the animal and color are related to the show and the forum in-jokes). To fit the theme of a fighter squadron, I added a jet-pack and boxing gloves to the image, arriving at this picture:
I’ve also had the image printed on a t-shirt (which is why the website’s logo is at the bottom of the image).
I submitted this image to the FX artist, but as far as I know, it was never used in the Legend of the Rangers pilot.
This year, Warner Brothers announced that it was releasing a new Babylon 5 movie, called The Lost Tales, directly to DVD. The (low-quality) trailer for the DVD was released last week:
At about the 31 second mark, there’s a CGI shot where a Starfury does a sort of “back flip” right in front of the camera. It’s hard to see because it’s such low quality, but on the top wing of the Starfury is my aardvark design. Here’s a freeze-frame of the shot:
Unfortunately, the trailer is such low quality, it’s hard to make out the image, but it’s definitely the image I made. IF this scene is in the final cut of the film, it will be much clearer.
I have no idea how the FX studio got the image, since it’s not the same studio that worked on Legend of the Rangers. My guess is that images used in Rangers — since they probably became the property of Warner Brothers — got shuffled into a general library of Babylon 5 assets, and this library was given to the studio working on The Lost Tales.
It’s not a big deal, really, but I was surprised to see it. I’m hoping that after the DVD is released, I can contact someone from Atmosphere (the FX studio) and ask for a high-resolution image from that particular shot. It would make a great poster. 