The giant Proteus is a futuristic model of a technically advanced space colony ship with hyperdrive capability. In Lost in Space, the crew of the Jupiter II finds this large spaceship as a derelict which has encountered hostile alien life and a space–time anomaly, which sent it backward to the movie's present.

Norman Garwood, the production designer of Lost in Space, did a couple of rough marker sketches that I used as a jumping–off point. Then I "sketched" a low–detail 3D model using Form Z, turning a bell–shaped piece into a huge ellipsoid hydroponic "greenhouse," lengthening the needle–shaped command and living quarters, and adding the vertical hyper–drive field generator ring just fore of the reactor drive module. I rendered the piece with minimal textures in Electric Image and used line–drawings generated from those files to create plans for building the large miniature at Shepperton Studios in London.