A new page has been published in the story The Purloined Patents of Doctor Brackett, at Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual.You can read it here.
Monthly Archives: June 2016
A new page has been published in the story The Purloined Patents of Doctor Brackett, at Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual.You can read it here.
Rory Björkman’s The Journey is a beautifully lit, modeled and textured image of a crusty old fellow on his crusty old three-wheeler. You can see the full image and loads of details, color tests, and other preliminary versions here.
It’s all worth looking at, from the many versions of the trike’s grille through the test renders of the helmet, the baggage, and many other elements from the picture. It’s really wonderful work, all of it.
In fact, you shouldn’t stop there: you can see a much larger gallery of Björkman’s work on this page, where I especially recommend Sky Machine No. 47. Nice!
A new page has been published in the story The Purloined Patents of Doctor Brackett, at Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual.You can read it here.
I came for the chairs; I stayed for the scooters.
Almost everything is scooters at Barcelona’s Bel & Bel Studio where old body parts from Vespas, Volkswagens, and other vehicles are repurposed into furniture and other works. They even do full restorations on vintage Vespas… when they’re not looting them for their shiny bits.
It was the fanciful office chairs that drew me in. Mind you, I’m awfully fond of the tired old chair I use here in the Secret Laboratory. But I flirted briefly with these streamlined beauties before I assured my chair that no, no, I would be faithful.
You can see why I was tempted.
But then I scrolled down to the self-balancing scooters, which by any other trademark would be called Segways… and suddenly I had a vision of myself zipping down the street in the dorkiest way possible, goggled and scarved, and I figured I was home.
You get the idea. If you’re going to look ridiculous, do it with streamlined style. In a perfect world, which at the moment would be a world where I didn’t need any exercise, you’d find me rolling off on one of these to the library, or to the grocery store, or down to the harbor, pretty much any day at all. With a big stupid grin on my face and that mounting sense of guilt and dread I get when I’m not working.
Anyway, do yourself a favor by dropping by the Bel & Bel web site where you can dream a little, if only for a few minutes. They’ve got loads of interesting furniture conversions and gadgets, as well as making-of videos. There’s plenty to keep you occupied.
A new page has been published in the story The Purloined Patents of Doctor Brackett, at Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual.You can read it here.
After a long hiatus, the serial stories at Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual begin again this Wednesday.
Welcome to the Retropolis Registry of Patents: a bureau of hard-working Officers and Investigators who file patent registrations for countless mad scientists – at no small risk to themselves – and who discreetly keep track of which deranged inventor is about to create an innovation so hazardous that it needs to be stopped.
Their work may be as insane as their clients are. But like any other person, whether human or mechanical, what’s really important to them is office politics.
This is a series of short stories – illustrated in glorious black and white! – which will run from six to ten weeks each.
We begin on Wednesday with The Purloined Patents of Doctor Brackett, in which we meet several people we’ll come to know in the series while we get our first look at the inner workings of this important, undervalued department of Retropolis’ City Government.
The serials will update just once a week; but because each update is around 1000 words you’ll get bigger weekly chunks of story than you saw in The Lair of the Clockwork Book, which updated twice each week.
Here’s the complete schedule for the year:
- The Purloined Patents of Doctor Brackett (June 15)
- Doctor Petaja’s Parlor of Peril (July 27)
- Fenwick’s Improved Venomous Worms (Sept. 7)
- Professor Wilcox and the Floating Laboratory (October 19)
- Ben Bowman in the Vault of Terror (November 30)
And after that? This schedule carries us into February 2017, so forgive me if I haven’t figured that part out yet.
I will be a little bit mean to you: the Registry of Patents stories are meant to conclude with a final story that will appear only in print, probably late next year. Still, after Vault of Terror there may be another story lined up. It just won’t be a Registry of Patents story.
I’ll probably have figured that out before the end of the year. In the meantime, enjoy what’s coming this Wednesday… and every other Wednesday for the rest of the year.
