Here’s the video of a TED talk by Bruce McCall, an illustrator from (notably) The New Yorker and The National Lampoon, in which he talks about his retro-futuristic work and humor. Near the beginning he describes how he arrived at his gouache style in terms that make that style sound like a limitation – while he also makes it pretty clear that the style is a kind of visual grammar that he uses, as you’ll see, to great effect. That stands out for me because the signature style is a double-edged sword that I know pretty well.

Throughout the talk we see examples of McCall’s work from his "Serious Nonsense" retrospective. He’s arrived at or invented a number of labels and phrases for his work that are sometimes pointed, and usually amusing, from the familiar retrofuturism to the unfamiliar and altogether charming faux nostalgia.

These illustrations are grounded in the real imagination of the 1930’s through the 1950’s (autogyros jousting over Malibu, or the auditions for King Kong); many of them get their bite from McCall’s experience as an illustrator and copywriter for the automobile industry. As he mentions in the talk a lot of this work has been folded into his children’s book, Marveltown.

And near the end, there’s another treat – an animated version of his three-page New Yorker cover based on The Ascent of Man – seen as an escalator.

Via Synergy Creative.

Chilean illustrator Carlos Valenzuela serves up this retro space extravaganza, complete with tentacles! Rayguns! And painful back-wrenching poses! In the traditional mode.

It’s a faux movie poster for, well, a faux movie, featuring Valenzuela’s model Vanessa Lake (who is occasionally, or maybe habitually, NSFW).

Via Dark Roasted Blend.

Here’s some more very vintage Roy G. Krenkel art, this time from E. E. "Doc" Smith’s Subspace Explorers. It’s part of an early 1950’s collection at Golden Age Comic Book Stories.

Krenkel’s later work is an indelible part of my memories of growing up – his covers, frontispieces and illustrations for the old Ace paperbacks, his work in Amra, and his collaborations with other artists like his friends Frank Frazetta and Al Williamson crop up everywhere in my memories. He had an enviable knowledge of real history, its artifacts and our archaeology that informed all his fantastic works and, I think, lent Frazetta a firm grounding for his own fantasy paintings and illustrations.

This illustration came early enough in Krenkel’s career that his signature inking, with its delicacy and spontaneity, hadn’t gelled yet. That’s one of the reasons that I like it. The catwalks, ray guns and mysterious machines don’t hurt either, of course.

I just realized that I haven’t heard lately from (or about) sculptor Greg Brotherton. If you’ve been here awhile, you might remember one or two posts I’ve written about his work in days gone by.

So I hied myself over to his gallery web site and found some new, typically neat and sinister pieces. I especially like the one I show here, Listening In. Brotherton lists its materials as "Welded steel, cast pewter, payphone dial, parts from a beer tap, concrete", which I think may sum up a large part of my own life, as well as reminding me quite a bit of my telephone.

There’s a similar piece called The Calculator that’s also really striking. The new pieces are often smaller, and somehow more intimate, than the large pieces I’ve featured here before. As always, incredibly neat work can be found in his gallery.

So here’s how I figure this happened. Terriers were working dogs, once upon a time: the well-equipped rat catcher would go out with his dogs and ferrets, which brings the Steeleye Span recording to mind, and between them those little (but fierce) hunters would flush out and dispose of all the rats they could find.

But what were they to do once they’d all gotten rocket ships? Apparently, they decided to play tag until the space rats showed up.

This is a pair of prints by Brian Rubenacker, at Etsy; and if rocket-riding terriers are just the tip of your iceberg, you’ll be happy to know that the same is true over there. Related: another Boston Terrier in an aviator’s helmet.

Doctor Professor’s Thesis of Evil is a motion graphics film project that’s the brainchild of a group of mad Finns in a far-northern town that (they tell us) you’d never even find on a map.

It’s the story of a super villain who’s found that super villainy, these days, is more a matter of public relations and media exposure than of the kind of full bore, absolute evil that he was after when he started his career. Evil’s become just another media event: you can imagine his disappointment in this world that bristles with death rays, giant mutant koala bears, and superheroes.

The filmmakers started with a low budget and they’ve made some interesting choices when it comes to figuring out how to get the best quality with their limited resources. It’s (predictably) a combination of live actor photography with CGI… but in order to get the highest quality assets for their production they’ve taken an unusual route that combines very good still photography, computer animation, and the kind of motion graphics techniques you’d more often find in title sequences for television and film.

The result is more striking than you might expect. Since their actor photography is all based on stills they’ve been able to deliver very nice lighting, and they’ve spared no effort when it comes to the costumes and makeup. That still photography is combined with the rendered CGI with pans, zooms and other camera effects that deliver an interesting sense of motion even though the actual motion of the characters is pretty limited. You can get a taste of this with their teaser, and see a bit more about the production at their IndieGoGo fundraising page.

That fundraiser has – as I write this – just 16 hours to go, and they’re currently a ways off from the $8000 goal they’ve set to complete the sound design and post-production for the film. So, you know, they could use a hand over there.

Sommer Leigh has written a pretty thorough description of the retro futurist genres that (mostly) end in the suffix "punk".

I’ve said before that I’m not all that crazy about labels of this kind, and it’s partly because apart from the first of these – cyberpunk – the punk suffix is completely meaningless.

In William Gibson’s Neuromancer and in at least its first descendants, "punk" really did belong in the name. The technological marvels of these futures were not there to benefit people. They were there to cement the power of large corporations and organizations. The fact that a disenfranchised few on society’s fringes were able to subvert those technologies to their own ends is what made them punks, in the punk rock sense. They were standing on its head the mechanism of power and making something personal and subversive out of it.

But then the word became popular, and shortly afterward it became meaningless, as we see in all the labels that have followed.

Leigh touches on this in her description of steampunk, which is nice to see. Heck, it’s always nice to see people thinking about the meanings of the words they use.

Apart from my own crotchety observations, then, Sommer Leigh has come up with short form descriptions of what each of these labels gets stuck on which should be useful to anybody who wants to use them. (Did I say I was done being crotchety? Oh well. And get off my lawn, there, you kids!)

Consider it a field guide to spotting these words when they’re thrown around in the wild. There are some nice examples cited except, oddly, for the one label I rather like. That’s "Raygun Gothic". Why do I forgive that particular label? First off, there’s no meaningless suffix – what a relief! But despite that, if you take a good look at it "Raygun Gothic" doesn’t seem to mean much, either. It’s just such a… pretty phrase, I guess, and sort of evocative, so I find myself smiling at it even though it, too, seems to be playing on my lawn.

planet express by *belldandies on deviantART

rocketeer. by *belldandies on deviantART