Vintage Buck Rogers News: the Action Figure, a new Atomic Pistol, and Newspaper Comic Strip Collections

Filed under Found on the Web

Go Hero has posted pictures of the final versions of its classic Buck Rogers action figure, along with a replica of the little ray gun that could – Buck’s Atomic Pistol, probably the first huge merchandising success for American popular culture. For full information, follow this link and click on “Shop”.

The little guy’s got loads of articulated and removable bits, including a bubble helmet and his own miniature pistol, and there are even glowing LEDs in the jet pack. (Buck originally used a “jumping belt” instead, which was made of the lighter than air metal called inertron; but jet packs did come along in the newspaper strips a few years later.)

It’s nice stuff, though I’ll warn you that it’s not priced for the faint of heart.

In other vintage Buck Rogers news, it looks like Hermes Press is starting a complete collected version of the daily and Sunday newspaper comic strips. Dailies and Sundays will be collected separately.

The first volume‘s scheduled for September, 2008. It’ll feature two years of the daily strips and an introduction by Ron Goulart, in hard cover. More daily strip collections are to appear every five months with collected Sunday comics pages appearing once a year.

Whimsical Retro Robot by Brazilian Artist Fabio M Ragonha

Filed under Computer Graphics, Found on the Web

Here’s a playful retrofuturistic robot from the portfolio of Brazilian artist Fabio M Ragonha. It’s a 3DS Max/Photoshop creation. Whatever job this little guy’s meant for, he looks like he’s ready to put his nose – if he had one – to the grindstone. Or his shoulder to the wheel. Or something like that. I have trouble keeping my proverbs in order.

Ragonha’s portfolio site is on the petite side, but it’s full of some wonderful images. Go see!

Version 2 of World Machine Now Available for Procedural Landscape Creation

Filed under Computer Graphics

It was almost exactly a year ago that I discovered Stephen Schmitt’s World Machine, a procedural generator for 3D terrain. It’s a wonderful product. He’d already been at work for quite some time on the 2.0 version of this powerful piece of software and today I find that he’s just released it at last.

My own upgrade copy isn’t here yet – here are some gallery images from the World Machine site. Some of the new features I’ve been following on his blog include realistic beachfront erosion and a method for generating occlusion maps for the terrain – that, and some other new things he’s been working on, should be a big help in masking out different types of materials to appear selectively on the landscape. In fact the new version will even render out a color map, based on the terrain shape, though I’m thinking that better methods for creating masks is more in my line.

Anyway, as I say I haven’t been able to play with the new version yet, but based on the old one I think it’s going to be a terrific tool. Go look!

“Lighthouse” Animation from ProMotion Studios

Filed under Computer Graphics, Found on the Web

As part of Liberty Mutual’s “Responsibility Project” for short films, ProMotion Studios produced this beautiful short animation called “Lighthouse”. Very nice work – a good story, technically excellent, and with several very nicely observed character actions.

You can see it in low resolution here (Flash player), in high resolution here (Quicktime), and you may also want to visit the Responsibility Project site or ProMotion.

In Progress – an airship of the retro future

Filed under Computer Graphics, Works in Progress

Here’s a test rendering of the 3D model I’ve been working on – it’s the Airship Vindoclavian, a lighter than air dirigible that incorporates some steering propellers from an old Modern Mechanix & Inventions cover and an exoskeletal frame that’s unlike any that were ever used in zeppelins (German zeppelins used internal, four-spoked frames, while the US Navy’s dirigibles used a similar, but three-spoked frame that the German engineers disapproved of*).

That frame and another aspect of the design are really intended just to make the nature of the ship more apparent… so I have to figure out what crazy notions led to those changes. Because I’m not a rocket scientist, of course – just a rocket artist.

*given the relative failure rates of the US and German dirigibles, the Germans seem to have had a point there.

Thrilling Tales: The Toaster With TWO BRAINS

Filed under Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual, Works in Progress

Here’s a retro science fiction pulp magazine cover for a magazine that doesn’t exist, but probably ought to: THRILLING TALES OF THE DOWNRIGHT UNUSUAL.

In this imaginary issue we have that nail-biting page turner “The Toaster with TWO BRAINS”, in which our heroes delve deep into the hostile lair of Doctor Rognvald, beneath the volcanoes of Iceland – only to discover that this evil genius has created the ultimate malevolent kitchen appliance: the Toaster with TWO BRAINS! Is it unstoppable? Immovable? Relentless? Horrifying? Unkillable? You bet it is.

Because a toaster with one brain isn’t terrifying. But two? Talk about the heebie-jeebies!

If I were able to explain this…. I wouldn’t. You can wonder all you like about infant toaster traumas. I’m not talking. Except to observe, as is my habit, that I cooked this thing up to serve fresh to you, dear reader, as an archival print, a poster, stylish t-shirt, greeting card, and coffee mug – just the thing for that apocalyptic breakfast that the toaster has in mind for us all.

Behold the Omniscient Overlord of the Future

Filed under Found on the Web, Works in Progress

Flickr user jbj has posted this inspiring photo of a young mad scientist who – in a praiseworthy show of social conscience – is warning anyone within reading distance that he’s about to throw that Really Big Switch on his Trans-Dimensional Vaporizing Fireplace Annihilator. Well done!

I’m pleased to see my Back Off – I’m Doing SCIENCE shirt used in this responsible way.

Rocket Man Take-Out: Vroom, Plus Va-Voom

Filed under Found on the Web

One out of a collection of scans from the covers of science fiction magazines, at the Whitechapel forums. It bothers me just a little bit that I might have read a few of these when they were new, since they span at least two decades .

Steampunk, Dieselpunk, Retropolis & Me

Filed under Can't Stop Thinking

My recent banner ads have worked absolute wonders for me – especially the ones for the Retropolis Transit Authority, my retro-futuristic T-Shirt site.

On a good day, or in a good week, I can watch the traffic there snowball into a regular avalanche as those folks who’ve found me through the banners post about it in forums, at their blogs, and so on. Some of those sites are very popular – or a popular blogger may find one of those first generation posts, and it can build from there. Well. Sometimes. It’s not like that’s every day, or every week. But here are some highlights:

io9 Blog | Boing Boing Gadgets | AMCTV’s Sci Fi Scanner | Schlock Mercenary | Pharyngula | Livejournal’s Anachrotech Group | Steampunk Librarian

One thing that’s surprised me about some of my recent linkage, though, is the number of people who’ve described my work as Steampunk. Because although I’m not one to snap on my brass goggles and to holster my Aetheric Odds Equalizer before I go out, I’m pretty well aware that Steampunk is all about the retro future of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, which means it’s not really what I do. Mind you, I like the style well enough, and I have a couple of things in the Idea Closet that would certainly be steamy, but they’re digressions, for me. My Future That Never Was is really all about the 1920s and 1930s and our ideas, back then, of what Tomorrow might bring.

The inestimable Molly Porkshanks has brought another word to my attention – dieselpunk. Now that, with its allusion to early twentieth century technology, sounds nearer the mark; but even there it’s much more evocative of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow than it is of what I’m up to. My rockets and robots aren’t diesel powered and my retro future isn’t, either.

And, frankly, although I was all over the genre of “Cyberpunk” as soon as Neuromancer hit the shelves, the subsequent *punks have sort of made my eyes glaze over. There’s clockpunk, for example, and biopunk, dieselpunk, and even – I guess predictably – postcyberpunk.

There’s not a lot of punk in any of them, of course. The “punk” suffix has lost its meaning. At one game company where I worked, the owners’ pet project was a supposedly cyberpunk game in which they’d forgotten to put the punk in. It wasn’t anything more than a sort of direct-to-video science fiction idea. The word had lost its meaning.

So the names, styles, and labels aren’t really my own cup of tea. I’m always pleased when people like what I do and with a name like mine, you’ll understand that I long ago decided not to bother very much about names and their derivatives. So if people who like steampunk or dieselpunk also like what I do, I’m thrilled; and even if they attach a favorite label – rightly or wrongly – to it, I don’t suppose I mind very much, even if I’m not quite sure why they do it, and even though I suspect that they’re watering down their own terminology when they do it. So what the heck; I’m even using dieselpunk, at least, in tags on my web sites.

Now on the other hand, I’ve recently been reading Patrick O’Brian’s excellent seafaring novels about the Napoleonic period and I have this idea that something along those lines with sky pirates and fleets of airships would just be the bee’s knees. So, somebody, go write them! Odds are they’ll be something like Steampunk, or maybe Sailpunk. And I’ll certainly read them, even though what I’m up to is something else.

Retropolis Fraternal League of Robotic Persons: a handsome, heroic propaganda poster for the whole family

Filed under Works in Progress

Robots of Retropolis, Unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!

The reason that’s not actually the slogan of the Retropolis Fraternal League of Robotic Persons is that – so far as any of us know – no robot has ever been chained to anything there. Except that one time, with Big Lug #11408, but everyone knows that was his own idea. And it could have worked.

But I’ll admit it’s a scary thought. The chains, I mean. No, their actual slogan is “Although We Serve, We Are Not Servants” which would have been a perfectly valid slogan in any office I’ve ever worked in, even though we were wise not to chant it.

Retropolis has in fact always treated its robots pretty much like members of the family – not the family you could be thinking of at the moment, but rather one of those small town MGM style families that only Ronald Reagan ever believed were real. Because, you know, Retropolis is a pretty nice place, overall.

What happened, though, was that a big crowd of robots went together to a revival screening of “Metropolis”. The movie left them feeling a little shaky. Between Robot Maria and the oppressed mobs of workers, the robots just had this sort of nagging idea that things could take a turn for the worse. So… they organized. Just in case. Food for thought.

This, like my other recent posts here, started as an idea for a T-Shirt design at my Retropolis Transit Authority site. I’ve done it up at a larger size to make it suitable for everyday home use as a poster, an archival print, and even on greeting cards, so you can send ’em to the entire Local.

Retropolis Transit, by the way, has been basking in the adoration (or at least the attention) of record crowds this past week. That’s partly due to my canny juggling of banner ads, but it’s mainly the result of the purest, blindest dumb luck in the world. Huzzah!