This is an artist’s rendition of the new Kennedy Space Center building that houses Atlantis. I drove by today and it’s quite a difference from when the last time I was here. With the shuttle now safely ensconced inside, the finishing touches are going on and, if the banners are to be believed, [...]
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Does this make the 8-inch floppy disk the missing link? [Image Credit: Gus Morais] 
Take some time this afternoon, and enjoy some whimsical creations from Mr. Bruce McCall. Some of these are out of Major Howdy Bixby’s Album of Forgotten Warbirds, others are from The Other Air Forces. All are perfectly legitimate and useful aircraft, if only they had actually been built.
In 1982, the film Blade Runner burst onto the science fiction scene. Released soon after the film was a book of concept art from the planning and production of the film–The Blade Runner Sketchbook. This book features artwork from Syd Mead, Mentor Huebner, Charles Knode, Michael Kaplan, and Ridley Scott. Long out of print, thanks to the wonders of the internet it is available for online reading, so hit the jump and check it out! 
Happy first weekend of the new year! Let’s take a look at some posters from The Last Starfighter, a truly under-rated film! These are courtesy of a website called GeekyNerfHerder; some are original release posters, a few are fan created art, and the last few are from comics. Enjoy!  Nāser al-Dīn Schah, Shah from Persia. The image of a Persian shah you see above is not a photograph. At least, not in the classical light and chemical sense. Instead, it was created by a method called Woodburytype. Invented by Walter Woodbury in 1864, it uses a chromated gelatin that hardens in relation to how much light is applied to it. So, a photographic negative is placed over a potato chip thin wafer of this gelatin and the soft gelatin is washed away. The gelatin is then put in a press against a lead sheet. A relief is pressed into the soft lead. Then, a pigmented gelatin is placed in the lead relief and a piece of paper is placed on top of it. Again, a press — this time a printing press — is used to force that image, along with all its details, onto the paper. In this way, a photographic quality image could be reproduced over and over fairly inexpensively. It revolutionized the mass production of photos for books and other reproductions between the mid-1800s through about 1900. Hit the jump for a video about the Woodburytype.   Star Wars - A New Hope (Hungaria) Star Wars definitely came as a certified phenomenon™ here in North America. Because of this, much of the promotional art work associated with the film has become quite well known and iconic. But in some distant lands, other countries did not just get posters with foreign text, they actually got original art of their own. Let’s take a look at the movie posters from Hungary and Poland, and see how you think the graphics measure up. (The source site where I found these calls it ‘Hungaria’, which research indicates is likely the country of Hungary, although there is the chance it refers to the even farther off land of the Hungaria family.)
Here we sit nearly a full 1/3 of the way through 2012, and the Easter time of renewal and spring seems a good point to reflect on the year so far. Have you accomplished any of the things you wanted before the coming apocalypse? Want a better way to remind yourself to live each day to the fulles? Try this handy Apocalypse 2012 Tomorrow! calendar. It supplies 12 different possible scenarios, pleasing presented in classical sci-fi pulp pin-up format. Click through the jump to see a few sample months!
While I must admit to being somewhat surprised none of our friendly writers from the frozen tundra of the North have mentioned this yet, last week I came across a museum exhibit coming to a Canada near you! This exhibit will allow you to explore the ‘sciences of identity’ through in depth examination of characters from Star Wars–which means looking at cool pictures that are made from other cool pictures! It’s not often one gets asked to design an entire universe. When a technical illustrator who worked with Boeing and did some movie posters was asked by George Lucas to work on envisioning and conceptualizing the Star Wars universe Ralph McQuarrie solidified his place on the map. From Darth Vader’s menacing black suit [...] |
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