I’m so excited for this movie! And the tie-in toys, while not as articulated as the individual characters’ lines, still look pretty awesome…
I have enjoyed the Universal Monsters ever since I was little. And as I grew up, I began to appreciate them on an artistic and historical level as well. While not the first horror films, they were certainly influential on artists for generations since. When I found out that Diamond Select was going to make a series of of these creatures, I was excited. I’ve taken these classic monsters into my studio, and wanted to share the results.
Happy Halloween everyone!
I don’t know what it is, but I genuinely like the old Universal monster films. I can still sit dwon and watch them today. The Diamond Select Toys are the best versions I’ve seen of all of these characters. It’s a shame they’re only releasing three a year, as I’m having a blast shooting them. I still need to take shots of Drac and Frankie, but here comes the Bride…
The young man in this photo stole this Legolas standee from the Dragon*Con Tolkien Track room sometime between 9pm & 10pm on Saturday night. There was a panel going on when he took it. If you know him, please ask him to contact:
jwwert@gmail.com
This is the rightful owner of the standee, who generously donated it to the Tolkien track room for decoration. No hard feelings will be had, just having it back is all they care about. It is written in pen on the back of the standee “Wert”.
It seems every year there are people who mess with the con by stealing or doing other stupid stuff.
Please spread the word about this person having stolen from a generous donator to the con. I don’t know if the owner will get his property back, but justice being done would be a nice consolation.
In my quest to upgrade what I collect, I’ve gotten my first official prop replica from my favorite movie, Jurassic Park. Jurassic Park is the film that ultimately got me interested in the arts, and was the first film that I actively sought out to see multiple times in the theater. I present to you, the Cryo-Can:
It’s really a very nice piece, and the rack that the embryo vials sit in actually pops up via a spring loaded mechanism. And the Barbasol cover does slip over the internal piece, just like the movie.
When I received this one, it had multiple colors for the fluid, and the labels were starting to come off. So I made my own new liquid, as well as new labels that better fit the vials, to get better screen accuracy. Getting this as my first prop replica was definitely a high point, and I’m looking forward to adding some more to it.
2012 can’t come fast enough. I have been stoked about next year’s Avengers movie since they first announced it back in 2008. I generally enjoy superhero films, and love the concept of a singular story being told over multiple films leading up to a group film.
And so it’s led to this. I’ve been picking up the heroes and their respective villains for the canon Marvel Movie Universe, and with the release of Cap, I can now start doing Avengers shots, the first of which is above. As soon as I pick up Loki, their nemeses will start popping up as well. It’s going to be a long time until next summer…
So, it got a bit warmer today, which allowed me to shoot my first outside dino. The concept for this shot has been sitting in my brain for the last few days, and I wanted to tackle it before doing another, more complex shot that I’m currently scouting a back plate location for. I liked the idea of a carnivore standing over a canyon, slowly surveying the land for his next meal, and the Allosaurus lent himself well. This shot came out of that concept.
It’s a composite of five different photos, and blends both miniature and full size photos (the majority of the shots are miniature, actually). And unlike the T-Rex photo, this shot offered a tougher challenge, is it’s very brightly lit. There’s no hiding bad lines, or fading anything to black. I’m still not entirely convinced that it’s where I want it to be, but I think it’s far enough along to be considered upload ready. Total work time on this was about 4 hours from the first shutter snap to the upload to Flickr.
Growing up, the Batman movies always excited me. I never really read Batman comics, but I watched the campy Adam West series when I was little. When Tim Burton released Batman in the summer of 89, I actually didn’t see it in theaters. I was seven, and was full on into my Godzilla and dinosaur obsession (see last post). But I did end up seeing it on video. It was fun, and I’d watch it now and then, but I wasn’t crazy about it. But then came Batman Returns…
As far back as I an remember, I’ve loved dinosaurs. I knew their names, the eras they lived in, and just a huge vault of random facts. I’m fairly convinced my enjoyment of Godzilla stems from this love of dinosaurs. So when I discovered that French company Papo had a series of highly detailed dinosaur toys, I got really excited. I bought some, and plan to do a whole series of shots with them over the summer. They are incredibly well detailed, and are all hand painted.
But, since it’s still winter out here and not very Mesozoic, I decided to do the first one with a created background, the results of which are above. I used 8 photos I found on-line for the background and background elements, and then took a shot of the T-Rex in my studio. After some Photoshop magic and about 6 hours, I finished up the piece. Overall, I’m happy with it, but it’s not without its problems. Definitely a fun way to start the series, though. I can’t wait until things get warmer to do more of these.
I’d never planned on buying toys of the new Marvel stuff. My current action figures were pretty much limited to horror stuff and The Dark Knight, and I was starting to sell off stuff. I certainly didn’t want to add more. But when the Iron Man 2 toys came out, they were fantastic, and I felt the itch. They almost had me, but I didn’t want to start buying these unless I could get stuff from the other Marvel movies. I thought it would be cool to build a collection of heroes and villains from the Marvel Movie Universe. And since the first Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk had come out two years prior, and were in two different scales, I figured it wasn’t going to happen, and was able to resist. Or so I thought…
I went into a Toys’R’Us back in May, and discovered that they had released 3 3/4” figs of all the original Iron Man armors in the new series. And they looked awesome. On top of that, sitting next to these, was an Iron Monger from the 6” line for the first movie, that was now in scale with these new figures. Very tempting, as it had partially negated my reasoning for not buying these. But, still I was hesitant, as I figured I’d never find The Incredible Hulk stuff I’d need to do this right, so I continued to hold out. Then, in what must have been some sort of serendipity, Toy’R’Us decided to put on the shelves some left over toys from The Incredible Hulk, including Abomination, The Hulk, and Emil Blonsky. These were in the same 3 3/4” scale, with Hulk and Abomination being a bit taller. And to top it off, they were on clearance.
Now, I consider myself to have pretty good willpower, and have put back many toys that I’d considered buying. But it was like fate had literally stepped in, personally destroyed my reasons not to buy these, and slapped me in the face. So I finally succumbed, and started building my Marvel Movie Universe collection. And with more Iron Man stuff coming out later this year, and both Thor and Captain America coming out next year offering toys in this scale, it looks like I’ve got a lot more coming my way.
Of course, because I also enjoy toy photography, I’ve decided to start shooting these, and making a new series of it. I’ll post these semi-regularly, and I’m going to start with the villain from the first Iron Man: Iron Monger. Enjoy!
