A fantastic set of illustrations by artist Renata Castellani showing what might have happened to the Skywalker family if Anakin hadn’t gone over to the dark side.
[Via IO9 | Source: Renata Castellani]
The Universe Explained by MinutePhysics [Video]
A new episode of MinutePhysics which explores what the universe is. Enjoy!
Realistic Hawken Papercraft Mech [Pic]
Papercraft artist Leo Firebrand just sent in this really cool papercraft model he made of one of the mechs from the upcoming online game Hawken. You can check out some more detailed pics of his creation in the picture gallery below.
Flyboard: The Coolest Water Jet Pack Ever [Video]
OMG. I want one. These things are priced at $6495.00 each on rockymountainflyboard.com, but they need to be attached to a unit (PWC) that powers them before they start working, and obviously, that isn’t included in the price. You can also rent a flyboard for up to a day on the site.
[Via LS]
The Throne of Nerds [Pic]
Canadian programmer Mike Dewolfe inspired himself from the Iron Throne to create the Throne of Nerds.
Artist Statement:
The Throne of Nerds is made in honor of the Throne of Swords from the Game of Thrones TV series and fantasy series. It is constructed from 20+ computer keyboard mounted to a chair. The keyboards and have been shaped and melted to follow the form of the chair, the shape of the user, and to meld together into a combined whole.
The underlying message is one of suffering. The keyboards have been melted and warped. They’re made to twist to fit, but at the same time that renders them unuseable because they cannot fulfill their intended purpose. The keyboards are black and silver, and the underlying chair is white, but those colours have been replaced with black, in whole or in random splotches.
The keyboard warping includes the scorching of almost all of the ESC keys to symbolize how impossible it can be escape suffering and blackness. The only key that is consciously left undamaged is the ESC key on the highest positioned keyboard.
Around the back, the keyboard cables have been arranged like human hair with an attempt to braid the cables that is ultimately left in a tangle. This denotes how good plans and order can degenerate into chaos.
Chroma Key Pioneer Petro Vlahos Dies
The man who made one of the most popular TV and movie technologies work has died at the age of 96. Petro Vlahos did not invent “bluescreening” but was responsible for making it work smoothly.
The technique, known colloquially as chroma key compositing, is now widely used for special effects, both in a genuine attempt to create the illusion of footage being “real” and for graphics such as in weather forecasting. Although it’s mainly used with blue or green screens, the technique isn’t reliant on a specific color: blue and green are simply the least likely to clash with skin tones.
Chroma key in the movies actually dates back to before the second world war, with the 1940 release The Thief of Baghdad earning praise for its use of the technique. Vlahos refined the technique, using it for Ben Hur and Mary Poppins. He received a special award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science in 1964 for his work on the system.
Vlahos developed chroma key with a technique which he called color-different travelling matte. Rather than simply use a transparent/opaque matte to let the artificial background “show through” in the right places, Vlahos used a technique that broke down each frame into its blue, green and red components.
This removed the problem of an unnatural glow around the “real” objects filmed and merged with the artificial background. It also meant the system worked much better with tricky visual images such as smoke, glass and moving hair.
The BBC explains that Vlahos later developed a further refinement that used a white background lit by sodium lamps, with a resulting yellow glow. A prism split the image by filtering the yellow glow and the camera made two recordings: one which recorded the yellow glow in monochrome, which was used to create the matte, and one which recorded the action in color without the glow. Combining the resulting matte and footage created a much cleaner combination.
This refinement, used in Bedknobs and Broomsticks and The Birds among others, later fell from favor as traditional chromakey recording improved.
The Academy notes that as Vlahos’ various patents ran out, studios developed and modified his techniques but ultimately “every green screen or blue screen shot in innumerable films (including every blockbuster fantasy film of recent times) employs variants of the original Vlahos techniques.”
(Image credit: Hollyckuhno via Creative Commons license)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HZ_smwa3BI
Bruce Campbell Want to Buy YOU an Evil Dead Tattoo [Pic]
Yes geeks, Bruce Campbell will directly reimburse the first (and only the first!) Evil Dead remake tatoo that beats the one you see below, at least that’s what he wrote on twitter.
[Source: Bruce Campbell on Twitter | Via Topless Robot]
Man Building Cylon Raider [Pics]
Eugene Haggerty from Clearwater, Florida has begun building a half-scale, DRIVABLE replica of a Classic Cylon Raider.
He is even an Imperious Leader of the Colonial-Cylon Alliance.
Construction began October of last year and Haggerty hopes to have it ready by Galacticon 3 this May in Houston, Texas.
About 150 hours of build time remain and Haggerty could really use some help.
Already, $10,000 has been sunk into the project and Haggerty expects the total cost will exceed $20,000, when all is said and done. After Galacticon, Haggerty hopes to make the rounds at Dragon*Con 2013, as well as a few other conventions, too.
If you’d like more information or would like to donate to his project, click here! Depending on your donation amount, you could even drive it at one of the conventions!
[Via RedEye Rogue]