Slave 1

I first saw The Empire Strikes Back in the theater in 1980 at the age of ten. As an avid fan I collected everything I could on the movie. One of the best books was "The Empire Strikes Back Sketchbook". There were a number of pages dedicated to the design sketches of Boba Fett's ship, Slave 1. In the book, It stated that the design idea came from a street lamp near Industrial Light & Magic, which was located in San Rafael at that time. 

Years later, myself now employed at ILM, I remember walking to lunch one day and looking for those street lamps to no avail. I figured the city had most likely upgraded their municipal lighting scheme. 

Then just a few weeks ago I was walking down the street from my home in Richmond, Virginia where I now reside. And low and behold, a single street lamp that looked oddly familiar. Its interesting to finally see what I imagine is the same type that inspired the original design idea.

I love the thought of utilizing/tweaking the design of everyday objects to create believable and seemingly original designs for things like spacecraft, robots, etc. 


Collaborative Scanning: Project Tango

This is just getting insanely cool. 

The future of 3D scanning is that we'll all be able to do it together! Check out this demo by Paracosm of the Google ATAP Labs Project Tango phones. Paracosm and Google Labs have been working side by side to create the technology to make collaborative scanning possible.

SLOMO

Excellent little documentary. If you ask me, Slomo has figured it all out.

Aronofsky

Tad Friend has a great piece in the latest New Yorker profiling writer/director Darren Aronofsky. For my money Aronofsky is one of the top filmmakers working today. Click on the image to read the article online. 

Darren Aronofsky

Darren Aronofsky

Starlog Magazine

I spent many hours of my childhood combing through the articles and images in Starlog Magazine. It was the precursor for so much of what we experience today as geek culture. But Starlog even went in depth into the process of filmmaking and visual effects. It had a huge influence on my interest in cinema and my desire to work in the industry. 

Thanks to the Internet Archive you can now get any and/or every issue of Starlog for free in almost any form. I picked out some of my favorites and sent them to my Kindle app on the iPad. Happy nostalgia. Click on the cover image below to go to the archive and have a look.


Yusef Lateef 1920 - 2013

Yusef Abdul Lateef (born William Emanuel Huddleston, October 9, 1920 – December 23, 2013) was an American jazz multi-instrumentalist, composer, educator and a spokesman for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community after his conversion to the Ahmadiyya sect of Islam in 1950.

Although Lateef's main instruments were the tenor saxophone and flute, he also played oboe and bassoon, both rare in jazz, and also used a number of world music instruments, notably the bamboo flute, shanai, shofar, Xun, arghul, sarewa, and koto. He is known for his innovative blending of jazz with "Eastern" music.

From the album "Eastern sounds". Yusef LATEEF (T sax, oboe, fl), Barry Harris (pno), Ernie FARROW (db, rabat), Lex Humphries (dr).

Cordkillers!

Become a patron. I did. Support Tom & Brian. This is a gonna be a great show!

http://cordkillers.com/

Tom and Brian kick off the very first Cordkillers with special guest Justin Robert Young. Netflix is leading the charge for 4K, Hulu has millions but is it enough, and why Atari's famous ET game failure could help Xbox.

Coppola

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While this is an old photo, circa 1978, it's my favorite image that I came across this year. Coppola is a genius and a true American original. When people talk about great artists, he is the first person that comes to my mind. I love this image taken on the set of Apocalypse Now. He looks pissed but equally determined. His manic and obsessive pursuit of his vision always serves as an example of the best in creativity. Apocalypse Now is possibly the greatest American film since Citizen Kane (2001 is close).

When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and you're life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money. That's a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again. - Steve Jobs

I hope 2014 is a banner year for all my pals out there.

Get pissed, get creative and make it happen.

© Matt Wallin. All rights reserved.