Cyber-Monday Super Sale!!

Save 5%-20% Off Your Order!*

Take 5% off $25.00-$49.99, 10% off $50.00-$74.99, 15% off $75.00-$99.99 and 20% off $100.00 or more!* Monday, November 30th ONLY.

* $25.00/$50.00/$75.00/$100.00 minimum order is before shipping and/or taxes. Order must contain $25.00-$100.00 or more of product. Discount does not apply to trades. Discount will be automatically applied to your order once minimum amount has been reached. No coupon code required.

Sale is one day only – Monday, November 30th, 2009.

A brief teaser for a new Tron game has been released over at GameTrailers, with the game’s world premiere coming to the Spike TV Video Game Awards on December 12.

The teaser – being a teaser – reveals next to nothing, but there are flashes of both light cycles and disc throwing. Tron Legacy, the new movie, has been set for a December 17, 2010 release in the United States, and will be presented in 3D.

A number of Tron games, both official and otherwise, have been made in the past, but it seems likely from what minuscule amount of information we have that this will be the most high-budget production yet.

[GameTrailers via @geoffkeighley]

What is (arguably) more fun than painting onto clothes yet safer than sewing LEDs into the fabric? It’s EL Wire!!!

EL wire is a copper wire coated in a phosphor that glows when it’s hooked up to a battery – so it’s kind of like a thin, flexible neon light that doesn’t get hot. And, my favorite part, the light a continuous line unlike a string of LEDs.

You can simply sew it right onto your fabric, and you can often find it for only $1/foot. The only trouble is that you have to plan out your project before you order because you need a special box for the length of wire you’re using. The boxes tend to be about $3 each.

Check out these awesome projects I found for EL Wire:
- How to Add EL Wire to a Coat or Other Garment – A quick tutorial on how to use the stuff.
- ThatsCoolWire.com’s EL Wire Ideas – Sweet! I found some cool ones here including lighting on a bookshelf, decorative/safety lighting in a shower, and an awesome Tron costume!
- My Favorite – The Fire Skirt!!! – Now this is uber sweet! I would love to do this with an airbrushed dress. (Hehe, I could even add some smoke, and/or paint it to look like it’s a wood dress that’s burning.)
- Retrofit a Floppy Disk Bag – This would be a great bag for a laptop. Oops, almost forgot, this is just how to add the EL Wire. Here’s how to make the bag itself.
- A Baby Tron Costume – After you make Tron costumes for Mommy and Daddy, you just have to make one for little Version 2.0. Aw, what a cute little program.
- The Laser Bike for Night Riding – Oh if only I could get a law passed that required this. Then those poor night riders might have a chance against those big bad cars. Oh, and runners and pedestrians should wear it too.
- An Iron Man Arc Reactor – Okay, so this last one doesn’t use EL Wire, but man would it be even more awesome (and accurate) if they did!

I’m pretty pleased that Monday is pretty much done with today. And to celebrate, I uploaded a picture of the Tron bike. I got to see this up close and it was pretty neat, except for the fact that the person on the bike wasn’t Harrison Ford.

Anti vie russe.
Sorti juste avant le 11 novembre (qui est aussi Veteran’s Day aux US), “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2″ (“MoWa2″) propose d’immerger le joueur dans une expérience “FPS” (First Person Shooter, Tir à La Première Personne en québécois!) où vous incarnerez plusieurs troufions, héros d’un film de guerre ultra violent et ultra réaliste. Le meilleur coup de Buzzing d’Activision est de proposer une mission (‘”No Russian”) où le joueur massacre un maximum de voayageurs innocents dans les halls de l’aéroport international Zakhaev de Moscou. Excellent coup marketing puisque cela fait parler du jeu qui pour le coup est la plus grosse vente actuelle.
Les jeux videos peuvent être violents. Même une simple partie de “Pelote Basque” dans “Tron” devient mortelle. Beaucoup se sont offusqués devant la violence graphique de Grand Theft Auto (GTA). Sauf que… GTA est un délire. Une mauvaise série B haute en couleur, jouant sur les stéréotypes et les clichés. Ce n’est pas plus réaliste qu’un film de cet abruti d’Uwe Boll. C’est de “l’éclate” baby plus défoulante qu’immersive. Même si au final les dommages collatéraux au niveaux des neurones du gamer peuvent se faire ressentir, on est quand même loin du cahier des charges “morts en direct” de “MoWa2″ !
“MoWa2″  qui se veut être une expérience hypra réaliste ! Une plongée dans le sang et les tripes, les gémissements des blessés, les balles qui sifflent de tous les cotés, les déflagrations abrutissants des grenades… Avec en sus, entre chaque rafale, quand vous prenez le temps de recharger, Hans Zimmer à la bande originale pour une ambiance chère à Michael Bay… Y’en a qui aiment l’odeur du napalm au petit matin chez Activision…

Casualties of war.
Le jeu est noté 18/20 pour sa fluidité, sa jouabilité et son réalisme mais comment peut-on plébisciter les dérapages Snuff les plus dégueulasses ? Froide perversion des faiseurs de fric répondant aux grasses perversions des no-life soudés aux manettes de leurs consoles laveuses de cerveaux: vivre un massacre dans la peau des bourreaux.
Si le joueur peut moissonner à la mitrailleuse des innocents (certains supplient pourtant qu’on les épargne, où rampent au sol dans leur propre sang pour tenter de s’éloigner !), j’attends la suite dans l’horreur ! Un niveau “Colombine” par exemple, avec chasse à l’homme dans le campus et redécoration du resto U à la cervelle fraîche ? Ou une suite Rwanda avec des enfants terrifiés qu’on découpe à la machette, des femmes en pleurs qu’on viole dans des caves avant d’y mettre le feu… J’ai même le titre “Call of Duty : Casualties of War”. Les horreurs de la guerre où le noir boucher qui sommeille dans votre cerveau reptilien va pouvoir enfin se réveiller et  revivre avec appétit l’expérience “enrichissante” des grands massacres de civils qui ont jalonnés notre merveilleuse époque moderne! A ce niveau, “MoWa2″ est déjà de la pure pornographie.

Jeux d’Enfants.
Je me souviens d’une démo sur Youtube de “Far Cry 2″ mise en ligne et commentée par un gamin d’une dizaine d’années qui expliquait dans un français approximatif qu’il préférait tout bonnement “les finir à la machette, ça économise une balle…”(sic)  Brave petit con. Voici une phrase que Polpot n’aurait pas renié. Merveille de la virtualité ! Délice de la violence juvénile ! Vivement que ces jeux sortent en odorama: Les odeurs de poudre, de sueur, de chairs brulées, de sang, d’urine et d’excréments devraient compléter l’immersion; parce que tout le monde le sait: la guerre c’est vraiment trop fun !!!
Avec les progrès actuels, je suis certain que les parties enregistrées peuvent être “partagées”. Quel “jeu d’enfant” ainsi pour un gouvernement ou une organisation de repérer et enrôler les futurs psychopathes sans âme qui sauront ouvrir le feu sans ciller sur des manifestants sans armes. Blackwater.com ?
Alors vas y mon petit gamer, entraine toi. Désensibilise toi. Il y aura du travail pour toi. Et comme à la fin du niveau de “MoWa2″ dans l’aéroport russe, tu seras remercié d’une balle dans la tête… “Ca c’est un message!” annonce en plus ton exécuteur en rengainant son arme…
Oui parce qu’à la fin du niveau, tu es sacrifié…pour rien… Ce niveau sanglant ne servait donc à rien dans l’avancement de la mission solo du jeu… Ah si, il servait avant tout le Dieu Marketing, mais ça nous l’avions bien compris ! Déjà que US Army, le jeu de recrutement officiel et gratuit de l’armée américaine me donnait la gerbe… Heureusement qu’il nous reste le foot et le hand !

Come to the Dark Side… We got cookies ! (Et en cliquant sur l’image… vous irez sur la vidéo immersive chez Destructoid…)

Pause.

I’ve been thinking about ‘Tron Legacy’ a lot today. Here’s a spot of cinephile autobiography: I can break down my entire existence film by film. Officially, the film that I love the most is ‘The Outsiders’ but for all-out impact for the last twenty seven years the film has been ‘Tron.’ Why? Because it made me into a heathen. Before you assume it’s because this computerised ‘82 epic made me contemplate our role in the world, technology’s prominence as the new god or Flynn’s faithless conquest over dark forces, it wasn’t that. I was four for fuck’s sake. On the run up to the film’s release I got hyped. Probably more hyped than you’ll ever know. Sick. Ill with the hype. So much so that my folks began to worry that I could be autistic.

I pored over every page of my storybook adaptation of the film, marvelling at images of disc combat and the Master Control Program. I sought arcades on holiday to experience the game I’d been told about. I wanted a Tomy ripcord-powered Light Cycle too. Like Lynch’s ‘Dune’ two years later it was on notebooks, lunchboxes and pencil cases long before anyone at school saw the actual movie and realised how slow paced and baffling it was to a young mind. By the time of its winter ‘82 release, my older brother and father announced a visit to the cinema to see the movie, which had now gathered near-mythic status, egged on by my equally excited sibling. One catch – they would go, and I wouldn’t. Worse than that, I attend a particularly premature (mid November?) sunday school xmas party.

Stood in the corner of a church, rocking brown cords and sandals with Christ-knows-what soundtracking a game of musical chairs, I quietly renounced Christianity and religion altogether, knowing that no god would place me in such a situation while half my family got to watch what had now surpassed any conceviable religious experience in my tiny mind. Think of it as a psychlogical version of Oldman’s bombastic sword/crucifix interface at the beginning of Coppola’s ‘Dracula.’ On returning, my brother waxed lyrical about what he’d seen, dismissing my storybook as barely coming close to the ‘Tron’ spectacle.

Twelve months or so later (bear in mind Disney were slow to release VHS of their films), after the film reputedly underachieved at the box office I finally saw it. It was interesting – it wasn’t underwhelming like ‘The Black Hole’ (Maximillion didn’t disappoint though) – it was visually arresting, but the expressionist looks of the heroic computer denizen’s was off-putting to me and the pace was slow. Looking back at it, things flow with all the smoothness of the animated star of Dire Straits’s ‘Money For Nothing’ promo. I’d preferred the build-up to the main event, but ‘Tron’ mania left me a changed person, I think, for the better.

Now, in an era where people flood to see dreck like ‘2012′ and ‘Transformers 2′ as event flicks, I can acknowledge that ‘Tron’ (or in the US, ‘TRON’ or best of all, in Australia, ‘Tron: The Electronic Gladiator’) is a masterpiece. How the hell did it ever get made?

Team Tron “Uh, we need seventeen million dollars to make a film?”
Disney “What would it be about?”
Team Tron “It’s about computer programmers and corporations battling it out in a computer realm.”
Disney “Hmm.”
Team Tron “It’s gonna have new effects with no proven track record.”
Disney “Uh-huh.”
Team Tron “People in the computer world will look like the stars of old black and white films…but futuristic versions!”
Disney “Who will star in it?”
Team Tron “Jeff Bridges – the guy from ‘Heaven’s Gate’ and the ‘King Kong’ remake.”
Disney “Hmm…anyone else?
Team Tron “David Warner!”
Disney “Huh?”
Team Tron “You know – the guy from ‘Nightwing’ and ‘Time After Time”
Disney “Doesn’t ring any bells.”
Team Tron “Oh yeah, and we want Wedny Carlos to do the music.”
Disney “Who?”
Team Tron “You know; the avant-garde composer who had a sex change years ago.”

It’s a miracle the film ever got made. Most films (think ‘The Bishop Of Battle’ segment of ‘Nighmares,’ ‘The Last Starfighter,’ The Wizard,’ ‘Brainscan’ etc.) using computer games can be well regarded, but they’re horribly dated too. ‘Tron’ doesn’t look like any game I ever played. It’s its own aesthetic. There’s no sense of any precedent – it’s a true original. The amount of designers, musicians and programmers left altered by the film are legion. Some missed the point – the adicolor ‘Tron’ shoe is the work of someone who didn’t “get” whatever “it” is when it comes to ‘Tron’ and neither did K-Swiss. ‘Tron’ was apparent in the design of the Nike Air Max 97 and Zoom Spiridon, or when Apple upped the ante with the coloured iMac collection – more characters altered by exposure to the film. Between 30 and 50, there’s a generation ‘Tron’ dispersed across multiple age brackets.

It’s been nearly three decades now. Offering a sequel for December 2010 that scoops up youngsters nostalgic for a decade they missed, and oldies obsessing over past glories feels a little cynical. By its very nature, Daft Punk offering some gnarly-sounding Carpenter synths and a visit back to those stark visuals with a 21st century tweak is reverse-engineering that’s at odds with a pioneering original. But hey, it looks like fun, and if it leads even one small child to rethink their whole faith system? Job done.

Thanks to the magic of YouTube, here’s a few ‘Tron’ related music videos and performances. I’ve omitted Infernal’s pop dance hit ‘From Paris To Berlin’ because it’s shit at every level.

Journey’s ‘1990’s Theme’ is their idea of what the 1990’s would sound like. It’s from the ‘Tron’ OST too. It’s amusing when you consider that Steve Perry from Journey may be the least futuristic man that ever lived.

Scott Grooves ‘Mothership Reconnection’ (Daft Punk Mix) is ruined by some atrocious late ’90s computer graphics that look worse than anything delivered in ‘82. It does however, have a CGI Bootsy Collins, which can only be a good thing.

The Strokes ‘12:51′ is my favourite ‘Tron’ inspired video. They’re unlikely candidates for these visuals, but it worked.

Undeniable flyness from Kanye and Daft Punk at the 2008 Grammys.  Kanye-bash all you like, but it beats a stage sleepwalk over a DAT.

Bonus level – nerds talking ‘Tron’ toys.

Watching movies from 20 years ago can be painful.  The big hair, the clothes, eyeglasses… they’re all giant red flags that the movie was made in a certain time period and they will be there forever.  While that fact is true with most genres, it is especially true with science fiction movies.

This morning I watched the 20th anniversary edition of Tron.  Oh my.

Tron, if you have never seen the movie before, stars Jeff Bridges in his thinner days, as a computer programmer who created 5 blockbuster games, was forced out of the company he worked for by ‘the villain’ (who rose to fame by claiming the games were his), and created a ‘Master Control Program’ to monitor other programs in the computer.  The trouble is, that the MCP is gobbling up smaller programs from other systems, and incorporating them into himself, thereby gaining more strength, and intelligence.  Typical movie, right?  Wrong!  This is where the story gets interesting.  The company has created a way of using a laser to disassemble matter and reassemble it.  The MCP decides that Jeff is a threat, because Jeff is trying to gather evidence to prove he wrote the games that the villain says that he wrote, so the MCP shoots the laser at Jeff, disassembles him, and brings him into the computer to finish him off by making him play games against other programs, and his champion program.

Painful.  I hadn’t realized when I watched the movie years ago, just how painful it was.  The animation & CGI is colorful, but the acting and the dialog is so frightfully bad, that I don’t know how I had missed it when I first watched the film.  There are so many references to computer jargon, just thrown in there, that it is obvious that they had a standard script, and then sat around the kitchen table and thought of ways to modify the dialog.

Two things to look for:  On the wall on the villain’s ship is a display showing a maze that is being searched by the bad guys for the good guys.  If you look closely, there is a pac-man chasing some dots.  Another, is when the space sail simulator is cruising along, and Jeff looks out over the vast plain they are traveling over, there are some light brown circular shapes they pass over.  The shapes form Mickey Mouse’ s iconic face (The movie was made by Disney).

IF you happen to decide to watch this film, you will ask yourself over and over again, “why doesn’t the MCP just ‘derez’ Jeff” Derezing is kinda like killing for a program, I assume. He has several opportunities, but wants Jeff to die while playing a game. Odd.  And I don’t want to spoil too much, but when Jeff DOES succeed, his “Proof” is a computer printout that says he was the original programmer, and the program was stolen or something like that by ‘the villain’, and the information was PRIORITY ONE (and I’m underlining it, just like they did on the paper.)

I’m just glad that while watching it, I didn’t have a heart attack or stroke and when the EMTs came in, they would find me in front of the TV watching Tron.  It would be just like being caught in a car accident with dirty underwear on.

Martian 8 - A personal project of creature/character designer Neville Page. Photo courtesy of and copyright of Neville Page

Like many Sci-Fi fans, creature/character designer Neville Page sat in a darkened movie theater when he was a child and watched in anticipation as the opening credits for the original Star Wars feature film began to roll. Having seen the adventures of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo and Chewbacca, his mind wandered in a direction that would forever change his life.

“I began to wonder what people did in order to make a movie like that,” recalls Page. “I didn’t understand that they went to school to learn how to be creature designers, sculptors or artists for that matter, and could then go work in films. Then, however, I began to collect all sorts of Star Wars magazines – I was really addicted to the film – and in one of the magazines there was this article on [make-up artist] Rick Baker. When I saw a picture of him with a lump of clay and a sculpting tool, it suddenly occurred to me that, ‘OK, people actually do this stuff,’ and that’s where my interest [in the craft] first began.”

When he was 17, Page moved to Hollywood and, after trying his hand at acting and stand-up comedy, enrolled in the Art Center College of Design where he studied industrial design. “I did that for several years, but all along I craved to work in films,” says the designer. “The more seasoned I became as an industrial designer, it became more apparent that if I wanted to make monsters and do animatronics, it would require a huge career and lifestyle change.

“At that point I thought, ‘Well, that dream is dead,’ but the very next day, literally, something happened that changed my mind. Colleen Atwood, who’s a major costume designer, was working next door to my studio on the Steven Spielberg film Minority Report. A buddy of mine had left his keys there and she stopped by my studio to drop them off. Colleen noticed that my business partner, Scott Robertson, and I do industrial design, including helmets, and she needed a helmet for a police costume. That’s when she asked, ‘Hey, do you guys want to work on some film stuff?’ and I haven’t stopped since. You can’t plan something like that. It’s like sitting at a cafe and being ‘discovered.’ You can only hope you’re in the right place at the right time, and mine was my buddy forgetting his keys.

Squidleyflat - a personal project of Neville Page. Photo courtesy of and copyright of Neville Page

X2, The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe, The Hulk, Cloverfield and James Cameron’s Avatar are just a few of the big screen projects that Page has worked on. “With Avatar I was kind of stretching my skills at creature design,” he says. “James Cameron is a very specific guy and you can just imagine how many portfolios were being thrown his way when it came to his movie. Four people were selected, myself being one of them, and I thought, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me. There’s a mistake here, because I don’t have much of a portfolio.’ I had a lot of industrial design stuff, but I guess that’s what Jim wanted. He wanted a very different take on a creature design and I’ve told him many times since then how incredibly grateful and indebted I am to him because he allowed me almost a year to become educated in what he needed to be the best, well-thought out creatures in film. So he afforded us the time to really do it right.

“I’m a huge fan of doing the research and understanding the subject matter, which includes buying animal bones and things of that nature to better understand a creatures’ physiology, and Jim really dug that we were coming in fully armed with all this knowledge. You can’t pull the wool over his eyes. He’s bright on all levels, and it was our goal to help crack the design nut. There were occasions where I would present an anatomical solution to a problem that would genuinely impress Jim. That’s a good day at work! Jim is a strong man who knows what he wants, and if you’re strong enough to survive that, you come out a better person and definitely a better designer, that’s for sure.”

While still working on Avatar, the designer took on yet another new creature challenge in J.J. Abrams’ Cloverfield. “When I met with [producers] J.J. Abrams and Bryan Burk at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles to discuss Cloverfield, I knew nothing about the project other than J.J. said, ‘I want to make a monster movie,’” says Page. “They explained to me that this film was a big experiment as far as how they were going to shoot  it, with handheld cameras and not a whole bunch of other cameras set up for secondary or tertiary shots. They also explained that the overall budget was next to nothing.

“For whatever reason, J.J. won me over because of his passion for the work and his loveable personality. I thought, ‘I don’t know quite what it [the film] is either, J.J., but sign me up.’ The hardest part of  Cloverfield, though, was that I was also in my last five or six months of Avatar, and the last months of any project are the toughest because you have to deliver all the final elements. I told myself, ‘I’m working with James Cameron and J.J. Abrams simultaneously. Am I the luckiest man in the world or what? You’ve got to make this work, Neville, no matter what.’”

Up close and personal with the Cloverfield creature. Photo courtesy of and copyright of Neville Page

Another angle of the Cloverfield creature. Photo courtesy of and copyright of Neville Page

Clearly, Abrams was pleased with Page’s contribution to Cloverfield because he subsequently asked him to provide creature effects and much more for the new Star Trek film. “I was tasked with two creatures right out of the gate, which were the ones on the ice planet Delta Vega,” notes the designer. “J.J. was very specific about what he wanted; he wanted one of the creatures to be red because it would look cool and be a great contrast to the white snow. The second thing he wanted was for it to have several eyes just so it was kind of freaky and scary. J.J. also wanted the creature to have a month that was extremely off-putting, not because you’d be afraid of being bitten by it, but that it might touch or dribble on you.

“If you study enough about biology and animals you can kind of reverse engineer a number of things into a plausible organism. That’s where it’s helpful to have a pretty broad understanding of several different animals as well as zoology and physics, because you’ll be able to take some really wacky concept and make it work by having all these other reference points. So I didn’t have much trouble with the color of the red creature because there are plenty of things in the ocean that are red, such as crabs, lobsters and the Humboldt squid. The creature is actually a cross between a crab and a squid, and it wasn’t necessarily that I thought of that as a means to hybridize something, but this thing just evolved to a point where it started to look like that. So I thought, ‘I can reference those two animals and tap into a little bit more of their physiology.’

“There are those who question the red color, but the important thing to remember is that this creature is most comfortable in the water, much like a squid would be. It only breaks through the ice for the occasional desperate feeding. That was my rationale, and it actually does make sense; animals do occasionally breach or leave their normal habitat when they’re incredibly hungry. However, there have been a lot of fans of the film that really objected to the fact that it was red, but when you know what its origins are, then it potentially makes sense.

“The fact that this creature doesn’t have fur is also another [deliberate] choice. A lot of whales don’t have fur, but rather excess blubber. It might sound as if I’m justifying things, but I’m trying to explain the fact that it’s an alien planet, so anything should go. But we have a critical Earth audience looking at the movie, some of whom saying, ‘I don’t know if I’d buy that [creature] because it’s red, doesn’t have fur and it’s skinny.’ Well, crabs somehow get away with it, and so do lobsters. There’s no fur on a lobster, so who’s to say that this creature isn’t some sort of hybrid endo-exo-skeletal thing. The most important thing for J.J. is that he just wants it to be cool for the moment so people enjoy the ride. My job is to make sure that it [the creature] is viable enough so fans and other people who may scrutinize it don’t feel insulted or gypped. But I must ask, why does no one question the survivability of the passengers on a ship that leaps instantly to warp speed? It’s all simply entertainment.”

The Polarilla creature from Star Trek XI. Photo courtesy of and copyright of Neville Page

Those who saw the Star Trek film and also, coincidentally, have an aversion to insects, probably had to look away when Captain Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood) is tortured for tactical data by Captain Nero (Eric Bana) of the Romulan mining ship Narada, and forced to swallow the mind-controlling bug. Page was the brains behind the look of that particular creepy crawly.

“That little bug was kind of an homage to the earwig that was in [the second Star Trek film] The Wrath of Khan, in that something bug-like is being put inside you that’s going to mess with your mind,” he says. “I felt it would have been far creepier to put it into an orifice that you wouldn’t normally put something in, but we were limited to orifices that were PG [rated],” jokes Page. “So ears and nostrils would have been it. I just thought that putting it in the mouth was, maybe, more like eating it, and not as unnerving.

“We did our level best to make it look upsetting, but I think most people are so bug-phobic that just having a bug near someone’s mouth was frightening enough. I really did want this one to be more like an earwig, which is why I made the tail earwig-like. J.J. was very specific, though, about wanting these claws and little tentacles that would make it look as if it has the capacity, once inside the body, to engage with the spinal cord or lower brainstem.

“So the design challenge was partially just arriving at the appropriate esthetic, but on top of that, we knew that we didn’t have the funds to do a full digital effect and that it had to be a practical on-set one. That meant we had to have something we could actually control animatronically, and that dictated a certain kind of body mass to fit the electronics into. A Japanese gentleman, in fact, made a robot that was tiny enough, or should I say microscopic enough, to go inside a rubber version of our bug. That’s what you see on-screen, this little remote-controlled bug on the end of barbecue tongs. It was quite incredible.”

Fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation are well aware that its Klingons as well as Romulans looked very different from those seen in the classic Star Trek series. An effort was made in Star Trek: Enterprise to explain the change in the Klingons’ appearance, and the same thing was done in the new Star Trek movie with regard to the Romulans, including Eric Bana’s Nero.

“The Next Generation Romulans had the V-shaped prosthetic on their forehead, but in the original show, they had absolutely no prosthetics,” explains Page. “So we had to come up with a way to justify how it is that over time, some of them developed the V and others did not. For that, I worked with Joel Harlow, who did a lot of the make-up for Pirates of the Caribbean, and was the head make-up artist for the Romulans specifically. The idea I had involved a bald head and therefore shaving it completely, but in order to convince Eric Bana of this, we needed to do a make-up test first. We didn’t have the budget to hire another actor or a model for this, so I ‘donated’ my head to the cause. We would shave my head, Joel would then do the make-up test on me, and if J.J. liked it, we would move forward and create the look for Eric.

“As far as the concept of getting that V-shape to work, I went with tribal scarification,” continues the designer. “If you scar yourself over and over again in the same place, over time it turns into a keloid mass. I thought it would be interesting if we could use that to create the natural V justification. So we put together an array of designs that Harlow sculpted to replicate that look, and we had a number of tattoo and hair ideas as well. In the end, what you see in the movie is not unlike the basic concept that I wore in our presentation to J.J. The final design, however, has more character nuances in it; there’s a scar on Nero’s face, because I always liked the idea of chopping his ear off to make it look like he’s even half of the Romulan he used to be. Ultimately, J.J. decided to make it more of a bite that Nero probably got while he was imprisoned with the Klingons.”

The original scarring went through a bit of a metamorphosis before filming began, but Abrams liked the design that Page first tested, so much so that he asked him if he would like to play a Romulan in the film. The designer wasted no time in accepting the offer. “I joke with people that that was my plan all along as a child, that I wanted to be a movie star. However, I had a whole different way of achieving that. It would be through the backdoor. I’d study design for years and work and work and then finally get my break while testing the make-up. It was a very strategic and circuitous path,” he says with a laugh, “but now that I am a huge celebrity, wasn’t it all worth it? Although J.J. did say, ‘Keep your day job.’ What could he have meant?

“Seriously, the best part about doing it was two-fold. I had to go through the make-up process many times, including having to wear full scleral contact lenses. They aren’t just the small lenses that cover the iris, but the ones that extend over the eye in all directions. I can’t stand the idea of contact lenses, but I thought, ‘If I’m going to be designing this stuff for people, I should at least know what I’m asking them to subject themselves to.’

“So seeing the sculptors interpreting my designs and then seeing the make-up applied step-by-step was, for me, not only fun, but also a wonderful education in the hope that I do more work like it. The other get part was getting to be on the other side of the camera. I’ve been around long enough to know what that’s like as a designer, but being ‘an actor’ on-set and watching them direct me and everyone else was another amazing learning experience.”

Caudal luring - a personal project of Neville Page. Photo courtesy of and copyright of Neville Page

Carnivor glow - a Mattel concept illustration. Photo courtesy of and copyright of Neville Page

Besides Star Trek, Page’s other recent work includes Watchmen and Tron 2.0, the sequel to the 1982 Sci-Fi film Tron. “I started off designing a bit of everything [for Tron 2.0] with everyone else, but I quickly gravitated towards the costumes,” he says. “From there, I ended up moving from the art department to costumes and developing the hero and specialty costumes. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do but it’s a hard thing to break into because it’s a totally different department.

“I recently came back from Vancouver where I watched some of the shooting [for Tron 2.0] and, my God, it looks really good. From the last script I read, I think it’s going to be an interesting film with some neat twists, and aesthetically it’s looking phenomenal. It’s right up there with James Cameron’s Avatar in terms of delivering really fresh and new imagery on-screen. If you watch the original Tron now, it’s important to note what a major achievement that it was then, and at the helm of it all was Steve Lisberger. He was the original director and conceiver of Tron and one of the producers for the new movie. Lisberger is very involved in the production and it was cool to see him and the new director, Joe Kosinski, brainstorming. It’s one of the more exciting projects I’ve ever been on.”

While some people who work in film and/or TV might take it for granted, Page sees his involvement in the business as very much the opposite. He is also happy for the chance to give back something to audiences. “When I sat watching Star Wars as a kid, my parents were going through a divorce, and the movie was an amazing escape for me,” he says. “It’s sad to say that R2D2 was my therapist at age 12. Having said that, whenever I meet someone who is moved by something I’ve done in the same way I was moved by Joe Johnston [Star Wars effects illustrator/designer] and Ralph McQuarrie [Star Wars production illustrator], that’s when it really hits home that what you do is relevant. And it’s such a priviledge to be able to do that.”

Steve Eramo

As noted above, all photos courtesy of and copyright of Neville Page, so please no unauthorized copying or duplicating of any kind. Thanks!

Ce poate fi mai inedit decât să citeşti pe tron? Când am scris anul trecut articolul „Plăceri Concomitente” am crezut că acela este cel mai neobişnuit lucru. Aveam să aflu pe percursul trecerii timpului că nu eram nici pe departe singurul care făcea chestia aceasta.

Daaar… consider că aseară am înfăptuit un lucru mult mai revoluţionar decât cel prezentat acum un an. Ce faci când eşti cuprins de o nevoie şi o dorinţă în acelaşi timp şi nu ştii căreia să-i dai prioritate? Îţi iei frumuşel laptopul în braţe, vă duceţi amandoi în baie, îl aşezi pe coşul de rufe şi îţi continui lejer jocul de FIFA început… chiar dacă trupul tău mai are şi alte… activităţi.

Ar fi cam grav dacă meciul ar necesita prelungiri şi penalty-uri, sau dacă în loc de FIFA ar fi vre-un joc de strategie… şi nu ştiu dacă aş recomanda în aceste condiţii.

P.S. Azi mi-a şoptit cea mai bună prietenă că au băgat episoade noi din South Park. Şi-aşa mă plângeam că n-am timp să le vad… poate recurg la gestul descris mai sus.

Ngày đầu tháng, mẹ đưa Tròn đến trường mới, Tròn ngạc nhiên quá vì sao quãng đường lại ngắn như vậy. Đến trường rồi, Tròn không muốn xuống xe nữa, cứ muốn đi tiếp như tháng trước ấy. Vì mấy tháng trước, Tròn đi học xa mà, rất xa nên mẹ mới lo, chuyển trường về gần, thấy yên tâm hơn hẳn. Trường Doll house tương đối sạch sẽ và nhỏ gọn, nằm khuất sau mặt hồ. Hôm đầu mẹ đến xin học cho Tròn, các cô bảo mẹ cài chương trình xem trực tuyến trên mạng, vậy mà đến giờ mẹ vẫn chưa cài được vào máy. Hôm đầu tiên đến trường, Tròn không khóc tiếng nào. Mẹ cũng ngạc nhiên quá, sao hai tháng trước thì Tròn lần nào đến trường cũng khóc. Sáng nay, buổi thứ hai đến trường mới, Tròn lại nhìn mẹ rồi mếu máo. Tròn cất tiếng gọi mẹ vẫn chưa rõ, nhưng nhìn Tròn mếu mà mẹ thương quá. Bắt đầu từ nay có lẽ trời trở lạnh, chuyển Tròn về trường mới sẽ tốt hơn, sẽ không phải đi xa, không chịu mưa gió nhiều như trước. Mà Tròn thì rất thích đi xe máy. Một ghế ngồi trước, Tròn tha hồ nhìn phong cảnh xung quanh. Có hôm trời mưa, Tròn tựa vai mẹ ngủ khì, mặc mưa quất vào mặt bỏng rát. Mẹ vừa đi vừa sợ con sẽ bị ốm vì mưa. Thế mà may quá, không sao cả, đến tận trường Tròn vẫn ngủ. Giờ về trường gần nhà, mẹ sẽ không phải lo lắng nhiều nữa.
Tròn ơi, con học các bạn tập nói nhiều vào nhé. Mẹ sẽ về đón con đúng giờ, không muộn như mấy hôm trước đâu, mẹ hứa đấy. Nhưng Tròn của mẹ phải ngoan nghe lời các cô giáo nhé. Có như thế, mẹ mới yên tâm được. Cho con đi học mẹ vừa thương vừa lo nhiều điều. Nhưng nhà mình chỉ có ba người, bố thì đi làm xa, con và mẹ đi học cùng nhau cũng vui lắm con nhỉ?

Show that MPC who’s boss. It’s been over twenty years but you can still show your love for the frisbee wielding hero of the computer age. Whether you want to wear something other than the standard CPU issued blacklight blue duds, or you just love awesome design this is the shirt for you my friend.