Nerf Gun Painted Props

Hello. To anybody out there. It’s been a few years since I posted on here.  I kept thinking of making a new blog just for Nerf Painting or Modding, or just prop building.  Then I like thought, well when I made this blog it was for animations and whatever I wanted to post. So there you go. 

I love painting the guns.  Incredibly fun. 

I have a ton waiting to be painted. I have some other props I plan on making.  And of course throwing myself back into 3d modeling and animation. Which I have not been doing since my PC died. Now I have one again. 

The Deep & Scuba Diving

When I was a kid I saw The Deep on TV.  Which I credit as the film that made me want to learn to scuba dive. I’m sure there were other tv shows and films also, but that was the film.  I do still find moray eels scary. I did see one on one of my first dives. Which you as actually cool. 

I love scuba diving.  It’s the closest I will ever get to being in out space. To floating in zero gravity. Floating weightless. Silent. Calm. Peaceful.  Beautiful fish. Brilliant colors.

I once dove with sea turtles. Like 100 sea turtles all around me
All you could see. Water and sea turtles. Some three feet long. It was like swimming with dinosaurs. It was one of the mist amazing beautiful things I have ever seen. 

I was watching the deep and I thought I’d share that.

My Star Trek Marathon

“Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.”

My Star Trek Marathon has come to the end. I would like to thank my girlfriend and her daughter for putting up with this indulgence.  I would like to thank Netflix without you this would not have been possible. I should also add that I am dictating this into my phone which parallels the inventions shown on the Star Trek series and how they have become part of everyday life.

A little while ago I decided to watch the entire Star Trek series from beginning to end in order they were aired are released. It began with the original series which is uneven at times, but thoroughly enjoyable.  The original for all its faults is great sci-fi.  When I re-watched the original series I saw the remastered episodes with new CG elements.  I thought with with CGI look great and fit in well for the most part. I would however have been happy watching the series in its original state with its original effects . I know some people have a hard time with the original series having issues with the F/X, campy action and cheesy stories. I feel those moments and episodes are few and far between. For the most part it is an entertaining and thought-provoking series that broke boundaries and proved that Sci-fi was a legitimate genre.

The original series was followed by the animated series which I had never seen until my Stat Trek marathon.  I had always assumed that it was a throwaway 70’s cartoon. However I discovered it was a well written entertaining program. I was surprised to find the stories were intelligent the voice acting was top notch and done by the original cast of the show.  Being an animated series it was able to show something the original series could not do such as have a alien creatures that truly looked alien.   I was shocked by the appearance of the holodeck, which I did not think of appeared until The Next Generation.

I may be in the minority here, but having just watched the original series all the way through I believe that’s the motion picture is totally consistent with the original series.   yes it is uneven and slow at points.  Visually it is a feast.

Wraith of Khan was night and day from the motion picture.  I have to agree that it is one of the best of the Star Trek movies. The return of Khan one of the best Star Trek villains.  Ricardo Montalban embraced the roll embodied and the part. The nebula battle at the end was a revelation its its use of three-dimensional three-dimensional space due to there two dimensional portrayal in a three-dimensional arena.

Search for Spock is another uneven film. The first act is slow, the second act picks up and it is quite enjoyable, then the third act slows down again.  It is more of a filler metaphysical journey bridging the gap between “The Voyage Home.”
“The Voyage Home” is a fun campy romp.  It explores the environmental issues of the day.

“The Final Frontier.” Was poorly received, but I love the line ” what does God need with a starship”

“The Undiscovered Country” political intrigue, cold war paranoia, bigotry. What’s not to love.  Some cutting edge CG. The soon to be overused shock ring and the zero-g blood.

Star trek the Next Generation heralded the return of the Starship Enterprise to TV.  It was and is one of my favorite of the franchise.  It began with a poor star, but it just got better and better as it went on. Characters we fell in love with.  The TNG movies ere okay.  None of them were great except for maybe Final Contact. Generations had two lackluster endings for Kirk.

Deep Space Nine was good, but not my favorite. It was slow. Its a tough one.  People either found it painfully dull or the most groundbreaking of the them all.  I did find it slow and sometimes a chore to get through, but it was an excellent series. Great characters.

Voyager was one of my favs. Great Captain.  Great ship. I really did like this cast.  I loved the stories.

Enterprise.  Not well received for the most part at the time.  But it is one of my favorites. 

The new movies I don’t hate. There not my favorites. I liked “Into Darkness” better.

Now I Have started watching the fan films. I must say I was shocked at how good Star Trek : Continues” was.  Amazing how spot on it is in every respect. Starts of great and keeps it up.  I wish there were more than three episodes. I hope the produce more. I also really liked “Star Trek: Phase II” also known as “New Voyages.” It didn’t star of great , but really got good as it went on.  I hope too see more of both if them.

I feel an emptiness now after my marathon ended.  Knowing I’ve seen it all.  Revisited old friends.  Although I do Star Trek CG a lot I haven’t watched Star trek like I used to in along time.  It’s not just that it event off the air. I had a person in my life that was very special to me and it was something we shared.  Afterwards it was hard to watch again. I’m glad I have done this.

I had forgot the end of my journey had a special show to watch. I will watch it soon.  “Galaxyquest” .  Love GQ. Such fun. Such love for ST. 

I don’t feel I’ve said or capture what I would have liked too about ST in this blog post.  Maybe I’ll write again.  Was kind of sensory overload with 40 plus years of ST.

Terraforming Mars Pt. 3

My Terraforming of Mars continues. 

My first version from my other post

The Fabled The Black Hole Video

I made the video around 2011.  I added the title cards and original John Barry score the I the day.  I’ve had trouble with codecs and uploading it. 

The video is the opening space shots of Walt Disney’s the black Hole redone by me in CG.

I give special thanks to Sean Kennedy and Gerard Duffy.  Great models thanks for making them available.

Terraforming Mars Pt. 2

I had a chance to redo my texture map from scratch and spent a lot more time this time.  I also fixed some errors like that I had a alpha map inverted on the specular and glossy channels. Basically making the ocean matte and the land masses shiny. Oops.

I think it looks a lot better now.  I will do it again I’m sure.  I think the land mass features are to big in some places.  And again I’d still like to plan out better what sorts if terrain should be were.  Really need more time to sit down and work on this.

Terraforming Mars Pt. 1

I am fascinated by Mars and the idea of Terraforming it.  Both on a real work level and a Science Fiction level. 

The other day I created a terraformed Mars in photoshop and created a new terraformed Mars in LightWave.  This like the second or third time. There will be a fourth.   The next one I want to spend a lot more time on.   This time I want to focus more on the actual terrain and where the different areas of desert, rock, and vegetation covered area should be.

I also will be Terraforming Venus at some point.

Inspiration

Hello again. 

I have been on a doing some work recently. Inspired by my Star Trek marathon.  I have been watching the all the Star Trek movies and episodes in the order they were aired or released.  I Started with the original series then the animated series. Followed by the first movies.  Then the next generation. Now I’m going back and forth between TNG and DS9.

I have did a couple of Star Trek shots and one image from Alien.

Shots were done using the newly released USS KANEDA: NCC-79235 mesh by Ulrich Kuehn.  Thank you for you beautiful model. The Enterprise 1701-D by Prologic and The Borg Cube by Ed Giddings.

Here are some of the renders I have done.

Asteroids A La Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

The other day I wsd being whimsical and made this quickly in LightWave as a little joke to post on Facebook and 3D Gladiators.  After it turned out so well. I wish I spent more time on it.  I suppose if I did it would just totally look like the game and would lose the charm of what I was doing it for.  

Asteroids was and is one of my all time video games.  As a child…actually preteen I was in The Children’s Hospital at Stanford for a prolonged stay. They had a playroom with Asteroids.  Which didn’t need quarters. Would play that forever.  That and Pool. On a real table.  

Ahhh memories.

Anyway I did the image quickly . Like an hour. Most of which was spent lookking for the Points2Polys plug in.  Which I seldom use and seems to move every time they revise LW.  Or I just forget. I think they’ve renamed it too before, but that could be another plug in.

Asteroids Continued

I got to sit down yesterday and work on my asteroidfield shot some more. It’s coming along. I’ve added a little specularity to the asteroids which I like. I think I’ll tone that down a little though. 

The weapon fire was done with the Worley labs plug-in Tracer. The explosion is tried and true stock explosion mapped in a polygon.  Added a yellow point light to give the illusion of light from the blast.

As far as the completed image there are a few more items to come. The most important of which is the ship. I want to build and texture my own starfighter. 

I’ll post again with changes.