Late nights at the Astro Cafe, in the retro future world of Retropolis: ah, the memories! This diner offers anything a spaceman, spacewoman, or robot might want after a night’s revelry, or after a night of dodging space pirates, which is not the same thing. Park your rocket, cadet, and have yourself a steaming hot cup of joe.

As usual, this was done with a combination of 3DS Max and Photoshop. It’s the second of what may be three pictures set in my diner of the Future That Never Was.

This one, like the first, has a title from Irving Berlin’s “Let’s Have Another Cup of Coffee”. Because my future is just like that.

Still: no women in tubes. Part of me feels wistful about how that might have improved things.

Available as a poster, an archival print, and a postcard.

Technorati Tags: let’s have another cup of coffee, retropolis, retro future, diner, cafe, retro, vintage, sci fi, science fiction, poster, art, print, postcard

I wish that Mac’s posts were tagged so that I could link to the whole series, but if you browse through the posts you can find them. Who knew that this was a subconscious imperative that retro science fiction simply must express?

And as you might imagine, I’ve searched my own work for tube women and I have to confess that I come up short. I feel completely inadequate, in fact. I have a feeling that I’m just going to have to do something about that before long. I mean, sure, I’ve put toasters in globes… but no girls in tubes? What the heck was I thinking?

And I wish that I were as clever as the commenter who called them “Tubular Belles”, too.

Technorati Tags: golden age, science fiction, pulp magazine covers, women in tubes, posthuman blues, mac tonnies, retro, vintage, meme

Just Imagine - now available at Amazon

This is momentous news, dear reader, and I have no idea when exactly it finally happened - but the world’s first all singing, all dancing science fiction musical is finally available on DVD.

“Just Imagine” was a landmark film, in which the 1920s and 1930s vision of the future was captured for all time - with amazing miniature sets and rockets, the most famous of which rose out of the prop room to become Flash Gordon’s rocket, in the movie serials - and it is simply not to be missed by anyone who loves the retro future.

It is also a profoundly silly film. Don’t let that stop you.

For years, it’s been impossible to find a commercial tape or disc of this movie, though bootlegs showed up often at eBay.

Just Imagine was an early sound picture - it was released in 1930 - and it features both Maureen O’Sullivan and the vaudeville comic El Brendel. The film takes us (and Brendel) to the astonishing world of 1980 - where we all have flying cars and New York is a multilayered city of public and private transportation, with traffic cops on floating platforms

Just Imagine - now available at Amazon

blowing their whistles at us. The sets are fantastic; the rockets are wonderful; and it’s just sort of mind-blowingly naive and silly.

There is (of course!) a trip to Mars, but possibly the best times are to be had here on Earth with its arranged marriages, its food pills, its whiskey pills, and its numerous jokes about Prohibition.

If Metropolis is our serious and socially conscious great-uncle of the retro future, Just Imagine is its jazz age slaphappy cousin.  The one we actually want to hang out with.

This is a great day. A tremendous day. It’s good to be here in the future. Now if they’d just release “Madam Satan”. But that’s another story.

Technorati Tags: just imagine, retrofuturism, retro future, futuristic, movie, film, science fiction, musical, sci fi, comedy

Here’s the first of what I think will be three pictures set in my retro-futuristic Astro cafe. That’s a scene I started working on in 2004 and plugged away at for quite awhile (in the shadow of the then Day Job). I dusted it off and found to my surprise that it only took about a week to finish it up.

Oddly (or not) I once lived just around the corner from a coffee shop called Astro in LA’s Silverlake neighborhood; and there was a hostess there who was not unlike Mabel, in some ways. But although I did once see a rocket go by, I never saw anyone wearing goggles in there.

This one’s available as an archival print, a poster, on blank books, and a postcard - the sort of impulse buy you’re likely to make at the counter, no?

Technorati Tags: computer art, 3d, robot, diner, cafe, retropolis, retro future, paleo future, science fiction, futurism, all night coffee and motor oil

The unsinkable Molly “Porkshanks” Friedrich has added these handsome retro rocket patches to her Etsy store.

You don’t need to be a card-carrying member of the Innuendo Division to admire these. In fact, you can still want one if you’re just a Suggestive Commando or a Winking Wingman. Person. Whatever.

She doesn’t mention how many of these are available but since it is an embroidered patch you can bet that it was a limited run.

So I’d suggest you order yours on the double - some of these Aether Patrolpersons seem to dabble in temporal acquisitions… and so they might beat you to it even if you’ve got yours already. Which makes my brain hurt.

Technorati Tags: steampunk, dieselpunk, rocket, retro, porkshanks, costume, patch, aether patrol, embroidered

This is a rough layout. It really is. The figures are just blocked in (mainly), the lighting needs tons of work, and there are all sorts of things wrong with it.

But I like it already. So there.

This is the first of what I think will be three high resolution pictures for prints, all set in the Astro Diner. That’s a 3D “set” I worked on for quite awhile back in 2004 but then set aside till about a week ago, when I dug back into it. (I posted some small shots of the diner here, when I’d finished the robot waitress we see in this picture.)

I have the same problems a camera crew has in a tight space - for many of my shots in the diner I’m going to have to cut out parts of the set that are in the way. But this one hasn’t required any major surgery yet.

Okay. You’ve seen it. That will be all.

Technorati Tags: 3D art, computer graphics, retropolis, diner, cafe, astro, robot, waitress, future that never was, retro futuristic, retrofuturism

“Reach” is another lovely short animated film about robots and the things that drive them - this time, both figuratively and literally. This one’s by Luke Randall. The film’s won a number of awards and about a month ago Luke took off for Tinseltown… or at least for Dreamworks Animation.

Technorati Tags: computer animation, 3d, robot, short film, luke randall

“Powerless” is a beautiful short film by digital animation students at the University of Hertfordshire. It’s got a dreamy dark palette and moody music, and shows us what a difficult time we can have when we set out to Meddle In Things That Man Was Not Meant to Wot Of. Or something. In fact, that’s not exactly what it shows us, but I can’t resist any chance to say that.

With a steampunkery robot and a solitary inventor in his woodsy cottage, not to mention all that copper and those antique gauges… what’s not to like?

Technorati Tags: computer animation, 3d, robot, steampunk, dieselpunk, short film, university of hertfordshire

I’ve continued to tinker with my latest online shops and one result of that tinkering is a new type of product that I think is pretty cool, over at Ars Celtica.

These Celtic art “photo frame” greeting cards are customizable - you can upload your own photo or graphic and that image comes in “behind” the Celtic knotwork borders. You can also personalize one or more messages on (and in) the cards.

That alone seems pretty neat to me: but like anything that can be customized the magic doesn’t really start until people start to modify them. So for example these can be used as announcements or invitations, as holiday cards or - and this is pretty much the point, isn’t it? - as things that haven’t even occurred to me.

Technorati Tags: ars celtica, celtic art, celtic design, custom, customizable, greeting cards, invitations, announcements, celtic borders, knotwork, border, photo, photograph, photo frame

One thing’s certain on any frontier - whether it’s in Wyoming, or on an unnamed moon somewhere near Cygnus - and that certainty is that it’s best to be polite when dropping by.

Just imagine the mortification of these spacemen who - and really, this was probably innocent - have set down their retro rocket on the surface of what seemed to be an uninhabited moon. Oops!

“Prairie Moon” is an 18 by 24″ archival print (a poster and a postcard are also available) and is also the name of a song from the 1930’s that was pivotal in Dennis Potter’s wonderful “Pennies From Heaven”. The picture itself is a purely digital image which I created with 3DS Max and Photoshop.

Technorati Tags: prairie moon, retro future, retro futuristic, space opera, rocketship, rocket ship, space man, spaceman, retro, science fiction, art, illustration, golden age