Gajitz

Blade Runner Revisted and Reconstructed Frame by Frame

delana — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 21:00:56 +0000

And you thought Blade Runner couldn’t get any more epic. This short film from Francois Vautier – aptly titled “Blade Runner Revisited” – takes the classic sci-fi flick and turns it into a few exceptionally dramatic minutes…leaving out, of course, the bored-sounding and distracting Harrison Ford voiceover. Vautier laid out every single frame from the movie (167,819 of them) into one huge image, then ran a virtual camera over the giant picture.

The result is an optical illusion that looks rather like many moving images, but is in fact just one very large (3.5 gigapixel) image. The movement of the camera makes it look like many separate streams of video running concurrently – kind of like an animation. These four minutes of nerdy sci-fi bliss are definitely worth turning on your speakers or plunking on your headphones for: the score is provided by Vangelis, who also scored the original movie. Be warned, though, that the little snippets of dialogue and short segments of movie scenes will probably cause an intense urge to watch Blade Runner in its entirety again.

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Rad Retro Re-Dos: Ten Tantilizing Movie Posters by Eric Tan

Remember the golden age of movie posters? They were detailed, beautiful works of art that told a story all on their own. That art has mostly been lost to unimaginative graphic designers who recycle the same photograph poses over and over or simply rely on Photoshop to throw together a passable product. Eric Tan, a Disney animator, hasn't lost his enthusiasm for the movie poster. He creates gor... Click Here to Read More »»

Amazing Laces: Nike’s Future Shoe Has No Strings Attached

delana — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:00:55 +0000

A short 20 years after seeing the idea in a movie, Nike has decided to make self-lacing shoes just like the ones in Back to the Future II. In the movie, Marty McFly travels to the year 2015 and pulls on a pair of Nike trainers that lace themselves up with some hidden inner mechanism. In real life, Nike filed a patent in 2009 for a similar shoe that, while the functionality is a little different, looks a lot like the BTTF2 version. At least in the patent drawing.

The patent information says that the shoe features an automatic lacing system that’s tightened and loosened with the push of a button near the heel. There’s an additional ankle cinching system that tightens up the upper portion of the shoes as well. There will be a small battery contained in each shoe to power the automatic tightening and loosening.

Lest you think Nike would ever release a product with no practical value, keep in mind that the benefits of a self-lacing shoe reach far beyond 80s movie nostalgia. A shoe with no laces (or even pesky hook-and-loop straps) to fiddle with would be a huge benefit to people with arthritis or other handicaps that prevent them from tying their laces. Now if someone could just go ahead and invent an IRL flux capacitor, we’d really appreciate it.

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When Antiques Attack: 3 Ridiculously Dangerous Old Gizmos

Some people think that today's safety concerns are out of control. But when you look back at the insanely dangerous products that used to be marketed and sold, modern safety regulations kind of make sense. Take the Shoe-Fitting Flouroscope for example: the shoe-fitting device was common in shoe stores from the 1930s to the 1950s, when it was deemed too dangerous. Shoppers stuck their feet into... Click Here to Read More »»

Touchy-Feely 3D Display Lets You Grab + Stretch Holograms

delana — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 21:00:50 +0000

For some reason, movie studios and TV manufacturers seems to have decided that 3D is the next big thing. We can’t say for sure whether we’ll all be watching the nightly news with those nerdy glasses on anytime soon, but we do know that like everything else, the novelty will wear off of 3D sooner or later. So it’s a good thing that Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology came up with the next big thing in 3D TV: a display that lets you touch and manipulate the 3D images on the screen. The system is called i3Space, and it’s the world’s first 3D display that allows users to actually touch the items they see in the air.

It works with the cooperation of six motion detector cameras and small clips attached to the user’s index fingers. The clips help the cameras track the user’s hand movements while also making little tactile sensations against the fingertips. Overall, the system knows where you’re touching and what type of movement you’re making, and it provides physical feedback so that it feels like there is an actual physical object in your hands. While we’d like to think that there’s some noble philanthropic use for this technology, we can imagine exactly what it’ll be used for eventually…and there’s nothing noble about it.

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Dimensional Invention: World’s First HD 3D LCD Display

For better or worse, 3D has been making a big comeback lately. With many new movies being released in 3D and new recording methods being developed to make the 3D experience easier and better, it looks like it's here to stay - at least until it falls out of favor again. And in a bid to bring all three lovely dimensions to your home viewing time, LG has announced the world's first HD 3D LCD pane... Click Here to Read More »»

Faking It: 3 Stunning Bionic Human Parts Making Life Better

delana — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 15:00:26 +0000

Prosthetic limbs have come a long way since the crude wooden peg legs and hook hands of previous generations. We now have robotic legs, hands that can actually grasp objects, and numerous other amazing advances. Above, the world’s first robotic ankle reduces the amount of energy expended on walking by the amputee. It was designed by MIT engineers for injured Iraq war veterans, and it is a history-making device due to its unique way of propelling the user. Rather than a simple spring, the ankle contains a small battery-powered motor that harvests energy from the user’s own movements. The bionic ankle gives users a more natural gait than any previous prosthetic leg or foot.

The complex functions of the human hand have made the hand a notoriously difficult part of the body to replicate with prostheses. Prosthetic hands can range from the purely ornamental to the amazingly functional. The hand above is known as the i-LIMB, and it’s the first commercially available bionic hand. It won the 2008 Royal Academy of Engineering MacRobert award for its incredible functionality and brilliant design. Each finger has its own motor powered by myoelectric sensors, and the hand functions almost as precisely as a human hand with no controls other than natural muscle movements. This type of fully-articulated hand with individually-powered digits is truly the future of prosthetic hands: it allows people who have lost hands to function just as they did before.

Finally, prosthetic limbs are usually anything but attractive. They are built for utility, not for looks, and usually end up looking like it. While in design school, Joanna Hawley decided to change all of that with an Eames-inspired prosthetic leg. Charles and Ray Eames revolutionized the design world with their classy minimalist aesthetic and brilliant use of non-standard materials, two characteristics that lend themselves very well to this prosthetic leg concept. Rather than looking like a piece of machinery, the leg looks like an accessory that shows off the personality of the wearer.

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Hands-on Tech: Double Amputee Gets Mind-Controlled Arms

When Christian Kandlbauer lost both of his arms in a work accident in 2005, he thought he'd lost his independence. But thanks to amazing advances in prosthesis technology, he now has two high-tech prosthetic arms that allow him to function in many of the ways he did before his accident - and they're controlled by his thoughts. The arms, developed in a joint venture between the Otto Bock health... Click Here to Read More »»

Sci-Fi Switcheroo: Movie Posters From an Alternate Universe

delana — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 21:00:05 +0000

Recasting classic movies is a game that just about every cinema lover has played, but artist Sean Hartter takes it one step further. He creates movie posters for films from an alternate universe. Above, horror master Boris Karloff takes on the iconic role of Freddy Krueger in an alternate-universe version of A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Could the prolific and well-loved actor John Malkovich do something fascinating with the character of Jason Voorhies in Friday the 13th? With his deep voice and contemplative style, he’d definitely bring a strange, alternate universe-type quality to the classic slasher movie.

Despite his obvious suitability for the role, Tim Curry has never played the Joker on-screen. (He did record several episodes as the voice of the Joker for Batman: The Animated Series, but the voice hurt his throat and he was forced to hand the role over to Mark Hamill.) Hartter corrects this grave cinematic injustice by casting Curry as the criminal mastermind in his very own (fictional) movie.

Believe it or not, before he was a talk show host and travel website spokesman, William Shatner was an actor. As much as we love the Shatner, we’re not sure that even his immeasurable coolness could have saved the truly terrible Daredevil movie…but we’d definitely pay to see it.

Mickey Rourke as Superman? Marlon Brando as Lex Luthor? Gary Busey as Bizarro? Well, at least that last one sounds right. The alternate universe version of the Superman franchise looks like a totally weird experience.

It’s kind of hard not to imagine other actors in iconic sci-fi roles, especially when you aren’t too fond of the actor that actually played a particular role. Would Bruce Lee, Sidney Poitier and Pam Grier have been better in The Matrix movies than Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne and Carrie-Ann Moss, respectively? What if Keith Carradine had replaced Harrison Ford in Blade Runner? Both movies would have turned out very differently, to be sure.

These two posters may be the strangest of the whole lot. Sean Hartter’s artwork turns Robo Cop into a bizarre porno and (finally!) makes a live-action version of The Maxx…starring, for some reason, Sylvester Stallone. Had these particular movies ever been made the very fabric of the universe might have been jeopardized, so we have to thank Hollywood for never having these ideas. See plenty more weird ideas and brilliant recasts (as well as other excellent art) over at Sean Hartter’s blog.