Category: Sci-Friday

For this Sci-Friday, take a step into early CGI with ‘Beyond the Mind’s Eye,’ which was part of the larger ‘Mind’s Eye’ series produced in the early 90s as a sort of ‘film festival in a box.’ You could buy the videos at different places, I usually saw them at Sharper Image at the mall during that time. For most of us, this was our pre-‘Toy Story’ exposure to CGI storytelling.

Jan ‘The guy who did the Miami Vice theme’ Hammer scored ‘Beyond the Mind’s Eye,’ giving us a double-helping of fun sci-fi stuff: conceptual sound and visual art. Kick back, grab your favorite beverage, and enjoy! If you like Sci-Friday, you can go down the rabbit hole of every other Sci-Friday I’ve published in the past couple years. Happy Friday and enjoy your weekend!

For this Sci-Friday, we take a walk down memory lane to enjoy some geek music and other fun sci-fi stuff. Ever wonder how they made the Reading Rainbow theme song back in the 80s before we had access to modern computer sound editing software and hardware? Here’s a clip that shows how they made the iconic theme on 80s-era hardware:

Two fun facts about Reading Rainbow: One, the show was specifically launched by PBS because of the “‘summer loss phenomena,’ whereby a child loses some of his or her reading abilities because they tend not to read during the summer.” Two, the original theme (used from 1983 to 1998) was performed by Tina Fabrique, who plays ‘Donna Davis’ on ‘Blue Bloods’ and featured one of the first uses of the Buchla synthesizer in a TV theme song.

So yeah, the Reading Rainbow theme is a beautiful example of both geek music, and fun sci-fi stuff. I hope this was a fun walk down memory lane for you, too. If you like Sci-Friday, you can go down the rabbit hole of every other Sci-Friday I’ve published in the past couple years. Happy Friday and enjoy your weekend!

Following up on my Tenet essay, I love this parody of the Michael Caine / John David Washington lunch scene in Tenet because it’s so close to the actual scene itself.  I’ve never seen Michael Spicer before but he positively nails this gag:

Many scifi stories aren’t afraid to lampoon themselves and people fall all over themselves to satirize Chris Nolan films on Youtube. Hope you enjoy this one!

If you like Sci-Friday, you can go down the rabbit hole of every other Sci-Friday I’ve published in the past couple years. Happy Friday and enjoy your weekend!

Remember in The Mandalorian where they rocked a stolen AT-ST on planet Sorgan? Did you wonder to yourself – “I wonder what it looks like inside?” This guy did, and for Sci-Friday, we celebrate Max Degtyarev’s detailed cross-section Star Wars art of what it looks like inside the captured Empire scout tank.

Mandalorian fanart: Raiders’ AT-ST cross-section (Max Degtyarev)

As Star Wars art goes, this is top-notch. He gets the details right, even down to expression on the alien faces and the squashed frogs under the tread of an AT-ST’s bipedal foot. Always a joy when someone can get their ideas out of their head and onto the paper. That’s the very embodiment of Geekquinox and other key pieces of the Inkican tribe. I’m sure you’ll enjoy these pics as much as I did.

If you like Sci-Friday, you can go down the rabbit hole of every other Sci-Friday I’ve published in the past couple years. Happy Friday and enjoy your weekend!

If you love scifi, you love Futurama – it’s that simple. Matt Groenig’s love letter to pop culture and science fiction included some of the top voice actors in Hollywood including a guy named Billy West. Billy, if you didn’t already know, had already built a successful voice career doing Ren and Stimpy. He went full ‘Mel Blanc’ in Futurama, providing many of the beloved, bizarre characters you came to know and love. It’s always fun to watch a gag reel, so sit back and enjoy these Futurama voice actor bloopers:

Don’t stop here, though. Billy West has a channel on Youtube talking about some of his experiences as a pro voice actor. Definitely worth checking out if you’re interested in that side of the business.

Part of the benefit of watching Billy West and the Futurama voice actor bloopers is that it de-mystifies the entire process of making scifi. At the end of the day, it comes down to regular people coming together to make something awesome. Always has, always will. If you like Sci-Friday, you can go down the rabbit hole of every other Sci-Friday I’ve published in the past couple years. Happy Friday and enjoy your weekend!

Drum roll, please … Hooray, we did it! We made it to Sci-Friday’s hundredth post – huzzah! I’ve been doing this for one hundred blog posts now, and it’s been a fun, fascinating challenge to find something every week to highlight the fun side of science fiction.

In this week’s Sci-Friday, we have a breakdown of the VFX going into an upcoming game. Thanks to Blender, all we need to make a rich, beautiful scifi universe is a great artist, actors, and green-screens. Watch!

Did you know the Jawa’s like Van Halen? Neither did I. And yet, this stop-motion animation provides undeniable proof of the galactic popularity of EVH. The beauty of scifi, as I’ve said, is how it lets us leverage our weaknesses into strengths. The creator himself candidly pointed out: “A Jawa Plays Eruption: A Tribute to Edward Van Halen is exactly that! This was an extremely FUN way to pay respects to a musical Legend and to also challenge myself to recreate Eddie’s amazing solo, frame by frame via stop motion animation. Is it perfect? Of course not, that’s impossible and nothing ever is :-)”

Now, kick back and watch a Jawa shred on Eddie Van Halen’s eponymous work, ‘Eruption.’

Hope you enjoyed ‘Jawa Van Halen, ‘ and if you like Sci-Friday, you can go down the rabbit hole of every other Sci-Friday I’ve published in the past couple years. Happy Friday and enjoy your weekend!