Go Outside and DO something...

My mother and stepfather used to say this a great deal when I was younger: "Go outside and DO something...you spend too much time reading and doing Star Trek stuff".  I suppose it was understandable.  My friends and I were into this up and coming thing called home computers and if we weren't playing on a TRS 80 or Commodore Vic 20 (my brother Mr. Fancypants had a Commodore 64) we were digging through Dungeons and Dragons books trying to figure out how we were going to make it through the next game.  We did go out sometimes...to the arcade.  Video games back then were in a cabinet, not a console and quarters were in high demand.  It was the Geek Dark Ages. 
One of my friends and I decided that Dungeons and Dragons was cool, but making a sci-fi movie would be more fun.  Soon we were carting home weird junk and piecing together a "bridge".  Most of the credit belongs to a guy named Mark Smart (fortunately he is really really smart or the name might have been a burden).  We spent hours either in his basement or eventually in my upstairs spare room risking fire from the many many christmas lights and light bulbs lighting up our bridge and heating up the room.

Most of you probably won't recognize it, but those top panels are 4 pieces from an abandoned "LEGS" pantyhose display.  There were also lots of fake buttons you could buy in bulk from Radio Shack back in the day (when Radio Shack was something other than phones and overpriced junk).

I helped mostly with the navigation and helm console: It had everything from light bright pegs (some of you are thinking 'what is a light bright peg?') to milk carton caps.  Duct Tape brought it all together.

If you're going to do a sci-fi film, you gotta have a spaceship, right?

This construction paper and toothpick shapeship was pretty awesome, really.  It's a shame the film never really came together.  We did have some fun, though!
Why we didn't date more, I'll never understand...sci-fi, computers, model ships...we were HOT. No-seriously, those lights brought the temperature up by 20-30 degrees. We were really hot.

So jumping forward from the 80's to the late 90's, I'd finally grown up.  What was I doing at night?  Working on a model of the bridge, of course.  It was scaled to go with some 9" action figures...ok ok ok..they were dolls. I had hoped to do a stop action film and the bridge was going to be the first set.  I did, in fact, do a small film for a sales meeting at work, but it is long gone.

The bridge model was about 6' in diameter and eventually had to be taken apart and it was ruined in storage (much like the earlier bridge set).

So, now it's 2012 and things are VERY different.  I work with a computer most days, and build crazy fun sci-fi and steampunk creations whenever possible.  This week I'm prepping for a large sign mural..almost 36 feet long.  After that, I have a stop motion idea that I've been toying around with for a long, long time...