Steampunk Girl (John Anealio) - Lyric Video

Download This Song For Free: www.johnanealio.com

"Steampunk Girl"
from Laser Zombie Robot Love by John Anealio
(C) John Anealio 2012

Features the Steampunk Girl artwork by Len Peralta

Animation (C) Joshua Westbury 2014
With thanks to the Blender Foundation

"Steampunk Girl" Screening: Kino London

The premiere screening of "Steampunk Girl" will be at Kino London, at Electrowerkz in Angel, on 7th July 2014. Doors are at 7.30. You can find out more about this "open mic film night" on the Kino London website.

Steampunk Girl is a song by John Anealio: discover more of John's music here.

The Joy Of Text [Work in progress: Steampunk Girl]

Over the past few weeks I've been working on a new animation project: a kinetic typography video for Steampunk Girl, a song by musician John Anealio. I'll post more updates as I go. I'm discovering there's something immensely satisfying about animating with words.

You can discover John Anealio's music here.

"Soupremacy" screening: Showreel

It's a reel pleasure: "Soupremacy" will be on the programme at Showreel short film night, at the Balham Bowls Club on 28th November.

"Soupremacy" screening: Brighton Moviebar

Let the good times roll - composer David Novan and I will be at Moviebar, at the Caroline Of Brunswick in Brighton, on 3rd December for a screening of "Soupremacy."

"Soupremacy" screening: Braine Hownd

I am pleased to announce a screening of "Soupremacy" at Braine Hownd, at the Hideaway Bar in Tufnell Park on 6th November.

"Soupremacy" screening: Kino London

My animated music video for "Soupremacy" by David Novan will be on the big screen at the Kino London short film night on 14th September. Kino has moved to a new venue: the Horse Hospital near Russell Square. It's not a hospital and there are probably no horses. However there will almost certainly be popcorn.

Wheels On Fire [Review: Whip It]

First there was this re-make of Day Of The Triffids with that one minor plot change. Now we have Whip It! - the new Rollerball, without the murder, the future media politics and the balls, but just as much blood and elbowing.

This non-sci-fi film has a lot to recommend it to sci-fi fans. Directed by, you know, Charlie from Firestarter, it stars Ellen Page as a reluctant beauty pageant contestant who defies her 50s-style parents and secretly joins a Roller Derby crew. With it’s Blockers, Pivots, Jammers and unmitigated high-speed aggression, Roller Derby is the closest real-world sport to Quidditch and the film is an extraordinary juxtaposition of shy, geeky teenager coming-of-age and high-speed rollerskating carnage. Page as Bliss/Babe Ruthless is brilliant – well, we wouldn’t expect anything less, and Drew Barrymore delivers a very watchable sports film, earning her director’s wings while still finding the time to cameo as the accident-prone Smashley Simpson.

Roller Derby is gaining ground fast in the UK with two leagues active in London and several more across the country - the London Rollergirls became the first UK league to join the WFTDA last year. Naturally The Sci-Fi Gene is a fan of the steampunk-lovin' Steam Rollers team. Many RD players give themselves names that appeal to my sense of pun - soccer, golf or snooker would be vastly improved as sports if the players included R. Meg Eddon and Nuke Leah.

Digital Scavengers!

AUTUMN

FUNNY

LOST

ENERGY

DANCE CONCRETECONFUSIONSMILE

Lifting Me Up's Digital Scavenger Hunt coincided with a visit to Birmingham. Check out these other Digital Scavengers who will also be posting photos on the same themes over the next few days:

Lifting Me Up

FreakSmack

Photography by Hank Plumley

Joocy Bits & Wotnots

Water Cooler, The

Soul Energy

Pink Dandy Chatter

The Sci-Fi Gene

Kent Today & Yesterday

Be Your Own Detective

Jerome Aoustin Photography

Jay.Me

Life, The Universe...

Click 'N Light

[update 12.10.10: final list of participants with direct links to their scavenger hunt photos]

Captain's Log [Review: The Wooden Spaceships]

The Wooden Spaceships, Bob Shaw's sequel to The Ragged Astronauts, takes place on Land and Overland, two co-orbiting planets sharing a common, figure of eight atmosphere that can be traversed by air balloon. Overland has been colonised by refugees from Land fleeing an airborne disease, but a Land ship arrives to re-claim sovereignty, crewed by survivors subtly affected by the plague, and heralding the onset of a war of independence. Overland's defensive strategy - including the invention of military space stations and a number of zero gravity dogfighting techniques - is led by Toller, the hero of The Ragged Astronauts who is only too happy to abandon his unsatisfying marital life to save the world again.

The Overlanders' struggle to develop war technology in time to repel the feared attack is gripping, as is the technology itself - with only a few fictional elements (the unusually hard wood brakka and the two crystals that produce a reaction) this is a pre-steam medieval space opera and war novel. Part of the fascination is seeing these astronauts master space travel without knowing any Newtonian physics and the wrong-headed assumptions that they make as a result. Having said that, once the Land forces do appear on the scene the action is anticlimactic as the Overland forces are a little too well prepared and lucky, and always stay several steps ahead.

The book also feels as if two novels have been squeezed into one - the last third of the novel deals with a journey to the system's third planet, Farland, to resolve a paranormal mystery described in interludes throughout the earlier chapters. With a little more balance between sides in the war, and perhaps a longer, more in-depth exploration of Farland, both could easily have been fascinating stand-alone novels. The story of Overland continues in a third novel, The Fugitive Worlds.

Only Rocket Roll But I Like It

This replica of Stephenson's Rocket is more usually seen at it's museum home in York. However it is a fully working replica and for another couple of weeks, courtesy of the Science Museum, it will be chugging up and down a very short stretch of railway in Hyde Park, London. It's a smooth ride although you don't get to sit down and you may get a face full of steam from time to time, also not very fast: six year olds on rollerblades were passing us without difficulty.

Rocket was designed by Robert Stephenson. It was my inspiration for the Martian steam barge in Soupremacy so I enjoyed this first-hand experience. The original Rocket, or at least what's left of it, can be seen down the road in the Science Museum.

Soupremacy: animated music video

Soupremacy is an animated music video collaboration between myself and composer David Novan. You can see the HD version here or on the YouTube channel. This animation was produced in Cinema 4D and edited in Blender.

Edit 6.12.09: Soupremacy has been in production for almost a year: I first posted a still image of the Rocket here in January!

Let Us Crunch Some Numbers!

Clive Sinclair and Chris Curry aren't the only unlikely pairing in the history of computing - in fact I wonder if Stonehenge wasn't designed and built by two druids with opposing personalities who inspired each other to great things despite being constantly at each other's throats.

The Victorian equivalent of Sinclair and Curry were mathematicians Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace, an unlikely pairing that led to the design of the Difference Engine and Analytic Engine. Babbage himself never completed a fully working Engine - or at least that's what I'd always thought until I read the awesome 2D Goggles web comic, drawn by animator Sydney Padua.

As well as the comic strips themselves I enjoyed reading about their real-life correspondence and Babbage's journal, itself a very entertaining read, which are plundered without shame, along with other historical sources, to great effect in the comic.

I found 2D Goggles via the excellent Brass Goggles steampunk site. I previously wrote about the modern-day replicas of the Difference Engine - that totally validate the original design - here.

The world will beat a path

And cats are now officially obsolete...

Steampunk Mousetrap from Ben Dansie on Vimeo via Blendernation.

Steampunk inspiration

I took these photos of steam-powered road vehicles at Chatham Dockyards during a recent historic transport event. It's good to know that when the electricity fails we'll still be able to flatten roads.

What's the attraction of steam power? These machines can be hypnotic to watch - literally given the number of spinning parts; they're noisy, dirty and dangerous and all of this draws and holds your attention. If you understand only a fraction of the underlying principles then it's clear that they have to be the shape they are - this is form completely following function. Yet the engineers still managed to embed flourishes and appealing shapes into the structure.

These are also machines that should have rusted, fallen apart or failed long ago - nowadays who expects even a car to last more than a few years? The fact that these engines are still running now is the reason I am in awe of both the original designers and the enthusiasts who restore and maintain them today.

The Rocket Revisited

Preview frame from a work in progress. I'm playing with some steampunk ideas here:

It makes all the difference in the world...

Last year was a good year for real-world steampunk generally as tall ships resumed delivery of wine and British engineers and enthusiasts built a new steam locomotive from scratch. I got my fill of steampunk last weekend by wandering through the Science Museum: Stevenson's original Rocket, the live demonstrations of Watt's beam engines and other static steam engines, the collection of steam ship engine parts and best of all the various Charles Babbage machines including one of the working Difference Engine reconstructions. The Difference Engine is the mechanical supercomputer of the steampunk world, playing a central role in the William Gibson / Bruce Sterling novel "The Difference Engine" (1990) but, as far as anyone knows Babbage never completed a full scale version of either the Difference Engine or its successor the Analytic Engine - a mechanical computer that may have proved the equal of the punched card systems that appeared much later. Over the past few years reconstructions of the DE have been built in UK and US museums, while impressivly Tim Robinson and Andrew Carol built working engines out of Meccano and Lego respectively.



While mentioning the Science Museum I should also point out they are currently running an excellent Dan Dare exhibition, contrasting the stories and features from the comic with real-life inventions and design trends from the 50s. I have fond (if somewhat vague) memories of the Eagle and would recommend the exhibition.

Enough clacking for tonight...