Titans Terrors and Toys

Recently, Netflix announced that an animated entry in the Terminator franchise will be arriving on its platform sometime in the near future. This announcement was made along with a teaser trailer that doesn’t show anything, other than to announce that a Terminator animated series (simply named Terminator ) is coming to Netflix soon. The new animated series will be written by Mattson Tomlin and produced by anime studio Production I.G. Not much is known about the plot of the series, other than that it takes place in 1997 a few days before “Judgement Day”. How this fits into the other Terminator timelines (if any) remains to be seen. I’ve been waiting for an update about this animation series for a while. It was first announced way back in early 2021, and news about this show had become so scarce since then that I assumed it did not make it past a pilot episode. Hollywood does have a habit of announcing projects that ultimately never see the light of day: for example, TV spin-offs have ...

I have to hand it to Super7. After they decided to keep the 3.75” scale action figure standard alive, it has become clear that they are willing to pick up ANY merchandising license from which to make 3.75” scale action figures. As such, their latest line of action figures is one I certainly did not expect them to do: a four-figure line of characters based on covers of controversial horror comics that were printed during the 1940s and 50s before the Comics Code Authority in 1954. The selection of figures Super7 is releasing as part of this line are based on the covers from the pre-code horror comic titles Baffling Mysteries , Black Cat Mystery , Chilling Tales , and Ghostly Weird Stories . The cardback art features reproductions of the original covers, and each of the figures also have glow-in-the-dark versions. I'm not sure why these four particular covers were selected by Super7, although the Radium Man figure represents one of the more shocking covers from that time.  Super7...

For those of you who live in and around San Diego and love playing with virtual tech, you're in luck this Halloween. The Phantom Gallery: A Spook Augmented Reality Art Experience is on its way! The Phantom Gallery exhibit will consist of Halloween-themed augmented reality (AR) art created by a group of digital artists (and yours truly) and will be exhibited in the Old Town neighborhood of San Deigo, California on Friday, October 27. This self-guided, in-person event will be a unique experience, where folks will stroll through the streets of Old Town to uncover hidden ghostly masterpieces that only reveal themselves through the latest AR tech. The artists who are participating in this augmented art show include Cabel Adams , Kevin Ang , Jacki Clark , Holliday Horton , Jason Rogalski , and Willowmoon Art . I will have some AR pieces in this show as well, including my virtual VHS rental shelves and a few 3D posters of classic movie monsters. Three of the AR ghosts who will appear i...

In the current media age of streaming platform madness, the Alien franchise seems to be doing well for itself. It has had two recent video game releases, a new movie and a new TV series in the pipeline, and a VR title in development by Survios . Unfortunately, there have been some drawbacks, such as the recent announcement that the mobile game Alien: Blackout will be removed from all app stores by the end of this month. Here is an official statement that was recently released by the game's development team: I was among the fans who were disappointed that the sequel to 2014's amazing Alien: Isolation was going to be a mobile game, so I didn't give much consideration to Blackout when it was released back in 2019. However, now that I have an iPad, I decided to give this game a shot before it completely disappears and I am VERY glad that I did.  Blackout takes place immediately after the events of Isolation , and players assume the role of Amanda Ripley (again voiced by A...

As a nerd who loves collectibles, I've seen plenty licensed merchandise connected to all sorts of movies, TV shows, comic books, cartoons and video games. Yet of all the titles that keep popping up in collector circles, the one that repeatedly surprises me is a film that has been lost forever: London After Midnight (1927). London After Midnight was a mystery horror film from the silent era that starred legendary horror actor Lon Cheney (a.k.a. "The Man of a Thousand Faces") and was directed by Tod Browning. Even though all copies of this film have been lost, that hasn't kept posters, film stills and publicity photos of Lon Cheney in makeup as his Midnight character Professor Edward Burke from being shared among monster movie fans and published in books and magazines. It also hasn't stopped the steady production merchandise based on Professor Burke, which so far has included model kits, statues, busts, and figures of varying sizes and features. For a film that h...

When it comes to the current state of augmented reality (AR), I'm going to paraphrase Charles Dickens: It is the best of times, but it is also the worst of times. Thankfully, we have Autobot leader Optimus Prime to show us the way (sort of). I've spent over a year using Polycam and RealityScan to take scans of all sorts of 3D objects. While I've put some scans on display in FrameVR galleries I set up online, I'm still trying to figure out what to do with them in AR. I have yet to find a good platform for the distribution of AR content, but I recently heard that Snapchat has added AR capabilities to its lens feature. I don't expect Snapchat to become the YouTube equivalent for AR content, but it's a start. Last Thursday, I created an AR lens of scan I took of a scrap metal sculpture of Optimus Prime so that Snapchat users can bring this Autobot into their own AR spaces. This must have been a good choice, because it has gotten over 55,000 views since then. O...

It's been said that you can't go home again, but you certainly can use augmented and virtual reality software to re-create it. As a fan of trashy VHS cover art (see previous posts here , here and here ), I still miss the local VHS rental store experience from the '80s and '90s. It was almost like going to a tasteless art gallery that's filled with shocking, gaudy paintings. Since the VHS era has been over for a long time and video rentals have shifted to online transactions and vending machines, I took it upon myself a year ago to use AR to re-create the kind of horror movie rental shelves I remember from those bygone years. Of course, I'm not the only one who misses the VHS rental experience and I've seen a few re-creations of video stores on social VR platforms. One of the most accurate replicas I've seen is a Blockbuster video store that's part of the same shopping plaza as 77077 Arcade & Bar , which can be found on the VRChat platform. Howe...

I've been having a wonderful time in VR, with its vast selection of social experiences, unique environments, and immersive games. However, one thing that I did not expect was how much VR would contribute to the practice of meditation. Here are a few VR titles that I recommend for those who are looking for peace of mind through mesmerizing digital spaces. Personally, I've frequently found it difficult to meditate. I've got way too much intrusive clutter inside my head to quiet it on my own, so using audio and visual cues like the ones provided in these apps has successfully helped me focus on relaxation. These apps also demonstrate the biggest advantage that VR has over other mediums: its focus on engaging three-dimensional environments. Providing beautiful, relaxing spaces that can be readily accessed through a headset is something no other form of media can do, not even AR. Of the VR meditation apps I've tried so far, I've divided them into three categories: enviro...

In the many years that I've been a fan of Jaws , I'm still amazed at how often fans have stepped up with their own contributions to the franchise's enduring popularity. I've seen fans produce books , screen-accurate replicas , and even feature-length video tours related to Jaws , productions that Universal would never bother with but nevertheless keep the franchise afloat among the fan community. Adding to this sizable selection of fan-fueled content is Shark Summer , a young adult graphic novel by Ira Marcks that was published in 2021. I try to keep myself updated on the release of new Jaws content, but I didn't know Shark Summer existed until I saw it at a local bookstore a few weeks ago. Just looking at the cover, which prominently features the word "shark" and Marckus' recreation of Roger Kastle's iconic shark art looming behind the book's main characters, my Jaws junkie impulses kicked in and I bought the graphic novel after quickly ...

Here's the Crocodile 1979 movie poster as it appears in 3D augmented reality. I used Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Aero to make this AR model.

When I was a kid, I collected small, die-cast Matchbox cars. Matchbox cars were fun, durable toys--three-inch cars and trucks of a wide variety of colors and shapes that were ready for play. Now that I'm older, my tastes in scale-sized car replicas have become more ambitious, making them the perfect fit for Nifeliz's 1:10 scale R18 race car kit. Nifeliz sent me a kit to assemble, and here's my review of this impressive build. Nifeliz has established a great reputation for ambitious brick car replica kits, and the R18 kit ably lives up to that standard. This kit consists of 1,685 pieces (including rubber tires for the wheels), and the finished car is 19 inches long and 9 inches wide. Below are pictures of the R18 box, which has a front graphic that's designed to look like the hood of an R18 car. The instruction manual is printed on glossy paper and features 162 pages of instructions that line up with the numbered bags which contain the parts. The instructions are clear a...