Titans Terrors and Toys

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...