Batmen and Stormtroopers and Ghostbusters! Oh my!

Pardon my poor blogging habits, but this post will be re-posted in the next day or two with links throughout. I would ordinarily just not post until I’m ready, but I really want to get these photos up and it’s bed time. On that note, none of my captions will line up with my photos because Windows Live Writer is for some reason not as good as it used to be. That will also get fixed. I just really want you all to see my convention photos, but it’s well past my bedtime and I just can’t deal with it right now.

New England Comic Con 2010. Was. Awesome. Excuse my poor grammar, but that’s how much fun it was. At first, when we were first planning to go, I thought it would be really fun. Then we got there Friday afternoon, everybody wasn’t there yet and people were just setting up their booths, so I was prepared for some major league boredom. So we went out with PaulC and Jill and had some Seafood. Saturday was awesome.

It was a ton of fun to see all the costumes, chat with a few comic artists and meet some of the Scooby gang. So, with no further ado, here are some photos.

Okay, I lied. Here is some ado. Several people asked me to send them the photos I took of them, so I just started handing out business cards to bring people here to my blog. If you (or something you made/own) are in one of these photos, have it. It’s all yours.

Because there are so many photos on this page (42, if I didn’t mis-count), these are jpegs and not my preferred Tiffs. They are not the best quality, and I put a watermark on them. If you want the Tiffs, I would be more than happy to send them to you. The high-quality images that I send you will not have a watermark, you can do whatever you want with them, and I don’t even want any money. I can’t e-mail them because they’re large files (50-60 Mb per photo), but shoot me an e-mail and we’ll work something out. I’m willing to mail a CD, or maybe setup a download space somewhere. Suffice it to say, we can work something out.

So here’s the show. And I talk during it.

Let me preface with this: all these photos look a lot greyer in my Windows Live Writer window than they do in my image viewer window.

First, I find it fitting that we begin with some Batmobile. This first one I took as soon as we walked in on Friday. Yes, I asked the guy. And yes, it was okay to take photos of the car. It was getting a photo IN the car that cost money. That would have been cool, but I wasn’t wearing my tights. The rest were taken at various times during the convention when I happened to see the car from a new angle.

I think this is the best one. I think they all came out okay, but some were not well-focused, and others had to be cropped down too far to be very good.

 

 

 

 

 

I didn’t notice at first that the car had the fight sounds around it. So i had to take one more shot to get them in there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And of course there was the BatCycle. this is the only decent shot i got of it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ladies and gentleman, allow me to introduce the one, the only (sort of) Harley Quinn. There were a few HQ’s floating about the big room, and this was the first Blasty McClownface to pose for me.

 

 

 

Speaking of circus freaks: where would the queen of scream be without her clown prince? Despite their perverse personas, these two were actually super friendly. Harley shook my hand for like an hour, jumping up and down the whole time, her hat bouncing all over the place.

 

Apologies to Mr. Ward, but this girl was the best-looking Robin at the con. I wish I’d gotten a better angle on this shot. If you can’t tell, she’s putting handcuffs on the Prize Prankster.

I think this is my favorite photo of the con. I saw the caped crusader, Harley and the J Man talking to the commissioner. The shot was too good to pass up, but they seemed to be having an important conversation regarding the quality of the quiltery at Arkham Asylum. So I took the shot. The jester (jestress?) saw me right before I snapped it and politely told me to buzz off.

The Dynamic Duo in all their colorful tight-wearing glory. I couldn’t have asked for a better pose for the caped crusader and boy wonder (no, not Captain Sunshine and Boy Wonder: Batman and Robin).

I’m ashamed to admit that I don’t know who this is. Yes. I know. It’s robin. But who’s that WITH Robin? At first I thought it was Rorschach, but now I’ve decided that doesn’t make any sense. Can anybody shed some light?

Right after I took this shot, I walked up to the two (actual) Boston policemen standing guard by the door behind them. I childishly asked if I could take their picture. In hindsight I should have said something like “I realize you guys aren’t in costume and that’s you’re real-life uniform. Would it be alright if I took a photo of the two of you just doing your job?” Instead I said the same thing I had been saying to everybody all day: “hey guys. Can I get a photo of the two of you?” But they were very cool and not dicks at all like they had every right to be and just said “no, we don’t do photos.” So, props to those two gentlemen for being exceptionally cool when I totally (unwittingly) disrespected them and their uniform.

Two words: Hot. Batgirl and Harley, just bein’ awesome. These two get the prize (in my opinion) for hottest costumes that I got photos of. I must point out that Supergirl was super hot. I did not get her photo because I was both dumbstruck and partially blinded by her awesomeness. Ask Kerry. She was blinded too. She was talking when we were walking out of the con and SG came strutting in, gold cape and hair flowing. Kerry stopped talking. I expected her to stop walking too, but I was able to pull her away from the shiny.

 

 

 

 

Cap was one of the few non-Batman comic book heroes in attendance at the con. He struck this pose all by himself. I’m sure this wasn’t his first rodeo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This was our first glimpse of the men (and women, but these were men) of the 501st. As they were marching by, I told Kerry to shout “remember Alderaan!” but she was too afraid.

Speaking of the 501st, I can only assume that these are the helmets of their fallen warriors. There was another group there called the “Mandalorian Mercenaries.” I don’t know if the two are affiliated (I presume that they are), so if I mistake one for the other, you must forgive me. I thought all of these helmets were really cool in their own right, and even cooler if you imagine the warriors who would wear them.

 

 

 

A welcome blast from the past was this super Sith Lord. I took a photo of him, then he saw me, then he struck this great pose. This was before I started asking people for pictures and was trying to snap surreptitiously. I’m glad I figured out quickly not to do that.

 

 

 

 

 

This accommodating member of the Grand Army of the Republic was the first person I asked to pose for a photo. He seemed more than happy to point his weapon at me, just in case I turned out to be a rogue Jedi mid-shoot. This trooper’s armor looks a lot purpler in my windows Live Writer than it does in my Windows Image Viewer. I hope it looks bluer to you than it does to me.

This suspicious-minded Mandalorian should pay more attention to his surroundings. He’s got the photographer pretty well covered, but the Jedi behind him looks about to start some shit.

 

 

 

 

Told ya. Great pose, but I wish I’d caught it from a slightly better angle. I love the way both this Jedi and Darth Maul’s lightsabers cast a cool light on their faces.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Okay. I’m not complaining. Really, i’m not. but this is the third guy in a helmet to point his gun at me. It’s a very effective pose, but it seems to be the only one of which masked Mandalorians are capable. So I asked this particular meter and three quarters of awesome to give me a second look.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Which he was only too happy to do. Truth be told, that first pose was better. Props to you, dark grey Mandalorian.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I saw Emperor Palpatine and his best-dressed apprentice walking around ominously on Friday night. Apparently that Jedi showed up and dispatched them while this poor guy was still getting his boots on. Similar to the blue clone trooper, the color of this guard’s garb is a little off here. In my preview window, it looks a lot redder, whereas here it looks a lot browner. Again, i hope you are seeing him wearing bright red-orange and not dingy maroon-brown.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The 501st had a booth setup at which they were giving the younger crowd some target practice. This brave trooper was one of the targets.

 

 

 

 

 

Some more super cool helmets. The one on the right is an empire-era pilot or driver helmet, and if I remember my history, the closer one is a clone pilot helmet. That would be before they switched to the open-faced, yellow-goggled variety.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This fine gentleman showed up on Saturday. Coincidentally, immediately following his arrival, all of the card games out in the hall started getting very one-sided. It should be mentioned that no one lost any limbs (at least, not that I was aware of).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The biggest celebrity of the con didn’t show arrive until Sunday. It was worth the wait. Has anybody seen “Beneath the Dome?” In that documentary, he was portrayed as something of a jerk. That’s pretty accurate. He was super arrogant, all rolling around twittering and being all “hey losers! I’m R2-Frickin’-D2!” It got a little annoying.

But seriously, the guy at the controls was super cool and R2 played with the kiddies.

 

The Ghostbusters of New Hampshire were also at the convention. They’re swell guys. They were taking donations for Make-A-Wish if I remember right. I caught this dude outside as we were leaving for lunch on Saturday. I was really worried I wouldn’t be able to salvage this photo. I didn’t reset my shutterspeed from when I was shooting inside. So this was shot at f/8 and 1/20 at around 1:30 in the afternoon. If you know what I’m talking about, you know that this entire photo was completely washed out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

No, this ghostbuster is not selling Fords, and neither am I. It just would have been hard to crop that banner out of the shot. So, you’re welcome New Ford Fiesta. I kinda wish this guy had given me a pose, but it’s still not a bad shot. Ghostbusters aren’t exactly common.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So I saw five ghostbusters standing by their car (which was super awesome, by the way. I think it was a PT Cruiser). Of course I asked them for a group photo. They did this cool pose. I don’t know if this was planned or spontaneous, but it made for a super shot. At first I thought they were flipping me off, and I thought “umm… there are kids around fellas, but whatever you want.” Then I realized they were just pointing and I laughed at myself.

These two officers were very friendly and wanted very badly to recruit me into their fleet of the stars. I was trying too hard to play along for any real conversation to happen. Live and learn.

So that’s all my convention photos. I have more photos that I took in the couple of blocks of Boston between the convention center and the hotel. Those will be up… later. I’m busy with school this week, but I wanted to get this con stuff up quick. I might not get to my wrapup and the outside photos until this weekend. We’ll see.

Once again, if anybody wants hi-quality copies of any of these photos, just let me know and we will work something out. Whatever is worked out, I will not ask anyone for money.

Assignment 1: Self Portrait

  So my first photography assignment was a self-portrait. I took 58 images and handed in six. I should have handed in seven. Here they are. Photoshop never touched these images. I took them all with my Canon Digital Rebel XTi and my dad’s tripod. For (mild) editing, I used Adobe Lightroom (really cool application. Check it out if you do photography).

The first thing I did with all of these photos was to set the color to 5500 Kelvin. It was off by a little bit in each one, and setting them all to daylight just made the colors look a little more real. I only cropped one after the fact, and I’ll tell you why when I get there. If you don’t care about photographic processes or what I did to edit the raw image, skip the reading. But come back for the last paragraph.

If you can’t see the images, fix your browser. Seriously, these are all tiffs. You should be able to see them in your browser. That doesn’t mean you necessarily can. If you can’t, try this. If that doesn’t work, e-mail customer service and tell them you want your browser to support the Tiff file extension. Seriously. It’s a little bit ridiculous that your browser doesn’t support Tiffs. Having said that, my understanding is that most browsers can’t display Tiffs without a plugin.

I won’t convert them to jpegs, so don’t ask. Jpeg compression supports a little over 16 million colors (8 bits per channel). Tiff supports a little more than 281 TRILLION colors (16 bits per channel). I did too much work to lose all that color data. That does mean 58mb photos, but that’s the price of 16 bits per channel. I would just put up the cr2’s, but I’m pretty certain nobody’s web browser supports raws. That being said, if someone WANTS the raws, I do still have the originals, but I saved my developed raws as Tiffs, so I don’t have raws of the finished products.

If more than one person can’t figure out how to see Tiffs in their web browser, I’ll try to figure something out. So don’t hesitate to speak up, but if you’re the only one, you will probably be ignored.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Original photo on right.

For this photo, after I filled in some light, I darkened the blacks a little bit to put some contrast into my jacket, which is all black, even though it looks like there’s some blue in it in these shots. I fixed the lights and darks, the highlights and the shadows to make the contrast across the whole image a little more. I desaturated the blues to make my jacket look black and my shirt look grey (which is what they really are). I know the jacket looks a little blue still, but I couldn’t lower the saturation any further without totally washing out the color in my jeans (I thought about just letting my jeans be grey, but this is a graded assignment and I didn’t want to look childish for having a whole bunch of sliders all the way to one side. More than that, they’re not grey. So they’re still blue). Next I desaturated the greens and yellows to mute the colors in the tree behind me and make you look where I want you to look. If you look too closely, the leaves do look a little funny. Then some noise reduction and a black vignette and done. I think this is the only photo where I’m on the right side of the frame (which is arguably where I should be).

  

Original photo directly above.

 

I was going to crop this one to get rid of the parking lot, but it’s a good thing I didn’t. Apparently it needs that dark foliage on the right side to anchor it. I guess there’s this thing: because our culture reads left to right, we need an anchor on the right side of a photo to keep our eye in it. Personally, I never see what people are talking about with rules like that. My eye stays where I want it to go. I always see a different focal point in an image than everybody else, and my eye doesn’t “slide off the page.” But rules are there for a reason, and there’s no point breaking them if you don’t know why they’re there in the first place (in art). This is one of only a couple of shots that I took at an upward angle. Turns out, that’s a good idea. It makes your subject look more important. “Larger than life” is I think the appropriate description.

I edited this image in color first, then converted it to greyscale. In hindsight, I wish I’d made the decision initially to go grey. It would have saved me a lot of work. I had to fill a lot more light in this one. That’s not necessarily a big deal, except that it keeps making my jacket and t-shirt look blue. I totally blew out the lights and highlights to completely wipe out the sky. To compensate, I had to darken the shadows to show some contrast. I then lightened the darks a bit to make my book a little more visible.

I heavily desaturated the reds, greens and yellows, to take focus away from the trees and the brick building behind me. This also of course desaturated the bench, which I wanted to keep highlighted, but you can’t have everything. I don’t like to play with the secondary colors, but in this case I completely desaturated the aqua “channel” to wash-out the bright green awnings in the parking lot to the right. To finish up, I desaturated the blues again, dumped in a ton of noise reduction, and added the dark vignette. At Kerry’s suggestion, I popped this one to greyscale after I had already fixed it up. I think it works better that way, and so did Professor Ruderman. Score.

 

I actually was pretty happy with the way this image came out of the camera. But I think you’ll agree: my final product looks better. I didn’t hand this one in with the assignment because it didn’t occur to me to put it in greyscale until later that day. I think it’s better than the other one of me in the window. Hence, Lesson 2: always try grey. Any given photo might look better in greyscale, and you just don’t know until you see it. For this shot, I actually had to set the tripod on the bed. So it was a little tricky to line things up just right without leaning on the bed. Even clicking the shutter button I had to be careful not to put any downward force on the tripod or it would screw up my focus.

 

 

I think this particular image has the heaviest vignette of any of the ones in this article. Just because it was so bright out, and I had to play with the light so much (in LightRoom, not “on set”), I needed to make the room dark again without darkening outside the window too much. I did have to play with the light a lot more delicately, just because I wanted to keep that window super bright. I didn’t NEED to play with the colors quite so much in this one, since there was plenty of light in the original shot. I actually added overall color saturation. After darkening the room a bit, it became very apparent that the wall behind me is in fact not quite pure white. So I cranked the yellow saturation down to almost nothing. That also made the gold coloring on my book look lighter and more golden. I also took out almost all of the green so as to keep your eye away from the trees outside, which all looked especially brilliant green all day. While this particular shot never made my t-shirt look blue, it did make my pants look especially vibrant, so I pulled down the blue saturation as well. To finish up, I did the usual noise reduction and added a heavier vignette than usual (I don’t think it’s overpowering).

This time, instead of just clicking the greyscale button, I reset the image back to raw and started all over. I think it looks just as good as the outdoor grey, and I  was able to drop about half of the heavy vignette that the color image needed. At least, that’s what it looks like. After double-checking my numbers (LightRoom is so awesome), it turns out the vignette here is actually about ten percent heavier. It’s just less dramatic because there’s no color.

 

 

 

 

This is the one I cropped. It looks okay now, and it looks fine after I’ve played with it. I’m happy with the crop. I think it makes the shot work much better. If I wasn’t happy with the crop, really what I should have done is re-shoot. The backpack and the couch cushion, which I put in on purpose (damn my eyes!), were just full of noise when I filled in some light and played with the levels. No amount of noise reduction could make them look okay. And in fact, the couch itself picked up a good amount of noise, but by being anal about the light levels, and careful with my noise reduction, I made it (mostly) go away. I shot this one downward… because. I was experimenting with different things all day, and it  was time to crank the tripod up as high as it would go. For this shot, I think it worked.

 

If you zoom in on the lightened corner of the couch, you might still be able to see some of the noise I was talking about. If you zoom in on the right side of my face (my right, not your right), you will definitely see some color noise.

Again, photo way too dark. Available light was just not my friend today (on the other hand, I learned how to light without flash and how to correct for available light). Not only did I have to raise the exposure in LightRoom, I also lit up the shadows, the darks and the highlights.

I didn’t touch the colors here, and I wish I had. I should have brought down the saturation on the blue channel just a bit. My pants really do look too vibrant, and the shadows in my shirt look a little blue.

Yes, that’s a different book sitting open than the book I’ve been reading all day. That’s my photography text book. Sitting on the table in front of me is the complete works of Edgar Allen Poe, which is the book in all the other shots.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This one was a bitch. I took six or seven shots with the sword, and this was the only one that didn’t look like I was displaying the sword. I knew right after I took it that this one was out of focus and I really wish I had re-shot it. Lesson 1 (or rule 2): If it looks out of focus on the camera’s little two-inch led screen, it’s WAY out of focus. re-shoot it. I really had to beat the piss out of this image to make it presentable. As an art project, I’m fairly satisfied with the results. As a graded assignment, I wrote my professor an e-mail and told him I didn’t mean to hand this one in.

 

 

 

Here’s how it came out. I sharpened it to within an inch of its bits. That helped, but it still looked like crap. I dumped in all the luminance and color noise reduction LightRoom could muster. That helped a little more, but it still looked really bad. Finally, I did something I never do. I added film grain effect. Kill me. Kill me now, Kill me quick. Film grain looks bad. There is no reason to ever ADD film grain to a photo. Grain is what makes old photos harder to work with. I will never understand why this “feature” exists anywhere, particularly in a professional digital image manipulation application. Why would you ever intentionally make an image look inarguably worse? The film grain didn’t make the image look better. Don’t you dare say it did. What it DID do is make it appear as though I made the image look like shit on purpose. Will I hang this one on the wall in my office? Yeah probably. This one is getting printed at 300 dpi and put in an expensive-looking frame. It’s going to follow me around for my entire career as a professional photographer as a reminder of lesson number one: RE-SHOOT!

 

I was lucky this shot turned out well. I only took it once, and I didn’t expect to use it. I just thought I better get a shot at the tree without the sword. I also took one with the book before this one. This was my last shot of the day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I wasn’t going to use this one, but I wanted to put in one more shot, it was too late to go back outside and get one and all of the shots at of me at my computer sucked (and too bad. some of them were okay).

I really didn’t have to do very much to this one. The two issues that came up in just about every photo I handed in were the trees and the blues. In this one as well, I dumped the saturation on the greens and yellows, and dropped it a bit on the blues. I did put in a little vignette, just to keep MY eye from wandering out of the image. YOUR eye might be held in by the shed to the right. My eye is not so easy fooled.

 

 

This was my third shot of the day. It needed a TON of light adjustment. Shooting directly out a window is a bad idea. It looks okay on the subject (if you’re not square with that as well), but it totally erases all the shadows and highlights everywhere else. There’s just light and dark. Anyway. It took me a few shots to get my hands in just the right position (notice I hadn’t put all my rings on yet). I kept taking a shot, then looking at it in the camera preview screen, then holding the book and trying to twist my head around to see my hands. Vain, I know. But that’s just the kind of narcissist I am.

 

 

 

So here’s the finished product. This is the first one I edited, and I think it came out alright. I wish I had killed the trees a little more, and I wish I had washed out the blues a little more also. I basically just fixed the light, raised the overall saturation, then made the reds just a ting bit yellow because it looked like I was wearing red lipstick.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So the problems I had in just about every photo were: vivid vegetation drawing attention from magical me, jeans, t-shirt and jacket too blue, and noise reduction basically sanding down the ribbing on my t-shirt. That was an interesting dilemma. I chose that particular shirt because it has some interesting texture to it and because it’s pretty close to a middle grey. So obviously, I wanted to keep the texture visible.

Noise reduction reduces the amount of colored “snow” in the image by averaging every pixel with the pixels adjacent to it. Unfortunately, that also makes the texture of my shirt disappear, leaving just a slightly (almost imperceptibly, in some cases) darker stripe right down the middle. So in every shot, I had to balance three things: the need for light, the need for noise reduction, and the desire for my nice, textured t-shirt to be accurately represented. Any rational human would probably say “damn the torpedoes!” and just use too much noise reduction.

But that would be too much. So, in trying to keep the texture of the shirt, I was able to judge just how much noise reduction was too much.

The jacket vs. pants quandary was a constant battle. Part of me said “fuck it. Let there be a blue shadow on the jacket.” The same part of me said “fuck it. Let the pants be grey.” The (thankfully) sane, third part of me (whom I have named Dan Forsythe) said “compromise.” So the jacket has just a hint of blue shadow to it, and the jeans look a little washed out (which they actually are). Next time, I’ll remember this and dress accordingly. I’m not sure what that means. I’ve learned my lesson, I’m just not able to apply it yet.

The trees were an easy fix: dump the saturation on green and yellow. It’s just lucky I wasn’t wearing anything green or yellow.

So that’s all the photog tech talk. The rest of you can start reading again. Really all I wanted to say is: if any of you (gramma, mom, etc.) want copies of any of these, I can make that happen. Let me know.

G.I. Joke

Image via Wikipedia

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra just got put on Netflix’s instant play list in the past week or two. So I just got done watching it. Before I get to anything serious, let me just say: you should see this movie. It is exciting, entertaining and the acting was mostly (see below) pretty good. The production designer is a genius, and the stunt choreographer was good. Not magnificent, nothing breathtaking. Just good. For anybody who still knows who Alan Silvestri is, he wrote the music. So it wasn’t John Williams, but it wasn’t Has Zimmer either.

Now, on with the show. This movie sucked. I mean it sucked balls. If you had told me when I was seven years old that in twenty years there would be a G.I. Joe live-action movie and that it would suck this hard, I would have kicked you square in the nuts.

I would have done this because G.I. Joe is awesome. It always was, and it always shall be. Lasers flying all over the place and four main characters ever get shot (good guys or bad). Super cool vehicles (land, sea and air) that look like they could be in use in the near future but which, under close scrutiny, are completely implausible (but really, who scrutinizes that kind of thing?).

This movie was completely and unapologetically ridiculous. From the egg-headed Scarlett (who “graduated college” at age twelve) who denies the existence of human emotion, to the complete and utter mis-representation of nano-technology (and science and scientists in general), to the fucking awesome vehicles of every variety, nothing about this film was beyond mildly believable. The story idea is not totally bogus, but the screenplay was written by three fourth-graders from South Park, Colorado.

Let me start with Scarlett. First off: super hot, as were all (3) of the females in the movie. This is as it should be. They don’t let non-smokin’ hot chicks into G.I. Joe and they never have. Second: super-smart. I guess. They say she’s super-smart, so she must be. Right up until she says this: “Attraction is an emotion. Emotions are not based in science. If you can’t quantify or prove that something exists, well, in my mind it doesn’t.” Is there anything true about that statement? Let’s examine.

“Attraction is an emotion.” Well, no. It isn’t. Happy is an emotion. Attraction is a biological imperative. Dogs are attracted to one another. Insects and birds are attracted to one another. Anything that reproduces sexually is attracted to its sexual partner. Whether or not dogs have emotions is debatable, But organisms with no brain or self-awareness absolutely do not.

“Emotions are not based in science.” What the hell does that even mean? That there’s no scientific basis for their existence? No scientific way of describing them? No scientific process by which they can be studied, reproduced and consistently explained? In any of those cases: patently not true. Scientifically speaking, emotions are neural chemical reactions caused by the application of external stimuli. Is that scientific enough for you?

“If you can’t quantify or prove that something exists…, it doesn’t.” Quantify yourself and prove to me that you exist. Go ahead. I dare you. “I think, therefore I am,” is a plausible response to that challenge. Great. You clearly don’t understand “I think, therefore I am.” That only proves to a person that they themselves exist. So now you’ve convinced me that I exist, but not that you do. That being said, emotions can be quantified and proven to exist. The fact that psychiatrists are able to make a living is proof enough. If emotions didn’t exist, there would never be any such things as religion, war, murder or funerals. Want me to quantify an emotion? Measure the brain waves of a sleeping human. While still monitoring, stab that human in the hand. You’ve just observed and measured an emotion named “panic.” Proved.

In summation: the problem isn’t that she’s stupid. It’s that she doesn’t exist. No one as intelligent as Scarlett is purported to be would say the things that she says. Even Spock doesn’t deny the existence of emotions, or even that he has them.

On to the mis-representation of science. Apparently, you can just walk into any “science lab” in the world and they can “weaponize” a nano-technology weapon with stuff they have on-hand. Their “weaponization software” just needs the right commands to activate the nanobots. I was under the impression that to “weaponize” something was to somehow change it into a form that could be used as a weapon, and was really more a matter of R&D than of actual physical labor. But apparently it means “to activate a unit of ammunition so that it is ready to be deployed.” And all you need is a blue laser.

Let’s not even talk about chunks breaking off an icepack and sinking to the bottom of the ocean.

According to General Hawk, GI Joe is made up of all “alpha dogs.” Whatever you say. Any organization made up of “alpha dog” type personalities would eat itself alive on a daily basis. I’m not saying two alpha dogs can’t work together, but I bet a lot of good psychologists would. Regardless, an operation as large as GI Joe, composed entirely of alpha wolves, would be constant anarchy.

Also, I’m pretty sure guys don’t get asked to join special ops groups because their friend scored really well on the entrance exam.

Let’s talk about actors. I like actors. for the most part, I liked all of the actors in this movie. Christopher Eccleston and Dennis Quaid both gave solid performances that should have been much larger. Ray Park as Snake Eyes was magnificent as he always is, and Marlon Wayans turned in another performance of “look at me! I’m Marlon Wayans!” And the former nobodies for whom this was a big break were all pretty good. It’s pretty unfortunate for them that this movie was their big break.

After all that negative, here are some positives. As I said above, the vehicles in this movie are all toy-worthy. I want to play with those one-man fighter subs. The accelerator suits are equally want-ariffic. All the tech in the movie was really cool. At least half of it (“Telepresence” by Cisco, for example) was totally ridiculous, but still pretty cool.

To sum up: see this movie. As I said above, it was a ton of fun. I really, really wish it had been as well-written as its budget deserves, but I guess we can’t have everything all the time.

Daz 3D Studio

So I stumbled across this really cool design tool. Basically what it does is let you play dolls on your PC. You take a person, put clothes on them, grab some scenery and pose the person. This is basically a free version of a program called Poser. Here’s what I made today:

This is one of the free dolls you can get from Daz3d.com. I also found this cool multi-display console somewhere. I initially had her standing at it, but then I found a Captain Kirk chair, so I put her in that. She looks much less stressed this way. Then I dropped the whole scene in a TNG hallway just to have something in the background. All told, I spent three or four hours working on this.

The time-consuming thing is actually posing the doll. You have to control each individual joint in its body, right down to the third knuckle. So doing something like pointing a finger or grabbing something is just tedious. But the end product is fun, so I say it’s worth it.

Tons of fun, and free. Sort of. The 3D Studio software is free, and the most popular male and female dolls are free. Where they get you is content. There’s a ton of 3rd-party content out there, but most of it requires that you have this or that piece of paid content which costs anywhere from 3.95 to 20 macaroons. I’ve put the adult dolls in some fun poses, but I can’t get any clothes for them yet, so for now I’m stuck with the anime chick I used for this scene. Not terribly disappointing, but she makes everything look cartoony.

Just thought someone else might be interested in this. I’d love to be able to afford something like 3DS Max or Bryce so I could whip up (in a manner of speaking) my own content, but for now I’m happy just using other people’s Star Trek objects to play space house. And with classes beginning this week, the last thing I need is a new toy.