WHEN MOVIES USED SCALE MODELS INSTEAD OF COMPUTERS

The US movie effects company ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) is coming up to its 40th birthday, due in May 2015. Formed in May 1975 by George Lucas, ILM has made groundbreaking special effects (SFX) for many big-name movies, including the scenes from Star Trek: Heart of Darkness seen in the video above.

RORY McLEISH - SCI-FI GENIUS AND KITBASHER’S INSPIRATION

Scots-born Rory McLeish spent much of his childhood sketching, painting, building plastic model kits and sculpting dinosaurs out of Plasticine. But these days, he uses different model skills, using computer software to create amazing worlds of fantasy. 

Thunderbirds are Go
Rory’s early influences included the likes of Gerry Anderson (of Thunderbirds fame) and this led eventually to his present role in conceptual work for commercials and feature films. All of which brings things round full-circle, because although computers are used for the CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) content of so many movies, the plastic kit manufacturers now bring many of those creations to ‘reality’ by making kits of them - which is terrific news for science fiction fans.

Star Trek Nemesis
Among the many McLeish screen commissions was to work on the Scimitar spacecraft used in the movie Star Trek Nemesis, which you can see in the YouTube clip shown above. And of course, Star Trek modelmakers are served pretty well by the kit industry, as you can see from the selection shown via the links below. Which one of these is SMN’s selection for afficionados? Hmmm, it’s hard to say - we want ’em all!

Kit-bashing
Meantime, if you don’t want to buy ‘yet another’ Star Trek or Star Wars kit or collectible, then Rory’s concepts open the door to some serious kitbashing possibilities. As you can see from the samples shown above, there’s a galaxy-full of possibilities for those of us (including this writer) who love make real models from fantastic dreams.

Visit Rory McLeish here.

Browse among some Star Trek kits here and here.

MONSTERS vs ALIENS COLLECTIBLE MINIATURES

It’s a moot point as to whether a collectible miniature of a fantasy creation is actually a ‘scale model’. In the case of the movie ‘Monsters vs Aliens’, the originals are Computer Generated Images (CGI), so in a sense collectibles in the stores are more ‘real’ than the source material.

Still, that’s one for philosophers - what’s more important is that the movie ‘Monsters vs Aliens’ is well made and huge fun. And so are the many collectibles currently flooding the supermarkets and toy stores. This pair, priced around the £5.00 GBP ($7.50 USD) mark, show the Alien Clone Robot and the evil alien overlord Gallaxhar. The pack makes them look much bigger than they are of course, but that’s typical of marketing techniques in the toy market.

Collectors probably won’t want to damage the ‘Alien Pack’, but the rest of us can open it up and place two nicely detailed models, each nearly 60 mm high, on the shelf. As for me, my robot collection has just gained another member.

The Monsters vs Aliens movie site is here, and all sorts of stuff relating to the movie is available from Amazon here.