Mike Trim Century 21 Original Art Auction!

BIG NEWS!
Mike Trim will be auctioning off twenty-three pieces of original concept art from his days at the Century 21 Productions offices! These are original drawings and color paintings that were the earliest concept art for such iconic hardware as S.I.D. and Moonbase from UFO, the Spectrum Helicopter from Captain Scarlet, and other vehicles and hardware from Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, Joe 90,The Secret Service, and UFO.
The auction will take place at Bonham's in London - here are their full contact details:

Bonham's
Montpelier Street
Knightsbridge
London SW7 1HH

Tel: +44 (0)20 7393 3900

www.bonhams.com

The auction will take place on the 23rd of June, 2010 at 2pm.
Catalogs are expected to be available in late May with full details on the pieces being offered. The website should have more information after May 23rd.

This is almost CERTAINLY the only opportunity you will EVER have to own one of these iconic originals. Plan to be there or be ready to bid by phone if you must!
Please help to spread the word by sharing this information on any social networking sites you belong to, or with friends who may be interested - just click the button below!

Fine Scale Modeler!

The current issue of Fine Scale Modeler magazine features a scratchbuilt F-116 jet from Joe 90 as designed by Mike Trim! Check out the Reader's Gallery for this excellent model.
And Happy New Year! I'll try and make a habit of posting here more often again.

Mike Trim in Filmfax, Part 3 - War of the Worlds. Uuuullllaaaa!

The final part of The Future was FAB: The Art of Mike Trim appears in Filmfax issue 117, in stores now. Look for the Shat on the cover! Thanks to Mike Stein and James Wilson at Filmfax for serializing the book, and thanks to all of you who've been buying the magazine and book and enjoying them!

I'll be signing copies of The Future was FAB: The Art of Mike Trim at Wrath of Con in Panama City, Florida, May 30 - June 1. Here's the website for more info:
http://www.wrathofcon.org/
Hope to see you there!
Anthony Taylor

It's a Cookbook!

I'm sure many of you are familiar with the Twilight Zone episode, "To Serve Man."
Based on a Damon Knight short story, the episode revolves around the arrival of seemingly benevolent aliens, who show up with the intention of serving mankind. Their leader, played by Richard Kiel, even carries around a book with the title "To Serve Man" proudly emblazoned on its cover in alien script.
Just as heroic Lloyd Bochner is about to board the alien's spaceship to take a trip to their home planet, his pal finishes translating the tome and and yells at him not to go; "It's a COOKBOOK!", she screams. Too late, the hatch closes and Bochner is trapped, on his way to the big stewpot in the sky.

I was lucky enough to get a table across the aisle from Richard Kiel as he signed photos and I signed copies of The Future Was FAB: The Art Of Mike Trim in the autograph room at Omega Con in Birmingham, Alabama, last weekend. He's a truly nice man, and a very good sport as evidenced by the photo below.


As always, click to enlarge the photos as needed.
Wow, he really makes the book look small! Thanks Richard, and thanks to all who stopped by to talk or buy a copy of the book at Omega Con. Hope to see you there again next year!

"At all costs, save the World President!"

Yikes, sorry it's taken me so long to update the blog. Hope everyone had wonderful holidays and has fully recovered by now!


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This is an image that Mike's named "At all costs, save the World President!" Combining some of the vehicles Mike's most well known for designing, it's a commission piece for James Fielding, based on an earlier painting for another client. James saw the original on display at the Fanderson Sector 25 convention in October 2006 and fell in love with it. Who wouldn't?

Still Nerdy after all those Academy Awards

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Richard Taylor sent me this photo today. He's wearing the Miketrimart.com t-shirt I gave him last year at the San Diego Comic Con. Richard is of course the owner of Weta Workshop along with Tania Roger, Jamey Selkirk, and Peter Jackson. He also wrote the foreword for The Future was FAB: The Art of Mike Trim.
The funny bit about this is that I saw another photo from this shoot which was released by Weta Workshop as an official press image in which the t-shirt was partly visible. Richard's been doing his part to get the word out about Mike's work!
Alas, the t-shirts aren't available for sale, they were promotional only.

More Fabulousness for Filmfax Funsters

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Part 2 of The Future was FAB: The Art of Mike Trim will appear in the Fall '07 Issue of Filmfax Magazine, which should be in stores at the end of November! Up this time around are art and stories from Mike's tenure on Joe 90, The Secret Service, and UFO - all three series for which Mike designed almost every futuristic vehicle or building seen onscreen! Less so for UFO, as Derek Meddings had finally finished with Doppelganger, but Mike still got to design S.I.D., SHADO Moonbase, the SHADOmobiles, Seagull X-ray, and almost every other aircraft that appeared in the series.
Filmfax is packed with other great articles and images as well - grab one the second they hit store shelves! And of course, most of the amazing art of Mike's you see in the magazine is printed in full color in the book, available at the links on the right side of this page.

More Thunderbirds Movie Concept Art

Here's a couple of concept renderings by Mike in marker for the Telehandler, a vehicle that doesn't seem to have made it into Thunderbird 2's hangar area in the film.

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The Mark 1 version may have included the Caterpillar graphics as an attempt to lure the company into paying some money for product placement in the film, or to try and entice them into making the vehicle for the production company. Working Title created a partnership with Ford to create FAB 1 and featured other Ford products in the film, so this is a fairly likely assumption.

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Mark 2 has been streamlined and the CAT graphics have been removed. The forward windscreen is reminiscent of Grand Prix racing vehicles of the 1960's, though I'm guessing the Telehandler would never make much speed. More likely, the windscreen was designed this way in order to feature the performer driving the vehicle.
I've looked through Thunderbirds: The Making of the Movie by Andrew Darling and can't find any shots of this vehicle from the film, so I'm guessing it was abandoned in the concept stage. Anyone have proof otherwise?

By the way, I came across the FIREFLY art below in the Darling book, so it was definitely from Mike's work on the film.

Firefly - Not Serenity

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Here's a marker rendition of a design for an updated FIREFLY, I'm guessing it's from Mike's tenure on the Universal Thunderbirds movie, but it's marked 2002. Mike sent me a disc full of images without captions, so I'm not sure exactly where this is from. It certainly fits in with the design aesthetic of the feature film.
There are several other updated TB2 container vehicle images on the discs, I'll try and get some details on them and post the images soon.

My Favorite Photo - Mike Trim and Anthony Taylor

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Here's a wonderful photograph of Mike Trim and myself at our book signing last October at the Sector 25 Fanderson convention. Many thanks to Tamsin Semrau for not only shooting it, but for digging around and finding this copy for me. Tamsin gets several pints on me the next time we meet.