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.

Happy Birthday Again Mr. Trim!

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Sunday, August 26th... Mike Trim turns 62 years old! Happy Birthday Mike, and many happy returns. To celebrate, here's an image from a disc Mike just sent me a week or so ago. I don't know anything about it except that it moves me. Nocturnal landscapes are usually rarely seen outside of horror genre paperback covers, but I like this one a lot. Nothing about it seems menacing, despite the full moon looming over the countryside. Indeed, I find the pastoral night comforting, and alluring. I'd like to look into those illuminated windows and see what's going on in the house... maybe there's a family gathering or perhaps it's just a routine evening for the inhabitants.
Either way, there's something about this painting that draws me in.
And you thought he only knew how to draw spaceships.
Have a great day and eat lots of cake, amigo!





Here's my schedule for appearances next weekend at Dragon•Con here in Atlanta:

Saturday 10:00 a.m. - The Gerry Anderson Phenomenon
With Mark Berry and Anthony Wynn
Cairo Room - Hyatt - Brit Track

Saturday 11:30 a.m. - Dressing The Future (on SF Costume in tv and film - how'd I wind up on this one?) with Rob Yancey and Ron Nastrom.
Piedmont Room - Hyatt - Classic SF Track

Saturday 2:30 p.m. - Building the Future in Plastic (with Frank Winspur from Moebius Models and Ron Nastrom - check it out, this will be fun)
Piedmont Room - Hyatt - Classic SF Track

Saturday 5:30 p.m. - Book Signing
Imperial Ballroom - Marriott - Auto Track

Sunday 1:00 p.m. - Non-Fiction for SF and Fantasy
With Mark F. Berry, John L. Flynn (m), Anne Petty, Anthony Taylor, Jean
Marie Ward, Martha Wells.
Manilla/Singapore Rooms - Hyatt - Writers Track

Sunday 7:00 p.m. - Full Boost Vertical: The Supercar Story Screening
Piedmont Room - Hyatt - Classic SF Track

Dragon•Con takes place in Atlanta from August 31-Sept 3rd.

Click here for more info on Dragon•Con.

Hope to see you there!
Anthony

Filmfax Fans Flourish Fab Future

The Future was FAB: The Art of Mike Trim is being serialized in the next 3 or 4 issues of fan favorite FILMFAX magazine! That's right, the entire text of the book (and many of the illustrations) will be in upcoming issues of Filmfax, the magazine of unusual film, television, & retro pop culture, beginning in mid-August with the Summer '07 issue, above. The magazine has elected to include several images not included in the Hermes Press edition of the book, making the issues must-have items for completists and collectors. Filmfax publisher Michael Stein is offering a special subscription deal for Mike Trim loving fans. Mike says:

The Trim article will probably run in three parts (at least) over the next several issues. If fans wish to start with the first issue now and insure
the following installments, we are offering this special subscription deal:

For $30, they would get the first Mike Trim issue FREE, plus four more
issues (and a $10 Coupon for any products purchase of $50 or more). That's
the same price for five issues of Filmfax as for just the three issues with the three installments of the Trim article at retail price.

They can subscribe by sending name, address, and credit card information
(number & expir. date) via email to filmfax@speedsite.com , or by calling us at 847-866-7155. We will send the first issue (with part one of the Mike Trim article) out to them immediately, plus the $10 Off Coupon.

That's a pretty excellent deal, folks. Filmfax sells for $9.95 per issue at bookstores, so you can see the substantial savings.
Now the disclaimer by me - Filmfax is a great magazine, one of my favorites, but they don't publish any interior color pages. All the art in the magazine except for the covers are black and white, while the Hermes Press edition is full color throughout.
My suggestion? Buy the book and subscribe to the magazine as well. You get your full dose of futuristic design/illustration everyday that way.
But then, I might be biased.

I will continue to add unused images from the book as time allows - sorry I wasn't able to maintain a more rigid schedule on this. I'll put new stuff up soon, I promise.

San Diego Smackdown Part Deux! Plus Filmfax

Booth 506. 506, 506, 506. Why can't I ever remember that Hermes PRess' booth at the San Diego Comic Con is ALWAYS number 506?
So, I'll be signing The Future was FAB: The Art of Mike Trim at booth 506 throughout the convention at various times. Check the booth itself for a schedule.

Just got this via email:

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Plus 10 more very similar pages.
Look again, that's not from the Hermes Press edition of the book...
It's from Part 1 of the serialization of The Future was FAB: The Art of Mike Trim in Filmfax Magazine.
That's right, the venerable cult and genre film mag is running the whole damned book! It's going to be laid out differently of course, and everything will be black & white (the Hermes Press edition is full color throughout) but if you're a regular Filmfax reader you'll soon enjoy the ass-kickingly cool art and passable prose of Mike Trim and yours truly, respectively. If you're not a regular reader, you should be.
Starts in the Summer issue, out next month.
Be there. Aloha.

Jaff Wayne's Musical WAR OF THE WORLDS Tickets - New Zealand

Giant War Machines descend on New Zealand and Australia when tickets for Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds Tour go on sale today!

Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of
The Worlds, Live on Stage! is set to land in Auckland's Vector Arena
on Friday 28th September 2007.

The first arena spectacular to be produced in New Zealand. This staged
musical and multimedia production of the classic HG Wells 1898 science
fiction story is a once-in-a-lifetime epic extravaganza, out of this
world entertainment, unlike anything to have hit these shores ever
before.

The production features ground-breaking special effects including a 30
foot Martian Fighting Machine (designed by Mike Trim) firing Heat Rays at the audience, 100 foot wide screens showing cutting-edge CGI-animation and Jeff Wayne conducting the 10-member Black Smoke Band, plus a 40-piece String
Orchestra.

The My Ticketmaster Internet only presale will commence at 2pm on
Friday 6th July 2007 until 2pm Saturday 7th July 2007 or until the
allocation is exhausted.

Public sale: Monday 9th July 2007, 12 noon.

Don't miss out!

Get your ticket today: http://www.ticketmaster.co.nz/promo/dfbp9i

Photo by Jeremy Pardoe for the Birmingham (England) Mail

The Art of UFO

Angelo Finamore's ART OF UFO website has a fine selection of photos and drawings of SHADO equipment, including many of Mike Trim's designs. In addition, Angelo has diagrammed every set, costume, prop, and model he could find in the show - excellent work, exhaustively researched and compiled. The ART OF UFO website is a must see for any UFO fan.

Keeping Up With The Dickens

Sorry, I'm late again getting a new image up and you must be starting to doubt my commitment to this little project. Fear not, I've returned and with a wonderful photo (shot by Mike) of fellow model shop "new hire" Roger Dicken and Stingray! Roger and Mike answered the same newspaper advertisement and were hired to work in the shop on the same day. Click the picture to enlarge it.
The company was just winding down post production on Stingray, but the boys were hired to start pre-production on Thunderbirds. This photo must have been shot fairly soon after Mike and Roger (and James Channing as well) were hired, as one of the Stingray models was obviously still laying about the shop. Another photo from this sequence (with both Mike and Roger holding the model) did make it into The Future was FAB: The Art of Mike Trim and appears on page 20.
Roger went on to be nominated for an Academy award for Best Special Effects in 1970 (along with Jim Danforth) for When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth. They lost to Bedknobs and Broomsticks!
Roger also worked on 2001: A Space Odyssey and Alien, for which he created the facehugger and other creepy creature effects.

San Diego Comic Con is fast approaching, and I'll be at the Hermes Press booth signing copies of the book again this year. The convention runs from July 25th through July 30th at the San Diego Convention Center. Here's the convention's website:
http://www.comic-con.org/cci/
Check back here for a booth number; I'll post it as soon as I find out what it is. Hope to see some old friends there and make some new ones. Please do say hello if you're going to be there!

The Whole Captain Scarlet Gang

This week's image that didn't make it into The Future was FAB: The Art of Mike Trim is the full crew photo from Captain Scarlet. The entire crew of Thunderbirds had gathered for a black and white group photograph during production of the series, and it proved a very popular image with all involved. A year or two later, everyone (sans Gerry and Sylvia this time, for some reason) posed for a color shot to commemorate the production of Captain Scarlet.
Mike Trim can be seen in the rear, beneath the puppet bridge. I've added a red arrow pointing him out. Click on the image to see it larger, of course.
Posed in front wearing Spectrum finery is The Spectrum themselves, the pop group that recorded the music for the closing credits of the show.
Many thanks to Chris Bentley of Fanderson for an enormous gaggle of images he sent me for use in the book. This came from the Fanderson archives.

Prospector Illustration

Sorry it's taken me so long to get a new image up, I've been crazy busy recently on new projects. I hope to continue adding one image per week here that didn't make it into The Future Was FAB: The Art of Mike Trim, but occasionally I'll falter - I'm imperfect like that. Click the image to make it bigger.
This is a vehicle designed for the CABS project. Mike and CABS creator Sean Robinson both have great love for the NASA Lunar Excursion Module from the Apollo program, and the Prospector is an homage to that venerable craft. Designed for mining the asteroid belt, the influence is clear, though this would have been a larger vehicle than the L.E.M. Unfortunately, the model was never created and CABS remains in limbo at the moment.

Just a heads up to let you all know that Mike's colleague and fellow Century 21 model maker Alan Shubrook has a book coming out later this year, which promises to be very exciting. Alan had his camera with him almost every day while working on the Anderson programs, and his book will include more than 200 photographs that he shot behind the scenes. Century 21 FX Unseen Untold can be pre-ordered by clicking here.

Intercepted Design Made Real

Just back from Wonderfest in Louisville, had a good show and lots of fun meeting fans of Mike's art. We sold a healthy number of books, thanks very much to everyone who bought a copy last weekend.
A real highlight of the weekend was seeing the above model, which was based on Mike's original concept art for the Moonbase Interceptor from UFO!


Scratchbuilt by B.P. Taylor, the model won the FAB Gear award for Best Gerry Anderson Inspired Model, and also a Silver medal from the judges of the Wonderfest Model Contest. More photos will be posted soon.
Enjoy,
Anthony