Den Sidste Krig (The Last War)

One of the many drawings I've done for my book with the working title Den Sidste Krig - The Last War in English.
I guess the picture above pretty much gives you an impression about what it's all about...
I hope to finish it soon and that it'll be out later this year. For now only in Danish :)

This is one of the main characters, Miss Gunn...

Our protagonist is getting himself trapped by the invaders! What a once-in-a-lifetime experience, huh?

The Great Martian War

It's very well executed, though you can't help noticing how even extra-terrestrial superior beings prefer steampunk and knots and bolts in the early 20th century...

But the soundtrack is really bad - anything would have suited the video better, than this. So turn it sown and watch the invsion in all its artistic splendor :)

The Unbearable Lightness of Being Alien

I always bugs me how nearly all aliens in movies, litterature and TV obviously evolved on Earth, left  the planet ages ago, forgot all about it, turned purple, only to return and try to recapture it?
Of course I know that it's about emotions and understanding and seeing ourselves from the outside, but wouldn't it be great if just once in a while something alien - truely alien - turned up?

All aliens seems to have evolved from the exact same branch of vertebrae - mamals - with spine, skull, jaws, arms, legs fingers and toes. They're all very monkeylike. Even those with scales and wings. And this just doesn't add up or make sense.

Nom, nom, nom...

Features:
So lets just talk about the jaw for example:
All aliens have jaws. And they're full of humanlike teeth. 
The vertebrate jaw usually bears numerous teeth and probably originally evolved in the Silurian period. The jaw evolved from the most anterior two gill arches supporting the gills and appeared in the Placoderm fish. This further diversified in the Devonian. The two most anterior arches are thought to have become the jaw itself and the hyoid arch, respectively. So getting yourself a set of gills-turned-into-jaws, and then adding white teeth and fleshy lips on top of them, seems to be the hippest thing since... I don't know.. five fingers? If you want to know more about jaws, there is a neat Discovery documentary about it here.

Of all the animals here on earth it's only vertebrates, that's got this feature and a little googling has made it clear that even though species like fish (including lampreys), amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals are vertebrates, more than 95 percent of known animal species on earth are in-vertebrates.
So how come that 95 percent of all alien lifeforms are vertebrates? 
And how about that spine, eh?

How come almost no designers or worldcreators thinks about where and what their beings are coming from? And how a different evolution on a very different planet would affect life. The only way mamals could be on top of things here on Earth is because the dinosaurs died out 65 mio years ago, and left the place to us! 

99.9 % of Star Trek aliens differ from humans so little that you start wonder why they bother putting on the make up at all. I'd love to see aliens being... well, alien for a change. Not even like THE Alien, but alien as in uncomfortably strange.

One of the few TV-programs I find interesting in this way - and inspired me quite a deal - was the Discovery Channels docufiction Alien Planet.  The show uses computer-generated imagery, which is interspersed with interviews from such notables as Stephen Hawking, George Lucas, Michio Kaku and many more. Wayne Douglas Barlowe (Illustrator and Head designer on Avatar and more) has done most (if not all) of the designs of the alien creatures together with the 3D animators, scientists and zoologist, that's contributed to the making of the show. Alien Planet was filmed in Iceland and Mono Lake in California and it's so worth watching. Just remember: It's a docu-fiction, so remember it's not science fact, just imagination. 

I sometimes wonder if aliens - if we ever meet any - have more in common with the oddness and unfamiliarity of the designs of HP Lovecraft than those of George Lucas. 

Shebacca, Her Solo and Lucy Skywalker...

...And the Millennium Falconesse.

I've always loved Star Wars, but I would kinda like to see this version as well. Sometimes it really annoys me how stereotypic genders are portrayed in actions movies. 

Recently I stumpled upon the talented Austrian artist lanimalu, who'd illustrated the hobbits from LOTR as female characters, and I really loved that take on the tale, so I decided to have a go at it myself.
Especially because Han in Danish means Him - so it made sense calling this charming rogue Her :)

Bilba Baggins. Art by lanimalu

Star Wars Trailers just keeps on giving...

Im just... speechless!

A New New Hope

Art by James Hance

Star Wars VII Rumors:

Even though some of my posts might suggest otherwise, I just love a good space opera. And I must admit that I'm the biggest sucker for Star Wars. I've always been since I saw for the first time it back in '78. Out of the theatre came a little chubby 7 years old old boy, who felt a veil had been removed from his eyes. 
I read every scifi book there was in the local library, and quickly learned to love Bradbury, Herbert and Asimov. It must have been around the same time I discovered Valérian and Laureline, which I've written about here.


So you can probably guess, that I'm quite excited about the new Star Wars - episode VII - even though I've learned not to get my hopes up too high. But then again - J.J. Abrams cannot possible screw up the Star Wars saga as George Lucas did. Geroge Lucas turned his own creation into the worst pile of pointless gobbledygook through bad directing and overusing VFX. It got so silly in the end (Episode I-III), that even though the designs and visuals in general were stunning, you consciousness never left the theatre while watching the movies.


SO Anyway: According to an article in io9.com article the thing that sets the whole plot in Star Wars VII in motion is Luke Skywalker's hand and lightsaber from The Empire Strikes Back.

The new heroes of the trilogy find it (played by Daisy Ridley and John Boyega), and they decide to return it (the hand too? A bit grose, but hey, so was Jar jar) to the proper people. They run into Han and Chewie, who recognize it as Luke's (the hand or the light sabre?), but they haven't seen Luke since Return of the Jedi (I knew it! Luke just couldn't cope with the fact, that he had a crush on his sis!)."Other details include an ice planet where evil people are building a weapon that can destroy whole solar systems. (Of all the things that survived the great EU purge, I was not expecting the Suncrusher to be one of them).

In many ways this plot of Episode VII is an echo of A New Hope. Instead of R2 coming to Tatooine it's a hand falling from the sky, but the basic sweep of the story is similar, and intentionally so. But things that seem familiar may not be as familiar as you think - don't assume that every ice or desert planet in the galaxy has already been visited, if you know what I'm saying. "

The original article at Badassdigest: here.
Article in io9: here.

AND don't forget to check out J.J. Abrams own little clips (Force for Change) here: