Lauren Davis

Ender’s Game studio tries reaching out to the LGBT community

This week, we wondered whether a boycott against the Ender’s Game movie—prompted by author Orson Scott Card’s particularly disgusting views on homosexuality—might be successful. It seems that Lionsgate, the studio distributing the film, is taking the prospect of a boycott seriously, issuing a statement to distance itself from Card. Via HitFix, here is the statement…

Concept Art Writing Prompt: The Creature Waiting at the Bus Stop

You can encounter some odd characters while waiting at the bus stop, but few are quite as odd as this fellow. What happens at this unlikely bus stop meeting? This piece is by illustrator Michelle Lamoreaux, via The Art of Animation. See if you can come up with a story inspired by this drawing, and…

Watch Pacific Rim‘s rousing opening and closing titles

Even if you’re not battling kaiju (or getting ready to watch Pacific Rim this weekend), the opening and end titles for Guillermo del Toro’s latest outing features great pump-you-up music and some lovely CG. Imaginary Forces created both sequences, the first to evoke the ominous threat of war and the second to celebrate the movie’s…

Man of Steel concept art puts Zod in more alien armor

We already know that Superman’s outfit went through many, many iterations for Man of Steel, but the Kryptonian armor also saw its share of designs. Concept artist Ed Natividad shares some of his Kryptonian armor studies, including Zod’s warrior helm. There is definitely a range of designs here, from medieval-inspired clangers to suits that feel…

The rather creepy 19th-century machine that spoke with a human voice

Euphonia was a bizarre sight to behold: a machine bearing a disembodied woman’s head attached to bellows that reportedly spoke with a “sepulchral” voice. But it was also the most advanced talking machine of its day, one that may have links to the invention of the telephone. Euphonia was constructed by Joseph Faber, a German…

Apocalyptic Velma and Scooby-Doo have got some zombies to kill now

We adore Travis Pitts’ Threadless t-shirt design in which Velma and Scooby-Doo are the sole surviving members of Mystery Inc. in the midst of the zombie apocalypse. Cosplayer The Queen of Chibiland grabs a great dane and brings zombie-hunting Velma to life. Photos are by City Light Studios. [via Fashionably Geek]

Movie posters for the Sharknado sequels nobody asked for

Sharknado may have been a ratings flop, but there are still so many natural disasters that Syfy could mashup with hungry sharks. Buzzfeed’s John Gara has come up with six movie posters for fishy storms more deadly than a Sharknado. Perhaps rather than sticking to the shark theme, Syfy could mine other fearsome creatures of…

What happens when a closeted superhero falls for a supervillain?

Things are going pretty well for Kyle, the pyrokinetic superhero of Alex Woolfson’s webcomic The Young Protectors. He’s on a successful young superhero team and he’s got himself a great set of teammates. But he’s also gay and very much in the closet. And, on the day he finally pokes his head out of the…

An X-Force movie is in the works—and maybe a Magneto film, too

With a new Wolverine movie on the horizon and production on X-Men: Days of Future Past clipping along, it looks like Fox is looking to further expand its corner of the Marvel Universe with a Cable-led X-Force movie. And we may be seeing a Magneto spinoff as well. After the site X-MenFilms.com noticed that Fox…

Star Trek fan episode feels like an extension of the original series

We were excited last year when we saw that Mythbuster Grant Imahara and Christopher Doohan (son of Star Trek’s James Doohan) would be starring in a Star Trek fan series. Now that the first episode of Star Trek Continues is out, we’re delighted to see how thoroughly it pays homage to the original series. Vic…

A Dramatic Tribute to Moebius

Nicolas Delort‘s black-and-white airship roars onto the page in this piece inspired by the legendary artist Moebius. Delort created this homage for a contest for the Moebius-themed blog The Airtight Garage. Delort has other equally striking ink illustrations on his blog, notably his Harry Potter pieces. [Nicolas Delort via The Art of Animation]

The Sunday schedule for Comic-Con is now up, making the schedule complete! Also check out the map of the convention floor to finish planning your Comic-Con week.

Original Doctor Who theme song slowed into 20 minutes of alien music

YouTube user telegenicx slows songs down and stretches them out into long and languid sonic experiences. Ron Grainer’s original 1963 Doctor Who theme song is particularly well suited to this time stretching, transforming into 20 minutes of otherworldly mood music. [via Dangerous Minds]

A charming and absurd black comedy about a family’s killer curse

Michael Duignan’s short film Ten Thousand Days has a definite Quentin Tarantino flavor with a frothy topping of macabre absurdity. Every male member of the Duncan clan dies on his 10,000th day of life, and Darby Duncan is convinced that he’s next. But what happens when death doesn’t go according to plan? Benedict Wall plays…

Crowdfund a quantum physics board game and a Victorian taxidermy doc

If you love adorable kittens that have been modeled into macabre taxidermy scenes, you can kick in to fund a documentary about Victorian taxidermist Walter Potter. You can also try to grab a board game about quantum physics, a video game that uses real Martian topography, and fund a new season of the web series…

Phoenix Jones mini-doc peeks into the psyche of a real-life superhero

Phoenix Jones‘ tenure as a “real-life superhero” patrolling Seattle’s streets has not been without controversy, but it’s still fascinating to hear him talk about his costumed crimefighting in his own words. This mini-documentary by the Avant/Gard Diaries interviews Jones about his experiences. Jones is still very much active in Seattle. Just this past week, Jones…

Claymation aliens turn a petty dispute into an all-out animated war

For the latest entry in his Illustrated Aliens series, Andy Martin takes us to Planet Six, where his part-claymation, part-hand-drawn aliens find themselves engaged in a small argument that escalates quickly into a violent battle. The clay will fly. Earlier, we shared two earlier videos from Martin’s series: Planet Four and Planet Five. Each month,…

Intricate illustrations of elaborate and impossible buildings

Toby Melville-Brown began his Tower series as a fanciful mishmash of his favorite architectural styles. But as his towers grew more elaborate and fanciful, he began to imagine the futures in which these buildings might exist. Melville-Brown explains that he is fascinated by the “synthetic landscape” of human civilization, and to that end, he imagines…

Designer creates a narrow house suspended between two sheets of fabric

Tanya Shukstelinsky’s Cocoon project is a whimsical take on urban housing, imagining a world in which skinny dwellings are made from cleverly segregated sheets of fabric. Shukstelinsky created this prototype, which she describes as “temporary living spaces for urban nomads,” as part of her final year project Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem.…

Incredible X-ray video captures a bat in flight

To better understand why bats are the only mammals capable of sustained flight, a team of biologists at Brown University is examining ultra high-speed X-ray videos of fruit bats as they launch themselves into the air. Led by Nicolai Konow, the team used X-ray Reconstruction of Moving Morphology (XROMM), a technology that integrates 3D renderings…