action figures

Homage to ALIEN (1979)

I love toys and action figures. I love Ridley Scott’s 1979 science-fiction masterpiece “ALIEN”. I especially love toymaker NECA and their toys based off of that film.

I took a week and sat down with some of these figures and created some small “moving stills” vignettes so that I could play with composition and moving the camera and smoke and lasers and all kinds of stuff.

Over the next three days I’ll be posting the three videos I created from that week of playing and experimenting. Some of these use audio and music from the 1979 film.


If you have any questions or comments or just want to talk about how awesome ALIEN is, leave a comment and let’s talk shop!

Sh*t Got Real JC: Part 2

Wander • Shit Got Real JC

Last week a post about my ThreeA figure "Sh*t Got Real JC" was published.  He rules.  Over the weekend I brought him over to Clough State Park, which I have done with my other ThreeA figures in the past, and spent a lovely afternoon making images with him.

Intimidation • Shit Got Real JC

A word of advice to other ThreeA collectors out there that like to take photographs of their figures:  BE CAREFUL WITH THE WRIST PEGS!  While trying to remove that awesomesauce Mad Max jacket I have for him, I pulled on the sleeve too hard and his wrist peg snapped.  This is the second time I've had a wrist peg snap - the first time was back at the start of 2017 when changing hands for my Blind Cowboy and his peg snapped.  Replacements can be found on eBay, but they are stupid expensive.  So be extra careful when doing anything with the hands or wrists.  I've since cut that long leather sleeve off the jacket, so now it's more of a badass leather vest.  Still looks excellent.

You can see a few more example images I made over on my Flickr page.

ThreeA: Blind Cowboy

ThreeA: Blind Cowboy

Y'know, I had told myself that I was going to stop at two of the figures that ThreeA makes.  Just two.  I wasn't going to be tempted by any others.

Yeah, well...

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Three A: Tomorrow Kings

Three A: Tomorrow Kings

I’m really loving these figures by toy company ThreeA. Let me show you some recent images I made with them.

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"The pit is completely enclosed. And it's full of leathery objects, like eggs or something."

I love the 1979 movie Alien. It's one of my favorites.

Toy maker Super7 just came out with these retro-style "ReAction" figures from Alien. I had to get the figure for Kane and take a photo of him.

This image was made using little colored finger lights I got at the dollar store, and cut up clear plastic water bottles for the "walls".

I wanted something dark, with just a kiss of light on his helmet so you can see his face.  The finger lights bounce off the water bottles and give the little color highlights.