The Art of Martiniere

Thanks to Stainless Steel Droppings for his excellent post on sci-fi cover art!
He featured several works by Stephan Martiniere, whose art is just stunning.


But Martiniere does more than just covers - he does illustration & concept art for movies, video games, and theme parks. He worked on such projects such as Myst 5, The Fifth Element, Knowing, Titan AE, Unoversal's Jurassic Park ride, and even directed several animated series. That's quite impressive!

His book, Quantum Dreams: The Art of Stephan Martiniere, contains 130 illustrations from book covers to video game designs to early sketches.

Visit his site at Stephan Martiniere for more information about this amazing artist.

Late Night TV Rant

Bit of a rant, but this annoys me.

They've announced that Jay Leno's 10pm will be cancelled due to poor ratings. But they haven't decided if they will just pay him the remainder of his contract or move him back to the late night slot.

What a prima donna! That is SO unfair to Conan O'Brien. He left his successful show to do The Tonight Show. Moved his family and everything. Yes. ratings for The Tonight Show fell when he took over, but they fell when Leno took over for Johnny. Conan is THE funniest talk show host out there right now. (Sorry, Dave.) He has a huge fan base. I never watched The Tonight Show when Leno was on it, but I catch Conan every day on Hulu.

We'll see how this all plays out for Conan, but it doesn't look good.

Playoffs start today - maybe a couple good football game will cheer me up!

Tech News - 3D TV

On the wake of Avatar's success, yes, 3D TV is coming.

ESPN announced this week that it will launch a 3D channel on June 11 and begin with coverage of the World Cup games. It will also cover the Summer X Games, certain college football and basketball games, and the BCS National Championship Game. The channel will not be 24/7 though - it will only broadcast during 3D events.

Discovery Communications Inc. and DirecTV Group are also planning 3D channels.

Right now, they are looking to broadcast 3D signals into existing digital boxes. There's also talk of 3D TVs, but I'm not sure people are ready to ditch their brand new high-def TVs for yet another one. So we'll have to wait and see on that one. No mention yet if glasses will be required, either.

I'm excited for these changes! I still remember viewing my first football game in high-def and marvelling at the details. How wild will it be to see it in 3D as well?

In other TV news, a South Korean company unveiled a new LG flat-screen that is only 7 millimeters thick. It looks like a thin piece of cardboard! Read about it here on CNN

Writing - Dialogue and Details

My first book goes to the main editor soon.

At the moment, I'm still doing some work on the dialogue. A test reader has been helping with the dialogue, trying to punch it up some. Also trying to work some more humorous sarcasm into the main character. I believe the term is "snarky!" I don't want to make him too obnoxious though, which is why I'm working on the humor, too.

I had to do some research, too. Difficult to research space battles, so I'd turned to a friend who knew a lot about fighter jets and training. I wanted to be sure I was using the right terms. My story is set in a fictional universe, but I wanted familiar terms and accuracy. If it's too alien, no one will relate! I see that sometimes in sci-fi books. Technology and concepts SO out there, it's hard to follow the story. I even tried to keep the names simple...

Anyone else read a book that was just so detailed, so complicated, so "out there" it was tough to read?