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Did you ever wish to star in your very own Gundam cartoon? For under $300, you can become the hero in a copyright-naysaying mecha epic! More »
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Japan's 1:1 scale Gundam statue was built, disassembled, and subsequently reconstructed. Now, Gundam statue aficionado DarwinFish105 has recorded the statue's return to its former home in Odaiba. Here it is looking appropriately epic, surrounded by cloud cover. More »
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In this scene from the movie Starbirds — which was a mish-mash of episodes of the 1980s Japanese cartoon Tōshō Daimos — the formation of a giant robot requires a zip line, aggressive sloganeering, an entire hidden bridge, near-death experiences, and some interpretative dance for good measure. In the future, a bizarre strain of amnesia has seemingly drained humans of the cognitive capacity to make keys. More »
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You've probably never heard of K3loid, a new short movie about humans hunting for a rogue artificial intelligence — but the list of people involved with this project is pretty amazing. Including mecha suits designed by Aaron Beck and Weta's Greg Broadmore. And music remixed by Amon Tobin. The actual storyline looks pretty creepy, judging from this brief trailer — there's a taunting, sinister A.I., and some weird-looking mannequins. And chasing the A.I. is a group of people in power suits bots, who have awesome powers — and you just know this is not going to turn out well for the power-suited cannon fodder. More »
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Cheese on crackers, would it be fun to work at the eatART robotics collective in Vancouver. In addition to building awesomely biomimetic vehicles like Mondo Spider, they're currently working on Titanoboa, a mechanical recreation of the 50-foot-long, one-ton prehistoric snake of the same name. More »
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We've seen some fairly convincing power loader facsimiles before, but this refurbished Ditch Witch by Raytheon-Sarcos — who are also experimenting with robotic exoskeletons — isn't that far off from James Cameron's original vision. More »
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Straight out of Burning Man 2011, it's Duane Flatmo's El Pulpo Mechanico. It's an octopus. It's a steampunk tank. It's a video game boss. It's an avatar of flaming doom. It's a one-metal-cephalopod parade. I wish I could drive it down the turnpike. More »
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One of the runners-up for the recent Animal Architecture Awards is also one of my favorites from the competition: "Farmland World" by Allison Newmeyer and Stewart Hicks of the Chicago-based Design With Company. More »
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Remember that 1:1 scale Gundam sculpture in Shizuoka, Japan? Videographer Darwinfish105 (who previously did a time-lapse video of the statue) has now made a similar montage of the statue, now broken into pieces and surrounded by police tape. I'd hate to see the authorities' list of culprits. More »
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This is MABEL, a bipedal robot who currently resides in a lab at the University of Michigan. Although MABEL has no head and needs a guiding bar to navigate its tiny gymnasium, this jogging robot can maintain an eerily human 6.8-mile-per-hour strut. More »
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During the last weekend this May, the Royal de Luxe marionette company trotted their disconcertingly large she-marionette — which is adorned with the hair of 70 horses — down the streets of Nantes, France. Now we know the dread the citizens of Metropolis feel whenever Toyman is on the loose. More »
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We've seen hamsters ride around in mechanisms inspired by Theo Jansen's strandbeests, and now humans have gotten in on the act. Attendees of the Vancouver Mini Maker Faire got to see the Panterragaffe — a rideable strandbeest — in motion. More »
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reMIND is set in a seaside village with a curious urban legend. Tinkerer Sonja doesn't believe the tales of underwater lizard men – until her cat turns up with stitches in his head and the sudden ability to speak. More »
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If only the guys in Super 8 had had this rig! As this demo clearly demonstrates, a robotic exoskeleton is exactly what every kid needs and wants. More »
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This is Ohio State University's Adaptive Suspension Vehicle, an legged conveyance designed to conquer any terrain. This 1984 demo reel is all sorts of awesome. If I were an investor, the soundtrack's synthesizer stings would've sold me in a heartbeat. More »
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In the 1960s, General Electric and Ralph Mosher built a 3000-pound, quadruped robot dubbed "the Walking Truck." Although the Walking Truck never caught on, you can still check out fantastic footage of this four-legged supply vehicle in motion. More »
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Skeletonics is a group of Japanese exoskeleton artisans who built an exosuit for the express purposes of A.) looking awesome; and B.) messing with their pals. More »
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First there was Voltron Girl, then there was this fantastic movie concept art, now Hollywood is primed and ready to make the 80s cartoon into a movie, and they're battling over the rights to the cat robot! More »
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Designer I-Wei Huang (aka Crabfu) was so inspired by Theo Jansen's kinetic sculptures that he built a hamster-powered walker. Says Crabfu of the walker and its furry test pilot, Princess: More »
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You've got to hand it to this Singaporean cosplayer for strapping himself into this giant Gundam costume, and it's just plum heartbreaking when he wipes out. What's a mecha's deadliest nemesis? An uneven floor. More »
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Why do you assume that a bulldozer has no consciousness? Perhaps because you have not looked at it properly, and seen the mouth that opens in its shovel. Or the finger that points at you in its drill bits. More »
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Darwinfish105's time-lapse video of this 59-foot Gundam RX-78 statue in Shizuoka, Japan is quite stunning. Screw public parks, I want my municipal money going towards a 1:1 ratio Gold Lightan on every corner. [Spotted on Major Spoilers] More »
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Just as Watchmen criticized the morality of superhero comics, manga like Bokurano and Fullmetal Alchemist criticize the "smiles and happy endings" of shonen manga. More »
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We may be able to see the long-awaited Mecha Angel battle some day. Halo Legends' producer announced that Evangelion is still in the pipeline for a live-action adaptation. And some Weta Workshop concept art hints at the potential awesomeness. More »
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This year's robotic avatar movie Surrogates showed us a world where humans live through beautiful robotic bodies. But the film's concept designer thought that not everyone might have such glamorous surrogates, as this new concept art reveals. More »
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While Cyberdyne plans to outfit our military personnel in exosuits straight out of Iron Man, Activelink draws its exosuit inspiration from Aliens, creating an actual Power Loader that's nearly ready for Ripley. More »
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Ridley Scott tapped screenwriter Jon Spahits to write the prequel to Alien, and the script for Spahits' unproduced film Shadow 19 shows us why: it's a videogame-fueled romp through an alien planet filled with space battles, sentient machines, and mecha. More »
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From the site that hosts the Legend of Neil webseries comes more science-fiction comedy. Meet The Megabot team, they are out to save the world, drink, cry, and burn. Guard your ears: the fight for justice includes adult language. More »
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Daniel Conway's digital paintings imagine richly detailed scenes from humanity's future, a time when mecha suits and robot warriors have been part of our lives so long that we have had time to see even them tarnish and beautifully decay. More »
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Tom Root, Mathew Senreich and Seth Green are out to corrupt your Voltron memories with Titan Maximum, their new series about a squad of pilots who must battle a former member of their giant robot team — with sex jokes. More »
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This year marks the 30th anniversary of Mobile Suit Gundam, the television series about space war and mecha suits that launched a phenomenon in Japan. Headbanging rocker Andrew W.K. plans to celebrate with a tribute album to Gundam's music. More »
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Nearly all of Barnaby Ward’s comics and narrative illustrations feature beautiful young girls, slender, hip, with unruly hair and too much eyeliner. But these girls provide an anchor for Ward’s far wilder depictions of giant robots, elaborate machines, and grotesque monsters, creating manga-inspired works with tinges of Edward Gorey. Check out our gallery to see more of Ward’s glamourous women and their mecha-flavored adventures. More »
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Just because Halloween is over doesn’t mean you can’t dress like a Transformer. Fashion designer Sandra Blacklund creates three-dimensional knitwear in unusual and elaborate shapes that turns the wearer into a living sculpture. And her latest line is clearly robot-influenced, so you can act out your wildest mecha warrior fantasies. More »
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This green-haired alien girl can rip your clothes off AND make you super-horny with just a strobe-flash of her eyes. Some people think science fiction hentai porn is all about tentacle monsters, but they're dead wrong. There are mad scientists who transform women into super-evolved sex-monsters, androids who need human sperm to upgrade their firmware, and women who ride naked on the shoulders of giant robots. Here's our complete guide to the worlds of science fiction hentai, with no tentacles. And yeah, it's not even remotely work-safe, unless you work on a sex-sphere. More »
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With everybody freaking out about this year's Olympic Games, the only thing a future-thinking person can possibly do is focus on the 2012 games — and this "Apocolympics 2012" tee from Terratag is the perfect thing (modeled by a guy from London dance troupe Renegade Dance). UK company Terratag makes a ton of amazing, future-minded designs with a trippy manga sensibility. They've got an entire line of mecha and gundam shirts, including ones with laser eyes. See more cute dancers in more cute robo-future tees, below. More »
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If you've been wondering what might happen if you dropped two hits of acid and then wandered into an anime shop, you'll want to check out Takashi Murakami. Yesterday we caught the last day of the months-long © Murakami exhibit at the MOCA in downtown Los Angeles, and saw the bizarre cute/scary creatures in artist/designer Murakami's work, which you may have seen emblazoned on t-shirts, bags, and posters. Next it's moving to New York where it'll open at the Brooklyn Museum in April. Click through to see a preview of what's in store for New Yorkers who visit the exhibit. More »
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You take a shambling horror from a Lovecraft story, pop a couple of shoulder cannons on it and a replace a few tentacles with laser beams, and you've got yourself a whole new kind of horror: CthulhuTech. More »
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When an intrepid visitor smuggled some shots of the concept artwork for Bionic Commando out of the bowels of one of Capcom's development pods, little did he know he'd be providing a glimpse of the future of civil service. One of the coolest pieces he smuggled out is this sketch showing two different sets of mecha-armor suits: one full of .50 caliber ammunition replenishment, and the other sporting a red cross and a massive needle. Although if you were lying prone on the battlefield in need of a kickstart, would you want someone trying to find a vein with that thing? More »
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Another casting rumor for S. Shankar's long-awaited Robot. This time, it's Aamir Khan, a serious actor and star of Rajan Hindustani and The Rising. Also, we finally have a plot description: a scientist creates a robot companion for his disabled child, but the robot goes on a killing jag. [Bollycircle] More »
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