Peter Rubin, whose Iron Rooster Studios provided concept designs for Surrogates, explains his concept for a lower class, industrial surrogate:

Early on during Surrogates, when it was just basically me and the director, (the writer's strike was still on) I proposed that there be a class of surries designed to serve in manual labor jobs, or even low-end clerical posts... the humans at the other end wouldn't be highly paid, and might not even own their own stimchairs. Nevertheless, they would have minimal luxuries of the sort that laborers might demand, for the psychology of it if nothing else - they could eat, and hear, and have some other sensory feedback that wasn't necessarily directly related to the job...

Industrial Surrogate [Nuthin' But Mecha]

Activelink, a subsidiary of Panasonic, working on a wearable robotic device — aptly termed the Power Loader — to aid in the heavy lifting associated with tasks like construction and rescue relief. Though considerably bulkier than Cyberdyne's HAL-5 suits, the Power Loader helps the wearer lift heavy objects (currently about 220 pounds) with ease. By placing their arms inside the robotic arms, the wearer will receive force feedback from the Power Loader, allowing them to more successfully manipulate objects in the Loader's grasp. Activelink plans to make the Power Loader commercially available by 2015.

You can see the Power Loader in action below, although Activelink fails to show off its Alien-fighting prowess:

[Activelink via Pink Tentacle]

Script review site Scriptshadow got a hold of the Shadow 19 script, which was purchased by Warner Bros. with Keanu Reeves set to star. (A grain of salt is indicated, of course: We're assuming Scriptshadow read the real script, and this isn't a hoax.) The project eventually fell apart, and Spahits ended up successfully pitching his idea for the Alien prequel to Fox and Ridley Scott. Spoilers for Shadow 19 below.

Shadow 19 may have fallen by the wayside, but its blood-pumping, hard sci-fi, action flick plotline promises great things for the Alien prequel. The script introduces us to space marine Conrad Vance, already outfitted in his mecha suit and about to be launched into an off-world battle. Vance is a warrior, but also a survivor, the brilliant strategist who always comes back from battle. It's just our introduction to Vance and the sorts of military technology that exist in this future, but Scriptshadow assures us it's perfectly thrilling in its own right:

And in a battle that made me cum in my pants, Vance takes the offensive. He rips a turret off the thing, enters the Colossus, and starts to kill every living thing inside like a goddamn bull in a China shop. Of course, the look on all of the officer's faces is pretty fucking priceless when Vance uses his jump-jets to blast through a ladder-well, collide into the ceiling of the bridge, fall, land, and proceed to slaughter the Hegemony scum ED-209 style. Kudos to you, Mr. Spaihts. I never had multiple orgasms while reading the first ten pages of a screenplay until Shadow 19 (and I've read a lot of scripts).

After this successful battle, Vance is quickly whisked off to a top secret mission that brings him to the State Science Agency, an organization of cyberpunk Scientists who are completely loyal to the Agency, not just by contract, but by design. The most advanced Scientists are fitted with a cybernetic crown, one that enhances their cognitive abilities and renders them capable of operating the Agency's technology with their minds, but also plugs them into the Agency permanently and irreparably, so that treason means death.

The Agency has created a secret sentient terraforming ship called Prometheus, and Prometheus has been sent to transform the planet Erix into a habitable world. One of Prometheus' submachines, known as a Crawler, has broken down, and Vance has to brave the hostile planet in order to repair it. The Agency also has a device that sends a projection of Vance to Erix rather than Vance himself, so that when he dies (something that happens repeatedly), he has an endless videogame supply of "extra lives." So, Vance is sent to Erix over and over again until he can figure out how to survive long enough to repair the Crawler. Meanwhile, he develops a relationship with a mid-level Scientist, forcing them both to question their loyalties to their respective organizations. And there may be evidence of intelligent life on Erix, but the Agency is determined no Scientist will live long enough to discover it. Eventually, the movie culminates in an enormous battle for which Vance has requisitioned Earth's most powerful weapons, a scene designed to please lovers of first-person shooter games.

Although Scriptshadow's review indicates some flaws in the script (Vance's repeated attempts to survive Erix are, apparently, at points repetitive), they claim it's an impressive piece of work, even just on paper:

Shadow 19 is a gunmetal paean to id Software and cyberpunk. A hymn to boys (and girls, are you out there?) who spent many a night playing Doom, or any videogame, really, and you were so engrossed in the virtual world the next time you looked out the window it was already dawn. It is a love letter to fans of smart and ambitious science fiction.

It's a movie we might never see, but at least we might get shades of Shadow 19 in the Alien prequel.

Shadow 19 [Scriptshadow]

Megabot, Ep. 1

Should you like to see more, Atom will be hosting new episodes weekly. And oh yeah that's Fran Kranz, or Topher from Dollhouse as blue.

In addition to his own concepts, Conway also creates concept art for video games, including Half Life 2 and Bionic Commando.

[The Art of Daniel Conway via Presidia Creative]

Titan Maximum, which will premiere on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim on September 27, follows Titan Force Five, a once-proud team of pilots who defend Saturn's moon Titan. Military budget cuts force the team to disband, and one of the pilots, Gibson "Gibbs" Giberstein (voiced by Seth Green), takes the news especially hard, vowing to destroy his former teammates and the whole of Titan.

Advance word on the show is that it's a send-up of classic science fiction, with a Robot Chicken twist. In other words, we can expect plenty of sex jokes and bathroom humor sprinkled in with our mecha-powered space battles.

[Sci Fi Wire]

The album, succinctly titled Gundam Rock, is due out September 9th and will contain English language covers of the theme songs from Mobile Suit Gundam and the movie trilogy, as well as covers of the background music. He also plans to reenact the opening narration and the speech Gihren Zabi makes during his father's funeral:

This isn't Andrew W.K.'s first tribute to Japanese culture. Just last year, he released a 14-song album covering J-pop songs, including Daisuke Inoue's "Ai Senshi," which served as the ending theme to the second Gundam movie:

[Anime News Network via Japanator]

In addition to his illustrations, Ward has his short comic “The Perils of the Uncommon Skyway” available on his website. And his most recent book, Sixteen Miles to Merrick and Other Works features four of his short sequential art stories as well as more of his single illustrations.

[Somefield via Sci-Fi-O-Rama]

These items come from Blacklund’s 2009 Pool Position collection and are handcrafted from wool. It’s probably not the most practical material for fighting intergalactic evil, but at least you’ll look good doing it.

[Sandra Blacklund via today and tomorrow]

Sexy Space Pirates!

Mad Science Is Sexy Science!

Aliens Want Your Sex!

The Sex Mechas!

I love the tee with the laser-eyed robot (below).

And who could resist this bizarre tee (bottom), which says "wonderful future life" and is topped with inexplicable pictures of mouse heads and explodey stars.

Be sure to check out the Terratag gundam gallery.

Terratag via Hide Your Arms.

Murakami seems determined to remind us that cartoony characters aren't innocent. His massive sculptures Disney-esque characters include a sculpture of a woman with enormous breasts squirting streams of milk from fist-sized nipples and a man who looks like Cloud from Final Fantasy shooting a swirling plume of jizz into the heavens. But you'll also find Murakami's tamer t-shirt designs, wallpapers, animation (including a Kanye West video), and the Louis Vuitton bags he designed. One massive wall contains a stunning piece called Tan Tan Bo Puking (pictured up top), which features the dying moments of a bizarre Japanime god as he voids his stomach and bowels during death.

However, what really caught our eye was his Second Mission Project ko2 Advanced (Human Type) piece. It consists of three different sculptures, each one of a female mecha in the stages of transforming from a humanoid into a fighter jet. It's nearly life-sized and contains a ton of stunning detail. If there's any way you can get to this exhibit I'd highly recommend it, even if it's for this piece alone. Watch Murakami discuss it in the video below, and you can check out the other parts of his video tour here.

The MOCA didn't allow photography, but that didn't stop some people (including us) from sneaking a few camera phone photos, which you can see in the gallery above along with some NSFW images. You can also check out Eric Nakamura's Flickr set, which documents almost the entire exhibit. Just as a bit of a tip, though... the museums sell the book/catalog of the exhibit for $65, and it's tempting to walk home with it while you try to digest all the art you've just seen. However, you can snag it for only $40 at Amazon, with free shipping. If you can't make it, or the exhibit won't be traveling anywhere near you, it's the next best thing.

Top image is Tan Tan Bo Puking - a.k.a. Gero Tan, 2002 ©2002 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

According to the CthulhuTech Web site:

CthulhuTech is an innovative storytelling game that started out as a combination of two popular genres. The first was that of cosmic horror, made popular by H. P. Lovecraft and culminating in the modern day with elements of Mike Mignola's Hellboy and John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness. The second was that of giant mecha Japanese animation, made popular by such series as Robotech, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and Rahxephon.

In fact, Paramount if you're still listening, just give the Cloverfield monster some sort of a blaster or missile pod in the sequel. Then we promise we won't complain. Check out Wildfire's CthuhuTech game on their site, where you can order everything you need to open dimensional portals and summon demonic forces. We didn't see any Shoggoths with armaments, but when you combine these two genres, you just know it's coming.

Cthulhu Tech

We love the idea of multipupose bot-like armor suits, and these perfectly juxtapose the images of life and death in war. You might have some massive bionic titans slugging it out and destroying the landscape, but these little suckers will be scurrying around everywhere, filling up guns and patching up wounds. In fact, why don't they put them to work in every facet of life? You could have a little mailman suit of armor, policemen, firemen, pizza delivery, and even Jehovah's Witnesses with backtanks full of copies of Watchtower.

New Bionic Commando Concept Art [Capcom Unity]