Hi everyone,

Slowly but steadily, the people at Bamf! are sending me some little jewels both from the shooting and production for the short film.

Sometimes, it is better to enjoy these pleasures in small amounts… so here you have a part of the final storyboard. This is the scene where Professor Tsing is about to reveal to the kids that he knows their secret.

Enjoy it… and see you next week!

So it turns out that there’s an Army mechanic in Alaska who’s tired of waiting for the future and he’s decided to do something about it. Carlos Owens spent the last four years building a semi-functional piece of mech. The thing is 18-feet tall and weighs a ton. It also has a hydraulic system that allows the mech to match the movements of the individual in the driver’s seat. Check out the whole story at Popsci.com.

Mr Owens forsees applications for mech in the military. You think?

And Mr Owens isn’t the only one thinking about the future of the military. The Army has asked a panel of 14 neuroscientists to think about how their field might be brought bear on their soldiers. The result, a hypothetical set of armor tied into the soldiers’ nervous systems (among other applications). Check out newscientist.com for more.

All of this just means that the kind future imagined in Gear School and in countless SF films and novels, is approaching faster and faster.

Not fast enough.

Hi to everyone,

Bamf! Producciones sent me some photos of the actors’ castings and a brief résumé of every one of them. So this post could also be called “Paper characters become flesh”.

Paula Jiménez plays the role of Teresa. She is a young actress. She appeared in several commercials and press ads. She was the image of the “Lolita” short film at the Sitges Film Festival.

 Anna Viñas plays the role of Moira. Teenager actress and model. She appeared in the TV miniseries “23-F, el día más difícil del Rey”, playing the role of Princess Cristina.

 Also, Peter Vives plays the role of Brian. Actor and professional advertising model. He jumped to the big screen and appeared in films such as “Savage Grace” (with Julianne Moore), and more recently, “Paintball”.

 Finally, Alberto Jo Lee plays the role of Captain Tsign. He’s the most experienced actor in the casting. He’s known for his roles in the series “Pelotas” and several films: “Tapas”, “El club de los suicidas” or “Al final del camino”. 

Apparently, the people at Bamf! would like to introduce also the rest of the crew in future posts… More news coming soon!

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More actor’s Casting photos:

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New photos from Bamf! Producciones.

This time I got so many of them that I’m overwhelmed… I don’t know where to start!

Finally, we have a Gear from the school. It is a flying Gear, or a first render of it. It looks a great deal like in the book. I think it will look terrific when it’s finished. We can also see a mothership that only appears in the first page of the comic.

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When I asked to the people of Bamf!, they told me that the landscape locations from my previous post are from the Bergueda county, in Catalonia, Spain.

Then, we have a set I didn’t expect. It seems a house in the city of Barcelona. It’s called the Bures House. According to the people at Bamf!, it will be used as a set for a scene inside the school. The great room and green office you can see below are in the house. My first impression was that it looked like the teachers’ lounge. Can it be?

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Panoramic views of Bures House

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However, my biggest surprise was Teresa’s helmet, that she uses when she’s driving. Here you can see a model progress, from its creation to the final color. However, something caught my eye… Is there really a Teresa inside the helmet? Have they found an actress that will play the character? If they’re thinking of dressing her as a driver, it could awesome.

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P.S.

There’s a final note where they tell me the filming starts this very week!!?

They have promited to give me an introduction to the actors and also some pictures of what’s happening right now!!

So next Wendesday, much more and much better.

In the science fiction subgenre which concerns itself with humans first contact with aliens, the aliens usually only serve one of two roles. They are either here to conquer Humanity, or they are here to save it. They re either the ultimate bad guy bent on our annihilation, or they are the cosmic parent guiding us through our evolutionary growing pains that we might all become Star Children…

 Peter Watts’s brilliant Blindsight shows us a third alternative, and we can all be thankful for a new idea in the subgenre. A first contact tale unlike any I’ve ever read, the book follows a group of astronauts–each of whom is a misfit in real life, but specially suited to the job at hand. The narrator, for instance, has had half his brain removed due to his epilepsy. The surgery has left him unable to experience emotions like all those around him, but it makes him the perfect observer of events.

 Watts is a marine biologist by training (and has written a series of SF novels that utilize that expertise, you should look them up) and has a rather dim view of humanity. His first contact encounter features aliens of almost unfathomable physiology and psychology. It is up to the humans in the story to interpret the actions of the aliens. And that, shall we say, leads to trouble.

 I read this book some time ago but have found myself thinking about it in relation to Gear School (see, we got around to this blog’s raison d’etre). Let me digress for just a second and then I’ll get back to the relationship between the two books.

 Personally, I don’t believe that humans will ever make contact with aliens. If aliens are intelligent and observing us, then thy know that it’s best to stay away. The Milky Way must look like that one scary neighborhood in your hometown where you won’t go after dark. And for humans to actually travel outside of the solar system and encounter  aliens we’d have to pull together and cooperate in a way that is, to say the least, unprecedented. Humans would much rather figure out ways to kill each other than to pull together for the greater good.

 Okay, let’s say that neither of those scenarios is true. That, for example, some poor unfortunate aliens stumble into the galaxy–the cosmic equivalent of The Out-of-Towners. What will they encounter? A species with access to nuclear and conventional weapons who are xenophobic in the extreme. A species who can’t kill each other fast enough provided the others of the species look different enough from them. Given that fact, how will this species react when an alien that looks like a huge spider/ball of light/what-have-you shows up on the White House lawn? I hear you saying, “But Adam, guys like Carl Sagan are running SETI. Everything’ll be fine.” And I say to you that for every Carl Sagan in SETI, there are a hundred Don Rumsfelds in the CIA, NSA, or other Three Letter Acronym of your choice. Our theoretical aliens don’t stand a chance. And, given that any aliens that could contact us would have to be very advanced, we’d probably seal our own fates as well.

 Pessimistic or realist, I’m not sure what you want to call it. 

 Now, apply this logic to the world of Gear School. We are in the future. We know that humanity is embroiled in a seemingly endless war with an alien species. Who fired the first shot? I’m just saying that the aliens may not be the bad guys in all of this.

 This ends your weekly affirmation.

New material arriving! Finally, we can see something about what is going on. At last, a picture with real people! I’m afraid it’s the people at Bamf! Productions, though. They must be a bit shy… we can barely see their faces!  What we can see is an outdoors landscape that looks like the setting for the school in the comic, but I’ve no idea where is it. I will ask them…

Here’s what I unearthed from the description Adam Gallardo made in 2006, when we were preparing the first sketches for the school:

The school is in a mountainous, wooded area. Again, much like the American Air Force Academy. I imagine that the government is interested in limiting access to the school and so they’ve made it difficult to get to.

  However, the real news in this post is a preliminary-looking 3D view of the school that actually looks great. I’m dying to see the final 3D render! 

 At the moment, my biggest question is: if the people at Bamf! have an outdoors location and a virtual school… have they thought of making 3D Gears as well? 

  Hopefully, we will have some answers next Wednesday… 

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The people at Bamf! just sent more material for this secret project. Just on time, as usual!

They did not send me the script I asked for, so I don’t know what these characters are doing yet… but one thing is clear: Teresa will be the main character. 

 However, there is something I don’t understand: they sent me some turnarounds of Captain Tsing’s metal legs too. It looks like they did a more up-to-date version…

 Also, you can see a turnaround of Teresa’s helmet, the one she uses when she’s dressed as a driver. But these are only drawings… going from plain paper to full 3D is a different matter.

 Lastly, I have also received a couple of photos of a room with some instruments. I can see a guitar, a drum, a microphone… Is there a Gear School theme or what?

 What will the people at Bamf! send me next week?.

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Apparently, the people at Bamf! Producciones are up to something. This time, the picture I received was not a landscape, but a shot of some scrambled papers that appear to be some kind of… storyboard?

The character going down the stairs has a resemblance with Teresa… can it really be her?

Also, I think I saw her carrying a helm in her arm. Where are they going to come up with a “Teresa”… and what are they planning to do with her?

Right now, I’m wondering if there’s any script for all this.

 Maybe next week we will have some new info to help us clarify this matter…

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It’s been ages since I posted something, but it seems something is happening… 

I’ve received this map from Bamf! Producciones. What is Bamf? How is it related to Gear School?

Apparently, I will receive more information next week… 

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