25 April 2008

An Extremely Well-Put-Together Little Droid

Via Desert Dispatches, I learned about Sillof's Steampunk Star Wars action figures, and a whole new artistic hobby: customizing commercial action figures to create new visions of popular fantasy universes.

The thumbnail picture shows, as an example, R2-D2 reimagined as a late Victorian, steam-powered droid. Visit Sillof's site to see pictures of how this R2 unit can light up from inside.

(Probably the best and best-known examples of "steampunk" in children's literature today are Philip Reeve's Larklight and Starcross. L. Frank Baum's Tik-Tok is steampunk without the retro irony.)

Sillof has also created Star Wars figures based on personal artistic vision, the pre-production drawings of Ralph McQuarrie, and (with another customizer named Glorbes) the military uniforms of 1942.

And where else can one find an action figure of the Invisible Man?

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