With the demise of the actual Bowerhouse magazine, thought it fitting to mention Martin.
He is, without any doubt at all, THE singular influence on me as both a modeller and a fan of SF hardware.
And what's odd about that is that i was a fan of his work for a long time without even knowing his name.
Not being able to remember whether i actually saw his appearance on "Blue Peter", i guess the first time i saw his work was on "Space 1999" and, boy, what an introduction - here i was seeing all those lovely detailed ships of the likes of the paperback books i was reading, given a spin and there on the telly. Couldn't give a stuff about the plot or the characters, just let me see the next effect please. I could illustrate the point with any (large) number of his designs, but i've gone with this here gun, which is an excellent example of Martin's ability to take a recognisible object (in this case the Flying Sub kit from "Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea") and change it into something totally unique:
Around the same time, i was also seeing his work on "The Tomorrow People" but, of course, with that shows cheaper production values, things weren't as effective:
It was with the Starlord comic that i first came across Martin's name, as he did the classic run of back page illustrations:
Guess it was with "Alien" and the slew of publications on it that it finally registered though just who Martin was. Again, tons of obvious examples i could go for, but i've chosen the Airlock from Kane's burial as its a textbook example of brilliant modelling on a small scale, weathered just right:
And, at the same time, he was making iconic craft for tellys "Blakes 7":
SO hard to try and illustrate my point with just five photos, but i've tried. Martin, you're a genius and my hero.
1 comment:
and a terribly nice chap too :)
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