"JB: Lots of fake cars built, so I decided to try my hand at a 'real' one -- meaning something for which I would actually have to look at reference. I chose Harley Earl's Buick Y-Job from 1937, simply because I think it is a really cool car. (Yes, Virginia, there was a Harley Earl.)"
WAR OF THE WORLDS:
"JB: When I got a newer version of the modeler, I discovered it would not run on my old computer, so I upgraded, and maxed out the memory. This allowed me to make models that used real forms, instead of some of the built in cheats the modeler uses. As I was learning my way through the new modeler, this is one of the things that grew, with pretty much all its parts being real parts. (When I tried a test, to see how much my new computer beat out my old one, I took this model to the old computer and the modeler simply refused to even open the document -- it was just too big!) The fire and smoke, and the background buildings are "painted" in with PhotoShop, a mixing of medias with which I was only beginning to experiment when I made this model."
WAR OF THE WORLDS REDUX:
"JB: Over a period of a week or so this strange, Victorian machine grew from a doodle. I posted an earlier version to StrataCafe, asking my fellow modelers what they thought it was. One guy said it looked like the base for some kind of Victorian laser cannon, so I made the cannon, and then I needed a good target for it! One again testing the memory capacities of my new computer I brought one of my Martian tripods into the Laser Cannon model, and this is the result. Once again, the fire and smoke is 'painted.'"
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ROBOT BEAST:
"JB: Feeling a great deal of freedom from being able to make actual forms instead of finding ways to simply suggest them, I set myself the challenge of building a really complex model -- and this robot is what happened. Since I am pretty much useless when it comes to quadrupeds, that was an additional layer to the challenge I set myself."
SILVER SURFER:
"JB: This one was done more or less to satisfy something that has been a bit of a bee in my bonnet for many years -- and that's the tendency of some artists to bury the Surfer in metal technique -- like he's the Chrome Surfer. I knew in my head what a SILVER Surfer would look like, so, even tho' this was an absurdly easy model, I decided to go ahead and do it, just to see if I was right."