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Note : Lobby cards were small
pictures which would be displayed in the lobby of a theater. Sometime
the photographs were in Black and White and almost always they had a
one or two color border on one or more sides of the picture
proclaiming the cast and crew or at least the title of the movie and
how fantastic it was. Some lobby cards were in full color and as time
went by they became more elaborate. Some grew to 24x19 inches in
size, but there were usually a few standard sizes created for each
film. .Lobby cards gave people a chance to see some of the more
impressive scenes from a movie, and was used to attract people to see
other movies at the same theater. Sometimes these lobby cards would
be displayed in advance of a films premier. Lobby cards died out, for
the most part) by 1980. they were replaced, for a time, by 8x10
glossy pictures with the title at the bottom of the picture.
In January I started a series of pictures with Vikki in them with a
common theme. Each picture would be a poster or lobby card parody of
a real movie with, of course, Virtual Vikki in the picture. The idea
for this series came from my failed attempt in October of 96 to
create a full sized Virtual Vikki movie poster, and not being able to
decide on content or a theme. As a result I started jotting down
notes for poster and lobby cards which would be fun to recast and put
Virtual Vikki into. My first attempt, which I quickly gave up on, was
to do a parody of the Mars Attacks poster. This poster featured a
bunch of Martian heads stretching off into the distance with one
Martian head popping up and looking around. The parody would be
called Vixens Attack, but I never actually sat down at a computer and
drew it out. This is similar to the piece I have partially finished
in which Vikki is asleep dreaming of electronic sheep jumping over a
fence. Its a great idea, but I have not gotten around to it yet.
The first actual
picture in this series ended up being a lobby card parody of Jason
and the Argonauts. Titled Vikki and the Argonauts this picture took
me a huge amount of time to create for two reasons. One was I wanted
a great looking picture, and secondly was that I was trying to make
another Quick Time VR movie out of it. Bryce 2 was used to create the
background and the skeletons were designed in Poser 2.0. The added
tails were created in Ray Dream Designer then added to the Poser
Skeletons. Erlinda did some touch up work on the grass and skeletons
and I created a lobby card like border. Finding out what the actual
type on the title of this film's poster looked like turned out to be
quite a challenge. I was very happy with the lobby card, but not
happy with the Quick Time VR movie as I could not get the light just
right in Bryce 2. I got a lot of positive response to this picture.
The picture area is 640x480 and the extra writing area brings this
pic up to 784x642. An odd size to be sure. The
original movie is (c) by MGM/UA. No copyright infringement is
intended. In case you can't read it the film's
cast includes:
Next up was one
of my all time favorite movies Planet of the Apes. In this parody The
role reversal was obvious. Vikki would pay a visit to the "Planet of
the Hyoomans." My biggest problem was what scene from the movie would
be best to so this picture.
I though for quite a while about it. My original idea was to have a
similar scene to the opening of Escape from the Planet of the Apes,
but I decided against it because it looked less like a parody and
more like the real thing. Next was the Statue of Liberty shot. This
really did not sketch out all that well as Vikki would be too tiny in
comparison. The final image form the move that stuck in my mind was
the crashed ship sinking in the water. I decided to go with this. I
really, in retrospect, should have gone back and watched the film
again as I seem to have forgotten to put in an escape hatch at the
top of the ship. Oh well. I'm rather happy with the reflections in
the water and some of the other little tricks I used on this picture.
Erlinda worked on putting a uniform on Vikki. There is no NASA logo
in this picture. I understand that it is not legal to use the NASA
logo for some reason so I created my own space agency with a similar
logo. The YIFA agency was born. It really does not show up all that
well in the final version because of the small size. The original movie is (c) by APJAC Productions. No
copyright infringement is intended.
In case you can't read it the film's cast
includes:
My next project was the creation of a movie poster. I really was
fascinated by the Mars Attacks poster so I settled on that for my
base design. 
The title took me
a while but I finally settled on Vixens Attack! as the name. I spent
quite a bit of time trying to render this all as one large picture,
but eventually did it the same way that the movie poster was done. I
copied and pasted like mad and touched up the edges. My wife did
Vikki's hair in this nifty curly design which looked much more like
Martian brains that does Vikki's regular do. This actually turned out
better that I though. I spent several hours trying to recreate a Mars
Attack like writing. Unlike Planet of the Hyoomas I had to create all
the letters except for the 's'. The names proved to be a problem as
well as the photos across the bottom of the screen. I used family
members and friends and then just left the last names of the actors
in the movies. Though this did not work out well with my wife on the
right hand side. I still have some related projects to finish. My
wife did the popping up Vikki in a Where's Waldo outfit. I think I'll
put that one out as a startup screen or something... The final poster
is quite large and is available via the YiffCo site. Of all the
projects I've worked on with Vikki in this I think this is the most
interesting finished product. The line in the center of the poster
was something that I saw done two different ways at ConFurence 8.
Hey! Plagiarism is the most sincere form of forgery!
This web page was selected as a Panacea
Pick of the Week by the orderlies at "Dr.
Daniel's Movie Emergency," for the week of September 1st,
1997.
If you have any other questions, or want to get on my Virtual Vikki
mailing list of upcoming products, please
e-mail me.
