Space Art: Rocky Jones XV-2 Orbit Jet - Pt 1

This photo was among the first batch of pictures I took after finishing the Moonscape diorama board. The XV-2 Orbit Jet has been posted here on the blog before but the rocket ship was easy to access out in The Cave and I thought this diorama base would do it justice, as nearly every episode of the TV show took place right here in our solar system. I have the set of DVD's and watched every episode and, quite frankly, the settings almost all looked like the moon. I'll post this photo today and a few more over the next days because, ummm, I have almost nothing else to post - no new series and certainly no big series.

Ed

I really like how this photo turned out but the odd thing is, although the photo clearly shows a light from the right, all the lights in the room were turned off!

Unlike some of my other Orbit Jet photos, this one was not a collage built up in Photoshop, but rather a 3D model on a 3D diorama base with only shadows, contrast, and other small adjustments made.

Rocky Jones: The Forbidden Moon

My take on the Rocky Jones Space Ranger episode "The Forbidden Moon" Chapter one airing on June 19, 1954. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

Saturn Fly-by

 

Rocky Jones New World's - Pt 5

It had occurred to me that, although the color photos are nice, when I was growing up everything I watched on TV was in black-&-white. And if I was trying to tune into any of the Chicago stations, then it was more like watching a snowstorm through the windows. With that in mind, here's my rendition of a Saturday or Sunday morning watching Chicago TV in Milwaukee. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

Rocky Jones New World's - Pt 4

This was the last of the four scenes I made with the Orbit Jet and I like the textured look of this one. It reminds me of Sunday morning's when we came home from church and I tried to watch Flash Gordon serials being played on one of the Chicago stations (we lived in Milwaukee). Often times the picture was distorted by all the static but of course it would have been in black-&-white and I'll post that picture tomorrow. Until then - Enjoy! Opa Fritz

 

Rocky Jones New World's - Pt 3

Bettina has managed to capture our fiery Southwestern skies on multiple occasions by doing nothing more than stepping out on the patio at sunset and taking a few photos. I've used several of her shots as backgrounds in other works, but this is one of my favorites. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

Rocky Jones New World's - Pt 2

My personal preference seems to have my spaceships landing or taking off on dark fiery worlds or at night. For this one I decided to follow the light and I like it a lot. It uses the same mountain ranges and placement of the Orbit Jet, but utilizes one of Bettina's sky photos as the sky backdrop. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

 

Rocky Jones New World's - Pt 1

Back in June 2016 I posted four photos of the Builder's Science Rocky Jones XV2 the Orbit Jet taking off from four different planets. They were all the same basic photo layout, only the background was changed. These four photos were meant to be the start of a new series but you know how I am - easily distracted - and I didn't start that series until this month! Okay, fine. Here's the first of that four part Rocky Jones series. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

Rocky Jones, Space Ranger Orbit Jet XV-2

We haven't covered Rocky Jones, Space Ranger too much because frankly, there's not a whole lot of merchandise that accompanied the show. It seems as though Tom Corbett got most of the cool toys back in the day. Rocky only ran for two seasons starting in 1954 and then sort of faded away, a forgotten relic of the early days of television Sci-Fi. It's a shame because many of the episodes includes themes or devices which would later be popularized by nearly everyone's favorite Star Trek. Today we're looking at one of the two space ships piloted by Rocky and his intrepid crew, the Orbit Jet XV-2. Later in the show he would pilot an identical looking ship called the Silver Moon XV-3. Fortunately the series was shot on film and the films survived in pretty decent condition. Some years back I bought a copy of the entire series and had a blast watching all the episodes.

I s'pose we'll cover the series more in-depth at a later time, but for now let's take a quick look at this beautiful model available by an eBay seller called 'Builder's Science' who's based out of the Philippines. I have a couple of their products (like the Flash Gordon space ship covered in an earlier blog post) and think they're great. They are a tad pricey but are all hand made and are faithful to the original designs. The photos were taken two years ago and I didn't really do 

Here's the Orbit Jet with a crew of Marx 54mm spacemen

A little fun with Photoshop

Lazy Day Post

Another lazy post today. The past couple of weekends were busily spent taking photos but today we have a storm front moving in and it looks like cloudy, wet weather in store for us. We need it though, having been in drought mode far too long. But the whole mood is just sort of tired and lazy, soooo I thought I'd post some odds and ends of photos taken the past week or month or whatever. The toys are all posed on the diorama base I made last year. 'Nuff said - Enjoy!

PIGS IN SPACE

A fun little .gif courtesy of Google's Auto Awesome feature

The toy on the left is a Ferrero Kinder Egg toy space pig.

The toy on the right cam from the UK and the buyer thought it was a Dan Dare offering. I have no clue. Do you?

A Dan Dare Baddie???

Lionel Alien Greets Rocky Jones XV-2

Kinder Egg Space Pig, Marx Astronaut, Rocky Jones XV-2

Marx Astronauts w/XV-2

Kinder Egg Monster Stand-off

Some Flash Gordon