UdW7rbcfGzs I post this trailer, because it’s on YouTube and thus fits nicely in the post, but really – you want to see the one at the official Stardust movie site – it’s much lovelier! And if that’s not quite enough for you, then there’s an alternative trailer at Yahoo. So perfectly amazing looking – airships! But what can you say about Stardust? It’s from the book by Mr Neil Gaiman (and what a delightful teller of tales he is) where a young man leaves the small Victorian village he resides in, to find a recently fallen shooting star as a token of his love for the village beauty. Of course, it doesn’t go as simple as he may have imagined it would.

I’ve got the book less than 4ft from where I’m sitting and I’m going to have to read it now – I mean, the trailer has airship pirates in it! Perfectly wonderful – between this and The Golden Compass, it seems that 2007 is the year for Steampunk airship films. I’m not about to complain. August cannot come soon enough for this! Thanks to the Steampunk Forum members, the people of The Clockworkers Journal, and Sci-Freaks for pointing it out – you’d have thought I’d have noticed by now!

On an octagonal pedestal, spewing out incomprehensible babble (well, it may as well be in tongues, to me) and clicking and clacking under a glass dome, a replica stock ticker, such as seen at the Stock Ticker Company just makes me ache to look at such beautiful archaic machinery.  Though the last mechanical stock ticker was officially made only quite recently (a horrid looking beige box thing, as many things are these days) historical stock tickers could look utterly amazing.  I particularly like the Edison Stock Ticker Transmitter for sheer loveliness and Steampunk sheen.

Thank you so much to Dr von Zarkof on the forums for pointing these out.  For much bigger photographs, do check out the press page where they have perfectly huge TIFF files.  Ogle to your hearts content!

The ever so kind Mad Salvager – who is fortunate enough to get her hands on a surfeit of beautiful old switches, valves, buttons and knobs, decided to see what a decidedly Steampunk control panel might look like.  The results are glorious and it must be said that anyone who can claim to have easy access to multiple ancient looking knife switches AND voltage dials is most certainly in a better position than I!  (I was about to post a link to the only knife switch I knew where to get in the UK (from Maplin) and what a pathetic example of the genre it was – but they no longer stock it!  The world – what has it come to?)

The resultant images are quite lovely and Ms Salvager wondered if they might suit as wallpapers – you can find them in the three usual sizes in the Steampunk Wallpaper page.  Just the thing for making it look as if it’s not mere folders on your desktop!

Oh Mr Von Slatt! What a marvelous and quirky pair of contraptions you have created – the above is one of two telegraph sounder replicas that he has designed and made himself. This one is brass, the other is the ‘Airship Edition’ aluminium one for when weight is at a premium. Not only are they beautiful in themselves, but they have been rigged up (next to his famous keyboard, I might add) and set to tap out the morse version of RSS feeds that he’s wired into! So terribly amusing.

While I’ve watched the video of it in action, I’m still not sure if I’d find the constant tap tappety tap of RSS feeds in the background annoying, or eminently comforting. There is information in the air – and even though I cannot understand it (my morse is atrocious, really) I would know it was all around me. What a great idea – and an excellent article to accompany them – full of detail and guidance. You are a wizard of Steampunk, Sir.  (Oh, and thank you, Mr Malaclypse, for pointing this out too.)

I saw the work of Mr Andrew Smith today on Make:Blog and I was ever so impressed! There’s so much brass and clockwork and chains and cogs – I am perfectly giddy!

While I cannot link directly to any of the pieces, I highly recommend Figurative > Fish and Bolts, Figurative > The Time Keepers, Kinetic > Tornado (I and II), Rolling Ball > Grandfather Time, and Water > Exhaler III and IV. Those are my particular favourites. Some of them look like they belong in a Steampunk inventor’s laboratory, and others look like they have escaped from that very lab with only the timepieces on their back as posessions in the world. Lovely things – I am quite a fan.

In a Victorian world, in the Umberland Asylum, a terrible mystery unfolds around two children – one ‘lost’ and the other missing.  Withershins, the comic, follows the unfolding of this tale that follows the viewpoint of the boy as he, with the gentle prodding of the psychiatrist assigned to his care, try to seperate childish mythology from fact, and find out what happened to his sister.

Nice little touches, like overgrown grandfather clocks, but with an overall feeling of dread and spooky atmosphere, this comic isn’t a comedy, that’s for certain, but it is beautifully themed with a struggle between the thorns of the forest and the ever present onward march of clocks.  Not classically Steampunk, for certain, but it’s a nice change – perhaps more like a 19th Century “Little Fears” or cautionary Victorian fantasy for children.

(For those curious, Withershins seems to be a play on the word widdershins, which means anti-clockwise (or counter-clockwise).  It’s a lovely word and really ought to see more use!)  Thank you, Wandering Nomad!

Oh what a handsome fellow this gentleman is!  And you should see his elegant lady-friend too – such a picture in puce with her dainty illuminated parasol.

The pair were created by the eminently talented Freya Horn over at the ConceptArt Forums for a postcard competition, and these very wonderfully fulfil the requirements for a postcard from another place and time – a Steampunk time.  Alas, I do not know if these will be made available as postcards, but I wish Ms Horn the very best of luck in the competition.

Now all I need to do is work out where one can find trousers with illuminated kneecaps, and a riveted top hat.  What marvellous cabled muttonchops!  Thank you, Mr McCambridge (from my work) – you’ve got an excellent eye!

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Just a quick post while I can sneak one in on my lunchbreak – a couple of people have pointed out the above amazing sizzle trailer for The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials Trilogy) film due out this year – it’s looking most interesting indeed! There’s airships and vehicular contraptions, terror, witches, polar bears (well, of a sort) and best of all – goggles! Thanks to both Andy_W, Jeremey and Mr Iversen for pointing it out! Definitely a fantasy/Steampunk cross to keep an eye out for (if you’ve not already read the books (Amazon.co.uk)). Of course, no big budget film would be complete without oodles of toys and other merchandise to accompany it – and the toys for The Golden Compass look quite interesting.  I’m particularly interested in the fact they plan to release child-sized props from the film (I know CuriousGoods has been keeping an eye on the compass replica) – I can only hope for some nice goggles to get my hands on.  :*:

Crabfu (Mr Huang) has done it again – above is his Steam Beetle, freshly finished and just oozing amazing Steampunk ingenuity.  Inspired by the Japanese Rhinoceros Beetle, and perhaps subconsiously by the anime Time Bokan (featuring giant, time-travelling all-terrain insect robots, of course), the Steam Beetle is a pretty tough diminutive vehicle!

There’s a video of it in action – with remote controllable wings, a whistle (how cheeky!) and it makes short work of clambering over ‘giant logs’ of several inches in total height!  The Steampunk Forum was treated to some work in progress videos a little while ago, and got an unusual sneak peek into the process behind crafting the carapace.

Do check out Mr Huang’s page for a lot more of the nitty gritty behind getting this live steam creature up and tooting!  Thank you again, Crabfu – it’s always facinating.

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I love books – not just the contents, but as against the old saying as it is – I occasionally judge a book by it’s cover.  The above book is by a gentleman called Mr Tim Baker, and he’s a makeup artist and prop maker.  This is apparently just one of a series of 6 custom prop books that he’s doing for some mysterious project that he’s not able to speak about yet, but oh – if the above book (and the rest) are anything to go by, it’s got to be something quite special.

The books were spotted over at the Handmade Book Community at LJ, by Mr Giles, and they’re just amazing.  Follow the link to see ammonite covered books, ones with hands and dials, and the above book with moving, hinged parts!  (Apparently the movement is required for the plot of this mysterious project.)  A beautiful Steampunk book that demands interesting content.  I’d be quite intimidated if I had anything even close to that to write in.