Let it glow, let it glow, let it glow....

     Sci-fi based work not only deserves special effects, but for me, it begs for them! Sounds, laser beams, special lighting, and movement of some kind, are all a necessity! While I had kept this issue to a bare minimum with the Fantoccini family (they only had lights in their chest plates and one light in the babies head), the new pieces I had in mind would need to really push the special effects envelope in order to be effective. How does one accomplish this on a starving artists budget?

     The answer came to me while at the movie theater. I had gone to see the new Tron Legacy movie, an update to the original Tron I had seen when I was 10 years old, and was completely amazed at the glowing suits, vehicles, and landscapes once more. When I got home that night I did some net searches on the special effects used in the movie and came across a company named ClearNeon. These guys provided the paints used in many of the scenes in the movie, and at just $20 dollars or so a can, they were within my reach. 

     These paints are truly impressive. They are nearly invisible in normal lighting conditions but glow blue, white, red, green, pink, yellow, purple, orange, and dark black under UV (black lights) lighting. An additional bonus was their non-toxic natural chemical make up. If all that was not enough to make them a cool option, they smell too. Orange like a cream sicle, white like vanilla, pink like bubble gum, red like cherry, and so on and so forth! A truly amazing product. 

  

   Further research on their website turned me onto the UV reactive 3D glasses they sell. I ordered just two pair at first. They were your basic, cheap, plastic/paper glasses, much like the ones you would have been given at 3D movies in the 1970s and 80's! They made the work POP! The fact that they also fit in with the theme of my work was a simple bonus and made them a must have for my showings.