Greetings, fellow Cosmic-nauts, welcome to Cosmic-books and another exciting episode of In My Opinion, the best darn thing to spawn from a puddle of primordial ooze since DNA. Now come inside and relax, grab a hot cup of your favourite brew and help yourself to the cookies on the mantle. Please think of Cosmic-books as a little interstellar cafe floating in the medium of eternity, a welcoming place that invites you to take refuge and ease your burdens from the void.
As many of you know, because you are the best fans in the universe, I generally design my monthly creations based on the current world of arts and entertainment. In other words, I take my inspiration from whatever is trending or generally occupying my immediate perception. If it catches my attention, I’ll create some art from it, using it as inspiration, and then write a blog post to promote my site…. win/win.
Now, I don’t put too much pressure on myself, that would just kill the creativity. However, I do aim to be productive at least once a month, just to keep my juices flowing.
This month was particularly challenging, and finding a topic to write about seemed almost impossible. Without a clear direction, it felt like I was left floating in an endless ether of mundane media, buried under a galactic web of a thousand unfinished projects. Drowning in disparity, time constantly nipping at my heels, what was I going to do?
Then, a little way off in the distance, I saw a new star on the horizon. It was small at first and didn’t really catch my attention, but steadily it grew larger. Yeah, that was just the shimmering light of my procrastination.
But, it’s true, this month, I searched high and low, looked under every dusty moon and comet and couldn’t find anything that inspired enough to fire up the Blender engines and get down to work. There is nothing I would rather do than craft a new and exciting experience for you, my favourite little astro-travelers.
Sometimes I do create original stuff, with no outside influences required, but those projects are not the staple attraction of my monthly opinion pieces. These IMO articles are aimed at a wider audience, because you never know what kind of reader gravity will attract, and getting customers through the front door is half the battle. Yet, the spring of inspiration was running low, and this month almost proved fruitless. Unable to find inspiration, the winter blues had begun to set in, and I had to ask, are we in a collective creative drought? Are we suffering the effects of a landscape filled with so many hollow AI images that creators have stopped trying?
This entertainment void appears bleak at best this holiday season, there wasn’t even a new Star Wars movie this Christmas, to look forward to.
Then I saw that the new Zootopia 2 animated film opened up, and because I really enjoyed the first one, I thought maybe I’d sculpt a fuzzy bunny. Yet, before I could get my fur flying it hit me, OMG, there’s a new Avatar movie coming out! It’s not Star Wars, but hey, it’s something I could work with. Then it occurred to me why I didn’t even know about this movie coming out. I mean, I did know about it, but not that it was coming out next week!
Why wasn’t anybody talking about this new movie? Avatar, Fire and Ash, is the third installment in the series from James Cameron, which he launched in 2009. That film made Zillions, and while the sequel did well at the box office, it didn’t have the same magic as the first one, so my question is will the third spell disaster for the franchise? Will this new movie bring fire and ash to James Cameron’s blue baby? Does it matter? Does anyone even care?
So I figured I’m all set, and all I need to do is rewatch the first two Avatar movies to get me in the mood, right? Easier said than done. Thankfully, I recently got myself a set of VR glasses, and the stage was set. I was ready to open Pandora’s box and see what secrets it held.
One thing about watching movies in VR is that even if they are not in true 3D, the big-screen effect is really spectacular and brings even old worn-out movies back to life. It took me a couple of days to rewatch the first Avatar film, and honestly, I am still amazed by it, it is really a work of art. So I fired up Blender and got busy crafting a little art of my own to commemorate the new film while honoring the previous films.
Pulling out all the stops, I managed to whip together a couple pretty cool models with the help of a new add on that I incorporated into my work flow, Loft Curves, by Mark Kingsnorth. It’s a good addition which makes older processes a little easier for shaping structures. Anyway the art took about 50 hours, not including this blog post, my elbows are sore and my feet swollen, but I’m happy with how it turned out. Sculpting these models made me think of just how amazing the work that went into those Avatar movies, those artists… The world building, creature and mechanical designs are mind-blowing.
Fun fact: I wrote a really bad children’s comic book in 1980 and the main set piece was a world called Ariel’s Halo, a world that was made up of giant floating islands where the main characters would tour around as part of the action.
Well, I’ve been re-working that book for decades, and the Cosmic-books logo is taken directly from that creation. Yet, not having the budget of James Cameron to bring my ideas to life, it still hurts to see his movie literally take my idea out of the collective well we are all apparently tapped into, and make billions.
So this leaves us with Fire and Ash. I believe it stars the same cast as the first two movies and I am sure it will revisit most of the old themes. I really do hope that we are not just going to receive another lengthy 3-hour environmental lecture by James Cameron, and the story continues to grow in interesting and captivating ways.
I’m going in entirely blind to the storyline of this new movie, and for all I know, Samuel L. Jackson is in it, yelling out stuff like “Get these Mother Freaking Avatars off my Mother Ducking plane? At least that would be fresh, IMO!
Anyways, Avatar Fire and Ash opens December 19, 2025.
You can bet I’m going to see it at least once.
Happy holidays