Appreciation Stations!!

I sent off an email the other day to Chris Neale in the UK, owner of the amazing ChrisNeale-Creative website (which I highly recommend any self-respecting sci-fi geek visit). He has created some extraordinary CG renders of Doctor Who and Star Trek icons, and provides details of how he went about creating them.

I was pleasantly surprised when he wrote back to me, taking the time to offer a few inspiring words, so without further ado, here’s my initial email and his response…


Hi Chris,

My name's Danny and I live across the other side of the world in little ol' New Zealand. I stumbled across your site and I just really wanted to say I love your work, the attention to detail is incredible... I'm a bit of a nerd so your renders of the Daleks and Star Trek are faves.

I wish I had your talent!! But I don't, so I will just continue to appreciate what you put together. And because I'm a cheeky beggar, I took one of your pics and changed it just a teeny bit in Paint (yeah, I really do know nothing about CG imaging techniques!!).

Not that your work isn't perfect, it totally is, and it's awesome to see the Renegade Daleks looking like they're not about to fall apart!! But I wanted to see what one of your pics would look like with the larger indicator 'ears' that I'm so fond of (cos I love the old movie Daleks). I also took out the eyespot cos I'm not so keen on that, I always felt it made the Daleks look less threatening and alien - that's why the original Daleks are the best!! Really looking forward to your Super Dalek, too :)

And I TOTALLY agree with you re: Shatner and the Enterprise. Can't wait to see your finished pics!! What did you think about the new movie?

Anyway, you're a busy man, so I'll quit bugging you, and I don't expect a reply, but your work totally rocks, keep it up!!

Danny in NZ




Hi Danny in New Zealand....

I appreciate your taking the time to write, firstly I don't make money from my work, so it is there purely for people to enjoy. I still get email from people who own one of my Challenger paintings (more than twenty years after it was painted) telling me how it has pride of place in their home. The fact that something I have done has made a small difference to someone else's life means far more to me than any amount of financial reward I could have received for my efforts!

Secondly, the fact that you have an imagination and you are interested in science fiction DOES NOT make you "a nerd". Men like Marconi and John Logi Baird imagined that they could contact the Spirit World with a machine... and accidentally invented radio and television respectively, while attempting to do so (something that is little known to this day)! Men went to the Moon firstly because they dared to imagine how it could be done. The idea was a fanciful one that had only ever been written about in science fiction books. It took a great leader with vision, Kennedy... to imagine the effect that it would have on his nation and it advanced the whole world in ways that most to this day still do not realise.

Sadly, the world is seriously lacking in imagination or great men of vision... when you consider that in 2009, two thirds of the population remain in poverty. The nerds... are the men in suits that exploit this fact in order to make more and more obscene amounts of money. They are the leaders who despite knowing that we have reached the point of no return... whereby the Earth's resources needed to maintain energy production are no longer sustainable... they refuse to accept the fact. The nerds won't let them develop new forms of energy production... because they'll stop making money out of the old ones. The nerds won't invest their cash either... because there's no guaranteed short term return on the investment required.

In short, the nerds are responsible for the dire state in which we now find ourselves... from the collapse of the global financial system to the decimation of the Earth's resources! They are the only ones that have benefited from it and they will either die with it or find themselves surplus to requirement when men of vision not only dare to imagine a better world... but begin to do something about it!

So Danny... keep on dreaming and if you have children, encourage them to be excited by the endless possibilities that currently can only be imagined in science fiction! Maybe one of them will turn out to be someone that saved the world... from the nerds!

Take care, thanks for your interest.
Regards,
Chris Neale