AcroRay
Repto and Membros Concept Art
This is the original concept art for Repto and Membros, developed and illustrated by the late, accomplished toy designer Stephen Lee for the California R & D Center toy design company back in 1978. Membros is a boneless sea slug with a suit of armor to protect his soft body and exposed brain, and tendril-like fingers. Repto also has an armored ceratopsian-styled plate to protect his brain. These practical features didn't make it to the toys' final designs, although Membros' sculpt suggest the armor around his pelvis. The art is various layers of pen and ink on bristol board, pasted up on heavier crescent board with an elaborate hand-painted star field for deco. This piece - and others in the collection - were shown to Mego's execs in 1978 and quickly approved for development at Cal R & D and the prototypes rushed shipped to Mego for production. There are no preliminaries or thumbnails for these concepts: they were done in blue line and finished right on the same board, so this is the actual origin piece for these two favorite Micronaut figures. It is also a beautiful piece of comic-book styled artwork in its own right.
This 30-year old Micronaut prototype piece is in my collection, and was also used in the Hero Factory Micronaut trading card set to make two cards, as well as appearing in the MICROPOLA #00 fanzine. I got this and several other pieces for the original Aliens, their vehicles and an unproduced playset from their creator nearly 10 years ago. Mr. Lee told me that if I hadn't called him when I did, he'd have probably thrown them all away within a few months! I've taken the whole collection to various Mego and Micronaut-oriented events. This was taken at a Pittsburgh Comicon get-together the Micropolis Embassy hosted in 2004. Photo by Erik Larsen, Micro-outpost.com
Repto and Membros Concept Art
This is the original concept art for Repto and Membros, developed and illustrated by the late, accomplished toy designer Stephen Lee for the California R & D Center toy design company back in 1978. Membros is a boneless sea slug with a suit of armor to protect his soft body and exposed brain, and tendril-like fingers. Repto also has an armored ceratopsian-styled plate to protect his brain. These practical features didn't make it to the toys' final designs, although Membros' sculpt suggest the armor around his pelvis. The art is various layers of pen and ink on bristol board, pasted up on heavier crescent board with an elaborate hand-painted star field for deco. This piece - and others in the collection - were shown to Mego's execs in 1978 and quickly approved for development at Cal R & D and the prototypes rushed shipped to Mego for production. There are no preliminaries or thumbnails for these concepts: they were done in blue line and finished right on the same board, so this is the actual origin piece for these two favorite Micronaut figures. It is also a beautiful piece of comic-book styled artwork in its own right.
This 30-year old Micronaut prototype piece is in my collection, and was also used in the Hero Factory Micronaut trading card set to make two cards, as well as appearing in the MICROPOLA #00 fanzine. I got this and several other pieces for the original Aliens, their vehicles and an unproduced playset from their creator nearly 10 years ago. Mr. Lee told me that if I hadn't called him when I did, he'd have probably thrown them all away within a few months! I've taken the whole collection to various Mego and Micronaut-oriented events. This was taken at a Pittsburgh Comicon get-together the Micropolis Embassy hosted in 2004. Photo by Erik Larsen, Micro-outpost.com