HOME | DD
RobCaswell β Fireball XL-5 and then some...
Published: 2011-12-16 21:03:07 +0000 UTC; Views: 2333; Favourites: 17; Downloads: 177
Redirect to original
Description
I don't have many pieces of art remaining from my childhood... and those I do have only surfaced by a fluke! This is another of those handful of images. While other kids were drawing houses, cars, and smiling suns in the sky, I jumped right to space craft.This is around age 4-5... when Gerry Anderson's Fireball XL-5 (in it's first run) was my FAY-voh-right TV show!! I'm not sure, but I think I tried creating some new ship types based on the XL-5 design, as well as trying to the show's ship some justice.
Medium: Big, fat ole pencil on newsprint-quality paper.
Related content
Comments: 75
LOL! What's it inspire you to do?
π: 0 β©: 1
To not quit at what I do. Β It should be good inspiration for anyone!
π: 0 β©: 1
Goes without saying that someone's come a long way
π: 0 β©: 1
Well... at least I don't reverse my letters anyone!
π: 0 β©: 0
I remember watching Fireball XL-5 when I was a kid, and I believe I had the model of the ship for Christmas one year, it was a great show!!!
π: 0 β©: 1
You had the model?!?! Now I'm jealous!
π: 0 β©: 1
I had the submarine Seaview model(not a put together model, already assembled toy), Lost-In Space's motorized robot-(about 12 inches tall), and a bunch of other neat stuff that eventually got thrown away!!! I could kick myself now when I think how much they might be worth today!!!
π: 0 β©: 0
Ahhh, if only I could find any of my lost drawings; they were all cars, of course - even though I do remember watching Stingray as a wee lad, I drew cars almost exclusively up until I was in junior high and high school, when I really discovered the wealth of Trek stuff out there (incl. the reruns!), and when I realized I could draw comics (kinda!). It was weird, considering I had lots of sci-fi toys (yayyy, Major Matt Mason!), but they were right there next to the Hot Wheels cars and tracks, and of course I had two uncles nearby who worked for GM who kept that particular habit well-fed 
So, were the markings on these ships your non-reading comprehension of the symbols on Fireball XL-5, or were you reading (and writing with one of those hugeass pencils you had to sling over your shoulder!) at the point you drew this?
π: 0 β©: 1
Heh - I'm pretty sure it was one of those giant pencils where the lead is almost 1.4" diameter. This was well before first grade and I was still reversing a lot of letters, as kids that age often do.
I loved my Hot Wheels. Remember when we were, like, 10-11, and they announced they were going to have timed races at stores carrying Hot Wheels? I was in there with my fastest beast and took first place (at Almy's department store) with my Nitty Gritty Kitty! I brought my Sand Crab... bit it lost. It always did. It was my favorite car, but it was dog-slow.
Sand Crab: [link]
Nitty Gritty Kitty: [link]
I also played with AFX cars, well into high school. I'd like to think it was because I couldn't get a girlfriend... but it may have actually been THE REASON I couldn't get a girlfriend...
π: 0 β©: 1
Mine was the Boss Hoss (the chrome one from the club
And I, too, had and loved the Sand Crab, and yeah, it was a crab on the track! I definitely remember the mall races, too! It's too bad the sets are so puny, these days, and it seems pretty hard to buy the parts separately - now that they have a car with a built-in digital video camera [link] it would be fun to put together a complicated track and then view it from the 'driver's eye' 
As for A/FX cars, I sold them! And I liked to custom-build them, but I never raced them against anyone 
π: 0 β©: 1
Yep - I had the club version, too (until my sister let her friends toddler play in the sand with it when I wasn't home - totally bent and gummed up the axles). I think that was my second or third fastest. Of course a lot of the speed just had to do with how heavy the model was
I sold AFX too, in my days as a "hobby pusher". So how did you make your customs? Vacuform.... or something else? I didn't have any custom bodies, but I was forever ripping down the innards and rebuilding 'em, trying to make the most of the engineering. I got back into it briefly, about '97.... but it didn't stick with me.
π: 0 β©: 1
Yeah, my experiments were primarily with getting faster chassis - I stuck with the basic plastic bodies, no vacforms. Speaking of electric racing cars: Motorific!
π: 0 β©: 0
I think pencil is STILL my favorite medium!
π: 0 β©: 0
I love this! Pretty damned GOOD for a 4 or 5 year old! I too have a handfull of drawings from when I was a kid. I posted one or two on my DA gallery as well. So was this supposed to be a comic strip? The way the page is broken up into separate panel suggests that possibility.
π: 0 β©: 1
I think I might have been trying to tell a comic story... in my own way. At least that'd be my guess. But, as you may well surmise, my memory on the specifics is a LITTLE fuzzy
π: 0 β©: 1
And 13 years later, the Starfarer took to the skies!
π: 0 β©: 0
better than me today, which is probably why I'm trying to find my muse as a writer,
π: 0 β©: 1
Well I'm sure this has a raw creative spirit behind that's lost to me. There are some things only a five year old can do
π: 0 β©: 1
I couldn't even do it at five, you're lucky.
π: 0 β©: 0
The first thing to impress is that you were clearly striving for realism.. at age 4, and with good results! Did you subdivide the panel in four (roughly) equal parts yourself? Did you do anything in color, back then?
π: 0 β©: 1
Yeah, the panel divisions were mine.
Color? A little.... but I think it's best described as "spot color". I think, even then, what I valued was creating the concept more than making any kind of technicolor spectacle.
π: 0 β©: 0
I started drawing at 5, and honest to gosh the TOS Enterprise was my first subject, followed shortly by the D-7. Unfortunately those have been lost in several floods and stuff.
π: 0 β©: 1
Bummer. Would have loved to see your uber-early works!
π: 0 β©: 0
That is so awesome... I did the same thing with aircraft (and dinosaurs)... now I'm sad that I don't have any of those pictures anymore.
π: 0 β©: 1
I know.... we never sere the value of such things at the time....
π: 0 β©: 1
Nope... even years later I thought they were trash... but now I'm old.
π: 0 β©: 1
It does! If you're lucky.
π: 0 β©: 1
I cross my fingers each time I got to bed...
π: 0 β©: 1
I find it's difficult to get a good night's rest with crossed fingers, so I just recite the old children's prayer.
π: 0 β©: 0
I'm so glad I actually have a few of these left. I created REAMS of the stuff.... but, of course, I placed little value on it before I was onto the next drawing.
π: 0 β©: 1
Well of course you were a kid holding onto doodles was a Rare thing you truly Had to think it was Bad ass for that Ha!
π: 0 β©: 1
Actually my Mom stored these away without my knowledge and only gave them back to me when I was about 30
π: 0 β©: 0
I used to draw spaceships myself; not as simple drawings but as part of full blown science fiction comic books complete with dialog balloons, monsters, robots, aliens... the whole nine yards. I vaguely remember Fireball XL-5 (I recall most clearly one episode where there was a 'sea of air' in outer space with no solid ground but - somehow - complete with flying bird monsters much like pterodactyls). I must have come along a bit later than you did though as I remember little from that far back; my major inpirations were Lost in Space, Star Trek, and various Saturday morning cartoons like Space Ghost and the Herculoids.
Unfortunaely all the drawings *I* made in my childhood are long gone!
π: 0 β©: 1
I don't remember that many details from Fireball XL-5.... and fewer from Supercar. But I know that both were my first "favorite TV shows" and inspired me in all kinds of ways.
π: 0 β©: 1
I can actually remember Supercar quite a lot better than I do Fireball XL-5 for some reason. Not sure if it came out later, or I watched it more, or what, but I can remmeber quite a few more scenes from it than I do from Fireball XL-5, even though from what I hear I should have liked the Fireball XL-5 show better! Mike Mercury (or one of he male characters, anyway) having a dream that he can fly without supercar and then falling, scenes about ome hostile underwater race of creatures, some villian resembling Goldfnger, a reference to George Washington... random stuff like that. I also remember seeing a Supercar coloring book at a store when I was a little kid too.
π: 0 β©: 1
I know I did watch Supercar, but reinforced it for me was that I had the Supercar Golden Book. That allowed for more visual reinforcement than the see-it-and-it's-gone TV episodes did... though they still DID have an impact. I do have one piece of Supercar-influenced art in my "pile", so maybe I'll scan that next
π: 0 β©: 0
Excellent 
π: 0 β©: 1
Oh man - your saucer ship sounds much like mine that I created around this time. It was part of my "Beacon Police" series - a sort of scifi cops and robbers concept.
π: 0 β©: 1
Very cool 
π: 0 β©: 0
The addiction to the Sci-Fi starts early and never leaves.
π: 0 β©: 1
I was BORN with a tricorder in my hand!
Well.... OK. It was actually a length of umbilical cord... BUT I was born with a good imagination, so it all worked out
π: 0 β©: 1
Baby said his first words...Space...The final frontier...
π: 0 β©: 1
| Next =>