Get Off My Lawn!

Posted to Flickr on 16 January 2015. Part of the Laugh! series. Funny is fun.™

“Oh! Trespassers make me so angry!”

Marvin the Martian meets NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover.

Origin

I was recently re-reading a scene in the comic book The Watchmen that takes place on Mars, and I thought about how funny it would be if a NASA rover were recording it. One thing led to another, I found a Hot Wheels Curiosity rover, I substituted Marvin the Martian for Dr. Manhattan, and I had my starting point.

Setup

The ground is an orange poster board covered strategically in certain places with bacon salt. The backdrop is a brown poster board with two brown sheets of scrapbooking paper suggesting mountains in the distance.

Setup

Three flashlights were used. The black flashlight on the far left gives Marvin a backlight. The rover is backlit by the blue flashlight. A third flashlight (not shown) provided some light at the top of the backdrop.

As usual, my large circular diffuser is above the scene but not shown, softening the ambient light in the room.

Alternates

I briefly toyed with the idea of a very abstract scene with just Marvin and the rover.

Alternate

I also tried to use a red laser pointer to give Curiosity a glowing red eye, but my pointer was not quite narrow enough, and the white plastic tended to absorb the light rather than reflect it.

Alternate 2

Elsewhere

Marvin and the rover have also been spotted here:

Karen Woodward

Have you seen this photo somewhere else? Or are you using it yourself? I would love to hear from you! It's always fun to learn where my photos turn up.