２０多年前，一群有生命的机器人从赛伯隆星球来到我们的地球，打响了一场无比激烈的战争，２０多年后，电影版《变形金刚》卷土重来，在全球席卷了６亿美元 的票房。影片勾起了无数人对童年的回忆，更让南京的３个变形金刚迷行动起来，他们以雪铁龙Ｃ２轿车为原型，手工制作了一个属于自己的“变形金刚”。

昨天，记者来到工厂车间看到了这个由雪铁龙C2汽车变形而来的汽车人。只见他一身金黄色，头微微侧向右方，两臂伸展，两手张开，右腿微弯曲，好像正含笑往前走来。

X2汽车人的制作者是三位小伙子，隋鲁鲁、张一鸣和李伟。隋鲁鲁告诉记者，他们把这个汽车人 起名叫“X2”，它的原型是大黄蜂和爵士，但又不完全是，加入了很多他们自己的东西。“我还加入了中国风。”隋鲁鲁说，与美国的变形金刚相比，自己设计的 Ｘ２的头部是仿造中国古代头盔，比较简单大气。

隋鲁鲁介绍，除了挡风玻璃和车顶盖，他们几乎仿造了汽车上的所有部件。车门是机器人的两个翅膀，后轮是机器人的两只脚……

“Ｘ２有４．５米高。这是根据Ｃ２的长度，计算出变形后的高度。”隋鲁鲁说，之前自己曾想用其他车型，可是都太大太高，操作起来有一定难度。

3个月做成变形金刚

X2汽车人的制作从3个月前开始，隋鲁鲁告诉记者，他和张一鸣、李伟都是看着变形金刚长大的一代，是铁杆变形金刚迷，正是由于这种强烈的变形金刚情结，让他们想拥有一个自己的变形金刚。

“这个想法两年前就有了，今年看了电影《变形金刚》后，我们决定开始动手制作一个属于自己的 变形金刚。”在开始制作之前，负责设计的隋鲁鲁至少画了二三十张底稿。“其实后来底稿也并没有完全用上，还是凭着感觉一边做一边改。”隋鲁鲁说，他们的汽 车人是纯手工制造出来的，是采用雕塑的形式做成的。所有材料都是买来原始材料，然后再加工打磨。“不可能用真正的汽车来做，除了车灯、轮胎是真的，其他都 是用树脂、玻璃等材料仿造的。”

X2其实也有“生命力”

“在制作汽车人的3个月中，每次看到X2，就觉得它是富有生命力的，会和它讲话，会觉得它时刻都要动起来。”隋鲁鲁说，有这样的感觉除了是对X2倾注了所有的心血，还有一个原因，就是在设计和制作上添加了很多细节，让X2看起来富有生命力。

隋鲁鲁说，因为受到资金的限制，他们三人凑了五六万才做成这样的机器人，如果想要变形，费用将更高，因此X2并不能像影片中的机器人那样变形。

他说，在X2的腿上增设一个液压杆，让他的腿有弯曲感；在手上增加了一些螺帽，形成了手的关节；还在他的脚上采用了履带，感觉他要行走一样。正是由于这些细节的增加，X2才显得如此逼真动人。

“X2至少用了四五百个螺帽，50米的杆子，五六百斤的树脂……”隋鲁鲁说，整个机器人有600多公斤重。

下一个目标：擎天柱

隋鲁鲁说，他们还想制作更多的机器人，其实原来他准备制作的是擎天柱，可是需要卡车。为此他曾经跑过旧车市场，看到很多旧零件，可是用手一提就发现，自己必须放弃，因为一个发动机就有1吨重，而且按擎天柱的比例，变形后远远不止四五米，至少要有六七层楼的高度。

尽管如此，这三名小伙子并没有放弃。擎天柱仍是他们下一个目标。“如果条件允许的话，我们会考虑让擎天柱变形。”

文章来自: 金陵晚报 (更多)

"New Tea" in China

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Neocha, or “New Tea”, China’s first website for artists to show off and share their wares, launched last week in Shanghai. Think of MySpace for creative types, then think of it channeling into groups for bands, or photographers, or clothing designers, sculptors, jewelers, bookbinders, knitters, sketchers, and so on. The vision for Neocha’s success is built around the Chinese love of gabbing.

The young Chinese love to get together online to gab about topics of all and any sort, from movie stars to new products to political or sensitive issues, which they address in creative, coded ways to avoid attention from censors. Online talkfests are the lynchpin of success for BBS (the immensely popular online bulletin boards), for blogs (a wildly successful phenomenon in China, even compared to the US) and even for Baidu, China’s own search engine that is currently whipping the pants off Google, in part because of the discussion forums offered and populated around search results.

In China, online chatter seems to be a mirror for offline chatter: I once drove more than 2 hours home to Shanghai from a blogging conference in Hangzhou with 3 women, one of whom talked, I swear, the entire trip without pausing to breathe. Chinese restaurants are incredibly, noisily chattery. The Chinese seem natively comfortable with a hand-held mike in front of crowds or on TV. Even walking along on the city streets, nonstop text messaging fills in empty air with silent chatter. A famous Chinese phrase, “renao”, meaning “hot and noisy” counts as highest praise for just about any social situation.

Neocha, the brainchild of a foursome of young Americans and Chinese, went live with about 130 artists. So far, it is self-funded. They discussed one possible business plan, which is to hook into the mobile-phone-accessed internet, where neocha could capture a percentage of the cost of each SMS sent to or from their website, from RSS feeds for example. Each message may reap a fraction of a cent, but fractions add up in China, which has over 250 million mobile phone users. During February’s Chinese New Year week this year, China Mobile reported over 11 billion SMS messages had been sent, up nearly 50% from the previous year. Already, 17% of the 137 million Chinese internet users say they connect to the internet via mobile phones. And all this is in a country of 1.4 billion people, where the internet is still in its infancy, and where future mass-scale internet access is likely to largely evolve by leapfrogging over broadband connections straight to mobile internet access.

The real-life 8-hour launch party for Neocha was celebrated in a renovated warehouse in the Suzhou Creek area of Shanghai. Suzhou Creek is New York’s Chelsea of Shanghai, although this particular warehouse sits on its far edge, among neighborhoods in the midst of destruction and construction. Here, people struggle to keep their shophouses open even as the upper floors of their buildings are being demolished, taxi drivers still congregate because the stall food is famously good and cheap, and no tourists yet venture.

The crowd brought to life the dry data points of China’s internet population: young, urban, slightly more male, and – hard to quantify with statistics but easy to imagine – incomparably hip. They dressed in complicated ensembles that placed themselves right inside their artistic creations: one young woman dressed all in white, with sharply contrasting jet black hair, sported big made-up eyes, which matched the eyes she painted onto her giant anthropomorphic sculpture of an IKEA storage unit (you had to be there). If you looked down, you saw seas of bizarre and colorful shoes, difficult to come by in Shanghai shops, but perhaps their own creations (I saw at least two cobblers displaying their wares). They wore hats, wigs, layers of pants, skirts, vests, jackets, and accessorized with belts, chains, fringe, bells, buttons, bags, and jewels. On the third floor of the warehouse, a succession of live bands droned on; on the second floor, a photographer assembled an on-the-fly, crowd-participatory creation of Polaroid photos, being shot, developed, printed, signed, and hung like so much laundry on lines around the middle of the vast room. On the first floor were dozens of tables of personal creations. A surreal stroll thru the space evoked senses ranging from the sinister netherworld of blood and gore (beach flipflops with blood and dagger scenes) to a Charlotte’s Web world of small-town-USA county fairs, with hand-crocheted sock-dolls and home-made soaps. The crowd spilled outside to the alley, where you could buy Tsingdao beer and hotdogs. And in the restrooms, gaggles of young women crowded around the mirrors, reminiscent of the primping sessions at a high school prom.

Much western press focuses on China’s censorship of the internet, which is a true phenomenon. Much less focuses on the wild and crazy place the internet also is, a place which is beginning to showcase the youthful, experimental creations of an unbound culture and a hungry, impatient populace.

I also want to announce that Neocha's online webzine called 《放大》, or 《Blow Up》 in English, will be putting out a new issue in late May.  This will be the third issue of 《放大》 and will be a special issue to celebrate the event, publish some of the best pictures and do follow up interviews with some of outstanding participants.  If you have pictures or videos of the event, please contact me through my profile or by email (sean@neocha.com).

Thanks again to everyone for their hard work and involvement with this year's 传染 - NeoSpring and please let me know how we can make the next one even better !

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感谢所有参加“首届新茶创意文化节”的朋友们！
是你们的全情参与才让这次的活动获得了空前的成功。
我们一定会继续做下去！

顺便预告！

5月底
neocha自己的网络杂志《放大》
第三期将会是“传染”的特别版！
告诉你“传染”背后的故事！！！！

希望有4/14当天活动照片的人，立刻联系我！
你的照片将有机会入选《放大》第三期！