In American society, infected with conspiracy theories and the arms race, there is a myth about the mysterious "men in black" - representatives of a secret organization who hunt down and interrogate eyewitnesses of UFOs.

Lowell Cunningham and illustrator Sandy Carruthers come up with three issues of Men in Black for Aircel Comics, and three more a year later. The main characters were already here Zed, Kay and Jay - however, all white.

Hollywood producer (who took over DreamWorks two years later) Walter F. Parks acquires film rights and tries to approach director "The Addams Family" Barry Sonnenfeld, who is currently filming Get Shorty. In the director's chair, they only want to see him, so you have to wait.

Film adaptation producer Spielberg manages to persuade Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith on the condition that the script be improved - it seemed to the actors that the writers had not coped with the spirit of the comic. Smith's candidacy was lobbied by Sonnenfeld's wife, a fan "Prince of Beverly Hills"- the sitcom that saved the young hip-hoper Smith from bankruptcy. Kay was originally going to be played by Clint Eastwood.

The first film in the franchise comes out, where one of the sidelines is removed at the last moment during the editing. The whole variety of alien races is invented by Rick Baker, who worked at Videodrome, Ed Wood, Exorcist, "Star Wars" and Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video. Leading up to the film, Marvel publishes several new issues of the comic, followed by a comic based on the film. In the footsteps of the film comes the shooter Men In Black for PC and PlayStation, Will Smith releases a single of the same name, and sales of Ray-Ban glasses of the Predator 2 series soar threefold.

On Warner Bros. The WB launches Men in Black: The Series, a sequel to the film that ran for four seasons until the sequel's release. Kay was kept on staff and rejuvenated, Jay's mustache was shaved off, and the MIB headquarters moved under the LaGuardia airport building. Besides, there were almost no jokes here.

Men in Black II is on the screen - the story of how Jay has to re-recruit Kay (who retired at the end of the first series) to fight a new scourge - an alien viper Serlina in the guise of Lara Flynn Boyle from Victoria's Secret advertising A far more ridiculous film collects a significant box office, but critics take it coolly, and Boyle takes it for the role "Golden Raspberry". Even on the set, Will Smith suggests to Barry Sonnenfeld the idea of ​​​​a sequel with a journey into the past, but it hangs in the air for a long time.

On June 11, 2010, a teaser with Will Smith in MIB's signature suit appears, announcing that "You expect us to have 3D with explosions, but we care about something else - I'm here to make 3D attractive."

On May 25 , the newest film adaptation of Jay and Kay 's story -- Men in Black III -- hits the world 's screens . Instead of Zed (Rip Torn, who played him, is now serving time for multiple offenses), the agency is now run by O, Kay's former secretary. By the beginning of filming, the scriptwriters had not yet come up with an ending and sometimes composed lines right in the course of filming. Will Smith appears on the silver screen for the first time after a three-year hiatus as the film's budget grows to 215 million because of his whims. Three days before the release, the game Men in Black: Alien Crisis appeared on sale, where instead of the main characters there is another character, but there is Frank the pug.

Greetings to all readers of the portal!

On April 27 and 28, an amazing festival died down in St. Petersburg - Epic Con Saint Petersburg 2019. This year it became an anniversary and celebrated its fifth anniversary.

My wife and I did not change the traditions of stand building and once again harnessed ourselves to one very interesting project. This year marks the release of the fourth part of the famous film franchise: "Men in Black: International". On the eve of the release, we would like to remind the visitors of the festival why they fell in love with this MCU so much.

The world of MIB is very complicated from a technical point of view. In addition to the abundance of black suits, these are also aliens, flying saucers, weapons and technical equipment with an abundance of chrome. So the job was not easy. Since such stands are entirely created by enthusiasts, we could not set the bar for Hollywood scenery. It was necessary to create something simple, recognizable and, most importantly, very cool at the same time. After all, we are the best of the best, sir!

A lot of hard and unusual work has been done in two months. I had to learn new tools, new programs, new techniques. It wasn't easy, but it was very exciting!

Each part of the franchise is something different: new actors, new weapons and equipment, a new era. Perhaps the company of undersized invertebrates, simply called Worms, remains unchanged.

I want to start a small series of articles on the creation of the stand of the Men in Black, from them, or rather from a description of the process of their creation.

Worms. These extraterrestrial assholes have never been distinguished by good manners: they gossip, smoke and constantly drink ... coffee. Yes, it's hard to imagine them without a cup of hot strong. And all because on their planet only the elite are allowed to drink this drink, which they are not.

At first we thought how to make them? We considered the most obvious option with papier mache with wire frame inside. This option was quite affordable, but had two major drawbacks:

- Soaked cardboard takes a long time to dry. It's not just a few days, but rather weeks. And it is also impossible to dry it with a hair dryer or similar means, otherwise the surface begins to crack.

- Repeatability. It is quite difficult, without experience, to fashion several identical aliens from paper pulp.

Additive technologies have again extended a helping hand in solving this problem. One caveat - there were no ready-made models of these worms on the Internet, which meant that they would have to be made by yourself. It's not the first year that I've been doing modeling: architecture, subject matter, technology. But no matter how much I tried and did not force myself, I never managed to model either people or animals, let alone aliens. But this time I had no choice, so I decided to give it a try. Admittedly, sculpting amorphous aliens is much easier than something earthly, with a clearer anatomy.

The first thing I started with was looking for references. Admittedly, I thought they were quite small, but some shots from the film helped establish their approximate height (about 1 meter, with a slightly bent back)

I also managed to find good angles in profile and full face. Then I threw in the main parts:

I checked the correctness of the forms with a smoothing modifier (Mesh Smooth), for the possibility of further sculpting.

Then it was necessary to splice all parts of the body, for which I stretched the mesh as follows:

Those. so that the number of edges on the end of one part matches the number on the other.

Having fused it with the body, and a little bit of magic in ZBrush, I got a pretty good result.

Then we thought for a long time in what position to put the model, so that it would be both universal for photographs and convenient for transportation, but in the end we decided that such a large "toy" should have at least some mobility. My wife suggested me a solution with hinges, as they do in dolls. The hinges will allow the limbs to move in different directions:

Back in 3ds max again, I started to cut the Worm at the joints, adding hinges to the joints.

As my wife explained to me, such articulated dolls are assembled on a rubber band:

It pulls together all the parts, and allows you to set any pose. Ideally, a properly designed doll should stand on its own.

The final touches in ZBrush and Worms are almost done.

The horns (eyebrows, or mustaches, I don't know what to call them correctly) and rudimentary limbs on the stomach were modeled last. They are cut lengthwise to ensure sufficient printing strength.

The remaining elements are also prepared for printing. I usually do a layout in 3ds Max right away to understand how to use the table area more efficiently and cut the model less:

Unfortunately, at this stage there are practically no photos. In parallel, I led a few more projects, and I was completely sure that I filmed everything.

The first set was a trial and was printed from the remnants of SBS plastic. We wanted to collect Worms and test how mobile they are and what positions they can be planted or placed in. The first thing we found out, yes - he can smoke: Then the idea came to make one of the Worms a little more interesting. A small test stand was assembled from pieces of chipboard, behind which a servo was installed. Small pieces of wire were hung on the elongated levers, fixing them approximately in the region of the aliens' shoulder blades.

The servo is connected in an extremely simple way directly to the Arduino Nano:

Then we fill in the test sketch and get the following:

For more "live" movements, a simple sketch was written ( Dinara, thank you very much for your help!) with random servo rotations in a given range of angles. At the same time, the speed could also be changed.

xservo.attach(9);

yservo.attach(10);

ypos = random(180); //generate random value for y-servo

yservo.write(ypos); //y-servo moves to new position

yservo.detach();

e = random(1000,5000);

yservo.attach(10);

xpos = random(180); //generate random value for x-servo

xservo.write(xpos); //x-servo moves to new position

xservo.detach();

s = random(1000,5000);

xservo.attach(9);

__________________________

The sketch shows two servos (for channels 9 and 10). I planned that if I had time, I would hang some more hinge on the servo, but unfortunately the time was not in our favor. In any case, it turned out interesting. Looking ahead, I want to say that such random turns to the left and right resulted in an interesting effect: those who came up to take pictures with the Worm did not know that he was moving. Therefore, sometimes we heard the screams of the unprepared public, which sat down closer to the stranger, in anticipation of a good shot. And some, on the contrary, seeing how the Worm turns, began to somehow interact with him: they stroked, waved their hands in front of him, and someone even tried to have heart-to-heart conversations with a heavy smoker.

Finally, after all the tests, it's time to print the rest of the copies. Unfortunately, SBS did not show itself in the best way in terms of strength (during the fall, the layers diverged a couple of times), so a cheap and durable solution was needed. Here PLA helped out a lot from Greg. I really liked it in terms of strength characteristics - at the last festival, most of the details for the scenery were printed from it, and all of them are still alive! It must be understood that after two days of active touching, using, photographing and other interactions, not all parts of the scenery survive. They break everything that is poorly screwed and that can be broken at all. This is a separate sad topic. People, please take care of our work!

Parts printed from natural PLA are glued together with super glue and covered with a mixture of silver and dry putty:

Such a mixture fills the pores well, gives little shrinkage and dries quickly (sanding can be done after 30-40 minutes)

The only non-PLA prints were tiny vestigial arms on the torso and horns on the head. They are supposed to be soft, so they are printed from SBS.

Then we thought how interesting it could be to play with the skin of alien worms. A very unusual solution was suggested to us by our decorator - paper napkins and latex. To explain briefly: liquid latex is diluted with color to the desired color, and with this mixture we, as it were, glue slightly crumpled thin paper to the desired surface, forming folds and wrinkles. The wipes also act as reinforcement for the thin layer of latex and prevent it from peeling off the plastic easily. I must say this method is very good when the surface after printing leaves much to be desired. For speed, I printed with a 1mm nozzle, so the ribbing was obvious, even though the putty hid some of it.

Smoking is bad for your health!

I would like to express my gratitude to the company Greg for the provided plastic. Honestly, we exceeded all possible budget limits and spent a lot of money on this stent. If not Greg, the visitors would not see a good stand, which by the way won the Grand Prix!

Because we are the best of the best, sir!

Earth, as depicted in Men in Black, is a complex and wonderful place. A small blue planet orbiting an unremarkable medium-sized star. A home both for the thousands of aliens brought here, and for the secret agency that protects them and people from the "scum of the universe."

But according to franchise producers Walter Parks and Laurie MacDonald, all these global ideas did not appear immediately. “The idea of ​​‘what if?’ was certainly attractive - what if aliens really live among us? What if there is a secret police unit? What if, by joining him, you can learn everything about the universe, but you have to give up the most intimate aspects of your life? Parks says. “But to tell the truth, it was the elements of style that initially attracted us: guns, sunglasses ... and black suits.”

Indeed, the visual part of the franchise is no less important than its plot. The creation of alien characters well illustrates the evolution from the man-made puppets and pounds of makeup in the first 1997 film to the modern CGI and motion capture technology of the new sequel to the Men in Black: International story. The filmmaking process for all parts of the film - from casting and the birth of characters to the design of weapons of the future and the appearance of aliens of all sorts - is described in detail in our new book Men in Black. A guide to the adventures of the defenders of the Earth from the scum of the universe". Here we want to describe the stories of several bright characters who were created almost spontaneously and with great pleasure.

Pug Frank

Typically, trainers would bring six to eight dogs to the set to play the same character, but one of them, named Mu Shu, was so great that “we ended up using him ninety percent of the time,” recalls Barry Sonnenfeld. He played in all three Men in Black films. "Mu Shu was just an amazing animal and his trainers were real professionals." One day he asked Christy, the trainer, "Do you think there's any chance I can get Mu Shu to hold a martini glass and smoke a cigar?" Ultimately, this effect was made on the computer. No animal was forced to smoke cigars on the set of this film. And there was no real smoke on the set!

C-18 cell people

The creation of the Camera was a shared effort, notes Douglas Harlocker. As we've seen throughout the franchise, "I was always looking for ways to play with scale," says Barry Sonnenfeld. “I love these guys,” he continues. "They're sweet and charming, but they talk like they're from New Jersey." Their city is entirely composed of particles of garbage collected from the floor of Grand Central Station in New York. They are part hamster, part rat, with large eyes and antennae that further accentuate their strangeness. “Their whole village is made of garbage,” says Rick Baker, who created all these creatures. And if you're a true MIB fan, then revisit the scene in the Camera and see if you can spot a continuity error.

Worms Glieble, Sneeble, Neeble, Mannix and Gordy

When designing aliens for films, Barry Sonnenfeld and Rick Baker had an ongoing dialogue. Barry often complained that aliens always looked like humans, and Rick began to develop several non-humanoid concepts. Barry inevitably responded, “But without eyes, how do the audience know where the alien is looking? And without ears, and without a mouth ... "- and so on. The search was not easy, but they adhered to the main idea - not to make every alien look like a person. Baker recalls, "The worms were the result of that thought." Later, Rick asked not only to draw worms with computer graphics, but also to find puppeteers so that it would be easier for the actors to improvise on the set. And indeed, when the team of puppeteers was assembled, the worm guys on the set literally came to life. In the second film, they even got their own bachelor kennel - with mini-furniture, a Jacuzzi and a soft carpet, on which the whole film crew loved to wallow.

Universe on a chessboard

In the new part of the film, agents Em and H meet a new character - Pawn. “The idea was that Pawn and his people live in the back room of an antique shop,” explained designer Charles Wood. “The backstory was that they were allowed to live here incognito, but they paid for their housing with the production of weapons.”

The original idea for civilization on a chessboard came from executive producer Walter Parks. "It was one of the old ideas of all context - could there be an alien civilization living on a chessboard?" says writer Matt Holloway. It was just one of the ideas: a world where everyone - from pawns to the queen - would fulfill their roles.

The idea was visualized by designer Charles Wood and his team of conceptual artists. They created cute little figures that lived on the chessboard and created a special atmosphere there. Chief among them was the character Pawns - funny and caustic. His face (using motion capture technology) and voice was comedian Kumail Nanjiani, who got freedom in improvisation and brought a lot of new things to his character.

Now the most mysterious and severe character without a name, played by Ed Harris, who inherited the black outfit from Yul Brynner's character from the original film, looks like. However, if Brynner's hero was a robot, then there is no exact opinion about who the Man in Black is. The most unexpected thing about the film is that the Man in Black was not a resident of Westworld, but a guest. In the first episode, it was said that the Man in Black has been coming to the park every year for 30 years, so he can be called a real gamer with experience. This is a kind of VIP client, which, most likely, brings a lot of money to the park. You can beat androids, this is a perverted meaning for a separate category of visitors. Here you can at least rape, at least cut children (all this is legal), so there are probably perverts and worse among the clients, and from the point of view of public safety, one can see a big plus in these actions - it’s better to rape and kill robots than living people.

Jeffrey Wright's character, Lowe's developer, mentions in one of the scenes a certain failure that occurred in the park 30 years ago. If we take into account the fact that we were talking about robots that do not obey commands, we can assume that a similar problem occurred several decades ago. Most likely, this is all somehow connected with the Man in Black, who began to come to the park just 30 years ago. Coincidence? I don't think. But perhaps this is just a reference to the events of the original film, which suggests that the original film and the series take place in the same universe. However, what is he looking for there, what are the mysterious signs he finds under the scalps of robots and does this mean that he is evil character - these are the riddles for the coming season.

In the original 1973 film, the Gunslinger in Black (Yul Brynner) was a robot that constantly stalked human guests and invariably got shot: until a virus hit the system, androids could not harm people (and they could not harm each other).

In the new Westworld, the stakes have risen: the park is not just an attraction, it is a testing ground for a god complex, and a virus is an awakening self-consciousness. And if Mr. Ford (Anthony Hopkins) is the creator, then the Gunslinger in Black (Ed Harris) is obviously Satan, who brings confusion into the slender, programmed thinking of the park's inhabitants. Accordingly, thirty years ago, the "fall" of a mysterious character could have occurred: whether it was a failure in the program from the original film or some new incident.

Then it remains only to build theories. Perhaps Strelok, like Dolores, was one of the first androids, but found a loophole in the system and used it to leave the game (and learned the horrific truth there). If we continue the biblical analogy, he could be one of the leading developers (for example, the predecessor of Jeffrey Wright), but disagreed with Ford in his views (using the example of another programmer, it is easy to trace the line of doubt about the need to make robots so similar to people). At the same time, he can see the future of the robots, which, unlike the people in the park, do not fall into insignificance for fun.

Whoever he is, the Strelok is looking for a move to the "final level" - to a meeting with the "creator", which makes the version with the robot more advantageous (Ridley Scott showed a similar plot from the position of people in "Prometheus"). And, perhaps, the feelings of the hero Hopkins for Dolores and talk about the imminent invention of the resurrection is the key to their conflict (in any case, the Shooter knew how to convey the message to the "chief architect").

Despite the fact that only two episodes of Westworld have been released so far, the series has managed to acquire an army of ardent fans. Fans of Westworld began to build so-called fan theories even before the premiere of the pilot episode, and with the start of broadcasts, predictions and speculation about the series began to multiply exponentially. The man in black, played by the brilliant Ed Harris, has become one of the main objects of the audience's hypotheses. Below I will list the most notable theories currently known involving the mysterious character.

## The Man in Black and William are the same person

According to one of the most extravagant theories, the storylines in which William and Logan (guests of the park) and the Man in Black act take place at different times, or rather, are separated by thirty years. The authors of the hypothesis argue that once in the park, the good-natured William became a participant in traumatic events and over the years turned into a cold-blooded killer - the Man in Black.

## The Man in Black is Ford's greatest creation

Ford, the creator of Westworld, is constantly improving his robots, trying to make them as human-like as possible. What if the Man in Black was the most successful brainchild of the master? What if finding the "maze" is some kind of intelligence test that the robot must pass in order to demonstrate its abilities to Ford? What if the "labyrinth" is the administrative complex of the park, where the Man in Black is waiting for a meeting with the creator?

## The man in black is linked to a 30-year-old accident

From the dialogues of the characters, we know that thirty years ago there was a serious accident in the park. In addition, it is known that the Man in Black first appeared in the "Western World" also three decades ago.

## The Man in Black can reprogram other robots

When this gloomy character drags Dolores into the barn, it seems that he intends to do something terrible to the girl. But, if one theory is to be believed, the Man in Black is actually reprogramming Dolores, allowing her to free herself from the script that keeps her going in circles.

My theories never pan out, at least not in Game of Thrones. But I'll still guess)
I think the man in black is not a person at all, it is either a virus or an antivirus, a controller like Agent Smith.
The following dubious circumstantial facts speak in favor of my theory:
1) Lively interest in Dolores, because it is obvious that she is not just part of the system.
2) Foreignness, going beyond the proposed.
3) Interaction with others is not reset daily.

And I think that he is a beta tester, because no bubbles will be enough for 30 years to go there. I started testing the game 30 years ago, and there I fell in love with a girl (as we know, one of the first models). And still looking for how to pull it out of there. Therefore, he is looking for a "secret level - from there he will be able to bring her out.

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Worms | Worm aliens

This term has other meanings, see Worm.

Worms, in original Worm aliens- aliens from the series "People in Black". They look like yellow anthropomorphic worms with primitive arms and legs. There are four worm characters in the entire Men in Black cycle, called The Worm Guys.

They do not have a skeleton, which is why they are very flexible.

In comics[edit]

In films[edit]

In the second film, they live in some kind of ordinary house, but when you enter their apartment, you can easily notice that the ceiling is very low. In the film, they are not addicted to coffee, but to cigarettes.

In the animated series[edit]

They live in the headquarters of the MiB, although they do not work there and have no political value. They love coffee and are always in the kitchen or trying to get to Zed's coffee machine. It happens that when they are threatened with death, they think of coffee. For example, when they were in danger from a deadly force field, they heated coffee against the wall of the field. It is known that their civilization considers coffee to be a royal drink and only the Emperor of Worms is allowed to drink it. When the Emperor arrived on Earth, the guys did not drink it, they pretended that they had never tried it.

In one of the episodes of the animated series ("The Future's So Bright Syndrome"), their race conquered the Earth (in an alternate future).

Worms are four short, yellow-skinned aliens that live in the MIB's kitchen. They are addicted to coffee, so they periodically seize Zeta's office with a coffee machine located there. They are restless, because of which they often get into various unpleasant situations from which Kay and Jay have to save them, most often this happens when they make another outing for coffee. They are terribly afraid of their emperor, because only the elite are allowed to drink coffee on their planet, which they are not. In the series, which follows an alternate timeline, the worms managed to save him from the Beetles, but they never received official permission to drink coffee.