Jeff Gurwood decided to remake the first six-plus minutes of Raiders of the Lost Ark with Hasbro’s action figures and some of the finest fan-made sets you will ever see. Seriously, it’s incredible. It’s why I had to title the article “Temple of Stop-Motion Animation,” even though it’s based on Raiders — not because Gurwood’s work is so fabulous it deserves to be treated as a temple, although it does, but because I’m pretty sure he ripped out some kind of professional model-maker’s heart and ate it to gain his immense power. Seriously, look at all the foliage. The only way one man did that is if he had the power of 10 professional model-makers inside him. (Via Blastr)
Robert Bricken is one of the original co-founders of the site formerly known as Topless Robot, and its first editor-in-chief, serving from 2008-12. He brought the site to prominence with “nerd news, humor and self-loathing” as its motto, raising it from total internet obscurity to a readership in the millions, with help from his savage “FAQ” movie reviews and Fan Fiction Fridays. Under his tenure Topless Robot was covered by Gawker, Wired, Defamer, New York magazine, ABC News, and others, and his articles have been praised by Roger Ebert, Avengers actor Clark Gregg, comedian and The Daily Show correspondent John Hodgman, the stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax, and others. He is currently the managing editor of io9.com. Despite decades as both an amateur and professional nerd, he continues to be completely unprepared for either the zombie apocalypse or the robot uprising.