11/16/2005

Hello,

My name is Simon Marston. I was born in 1974, and I live in Leicester, in the UK. I currently work as an engineer in the high power electrics industry. My duties at work involve CNC machine Punch Press Machine tool Programmer, Setter & Operator. As well as being the Team Leader in the fabrication shop within the company. With this responsibility comes some machine maintenance also.

I have been taking things to pieces to see how they worked from the age I could hold a screwdriver, lol. I realised my interest in electronics when I was about 11 years old, and I have been into the subject of robots since around then too. I started to get into the robots more seriously when I first saw Short Circuit when I was about 13. Since then I have always been so fascinated with J5 and began drawing up ideas on how J5 would work, and I still have a few old drawings I did back in 1990 and before.

The designs I did started to vary from the original J5 design, for a short while, as I wanted to make my own idea. It was not long before I realised that J5 itself was what I really wanted, and went back to working on those plans. Since then, my J5 designing went from just sketches and ideas on paper into something more real about 1998, when I started to learn 3D modelling.

Between 2000 and about 2002, the development for my part, had died off a little, due to work and family, but the dream was never lost. When I started to get back into it again, I did more research into mechanisms that could be used in J5. Also in 2003, I started to draw J5 in 3D (work that can be seen on this site). The information I used to draw from was intensive watching of the film, and I stumbled across some sites to help me, but not many. J5 information is hard to come by !

During the searching for pictures of J5 to work from, I found a fan site for J5, and I read on the site, that the blueprints may be coming! I was over the moon, even though I had no clue that one day I may be involved in such a project, but still so wanted to be a part of it. I put up my 3D renders of J5 on the fan site, and that’s when I got recognised.
I was asked if I would like to help in the design of the blueprints! Of Course I did!

Since then, I have been mainly working on research and development of prototype parts for the J5 Project. I have recently been increasing my knowledge of electronics, of which I’m learning much more each day with the design of various systems that maybe be used in the final construction of J5. I have also access to a small machine shop, that I have been making some prototype parts. The parts are made as we go though the design process, not only so that we do eventually have a J5 at the end of it, but really to test that the components will all work together, as we now realise that the blueprints that we are working on will be so much more advanced than the J5 `prop` that was used in the film.

I can assure you, also on behalf of the team members, that this is REALLY happening, but please understand that it is such an intense project, quite a bit of time is still needed before we are any where near completion. As a team, we are all able to help each other with different aspects of the design and manufacture. Ultimately, J5 WILL be a reality, for who ever wants it, as soon as we possibly can.

Simon Marston.