We wanted to give those of you who have been following the progress of this lamp from a wild idea to a final product something special, so we made a special limited edition just for you.

The limited edition features a laser engraved signature at the bottom of the UFO and a specially printed certificate poster. The lamp is made from metal with a high quality finish, and it comes complete with an alien crew, a perspex beam, a bovine abductee and real fake grass on a non-slip base. The antenna function as the on-off switch as promised, and it can also enable a very smooth pulsing of the light. I am happy to say that great attention has been made to every detail, making this a high quality product that I hope you will be happy to own.

Everyone who posted a comment on this blog or signed up at the original or the new abductionlamp.com should now have received an invitation to order a limited edition Alien Abduction Lamp.

There are only 2000 of these lamps, so hurry up and grab one at http://abductionlamp.com/order

And of course, the grass and/or cow can be removed so that you can place any figure or object that you want to have abducted in the beam.

We have now published the new website for The Alien Abduction Lamp, and we are showing a picture of a prototype for the first time! The picture shows the last prototype, and there will only be very small changes (if any) before production starts.

If you have been following the progress for this lamp since the start, you will notice that we have managed to produce a lamp that is very true to my original 3D renderings. The way from concept to prototype has gone very well, without having to compromise on any important details. The few changes that have been made from the renderings to the final products have been by will and by listening to your feedback in my little survey rather than by necessity. The most noticeable change is the removal of the ornaments and pattern to arrive at a more timeless and clean result. You probably also noticed that it has taken quite a while, but seeng the beautiful result, I think it has been worth the extra time.

The UFO itself is very solid and cast in metal with a beautiful black pearl finish (you can’t really see how nice the finish is in this otherwise great photo). The antenna functions as the on off switch, and it also has a third position for pulsing light. And of course it comes complete with glow-in-the-dark aliens, real fake grass and a poor removable bovine abductee!

The Alien Abduction Lamp. Photo by Tiger Global

Now, pull out your 3D glasses and head over to abductionlamp.com to take a look for yourself!

(Those of you who have sent me a message with your email from the old website do not need to send a new one now.)

Freshome were among the first to write about the Alien Abduction Lamp back in june 2007, and I have been following them since then. They have now included the Alien Abduction Lamp in their list of 40 of the most creative lamp designs ever. I recommend this article to get a look at the other lamps. I am very happy to see the Alien Abduction Lamp in such great company.

Two Alien Abduction Lamp prototypes arrive at Oslo airport

Standing before me on my desk at home is a fully functional prototype of the Alien Abduction Lamp – complete with lights and alien pilots.

As the designer of this lamp, I am not going to begin to describe the feeling of holding a physical version of the lamp that I have been working with renderings and models of for the the last year and a half. 

I suppose that your first reaction is to want to see a picture or a video, but I am afraid that I can not show any images yet. This is after all a prototype, and as with all prototypes, the overall look is somewhat different from what a final product.

Please trust me for now when I say that the lamp looks fantastic! I am convinced that those of you who wanted a lamp after seeing the computer generated images will definitely want to own the real thing.

When will it be available?

I have had a long and productive meeting with the representative from the company in London who is in charge of sourcing this lamp from a highly experienced lamp factory in China. We were both very happy with how the lamps look, and we agreed on a relatively short list of amendments that need to be made before we can say it is finished.

Messages keep ticking in daily from abductionlamp.com to ask me if this lamp is available yet, so I know there are many people wondering how long it is going to be before we start shipping the lamp. Drew agrees with me that making the product as good as possible is more important than rushing to meet a specific date.

All I can say right now is that the heaviest work is behind us, and that we are rapidly ironing out the last minor issues. We are working to have the lamp ready as soon as possible, but we have not set a final deadline yet. I think you will agree with our priorities and be happy that we are making no compromises once you see the final product.

Limited edition

We are considering a special opportunity for all of you who have followed the lamp faithfully by sending messages at abductionlamp.com and by posting comments with your email here at herrklein.com. You will be the first to know, and we will invite all of you to be the first to get a chance to order a limited edition sample with a certificate that I will personally sign for you as soon as we get the lamp ready.

Kind regards,

Lasse

I got the idea for the Alien Abduction Lamp late in the summer of 2006, and I finished designing the lamp during a holiday in Italy in May 2007. I published the 3D renderings on June 4. 2007; – with low expectations, and without any plans for taking the project beyond the concept stage.

High demand

Shortly after publishing the lamp, the response was overwhelming. International press and blog press wrote several articles about the lamp, and I got Stumbled, Dugg and Boing-Boing-ed. Messages were ticking in daily, and they continue to do so today. I have also been contacted by several manufacturers, distributors and resellers. The massive demand made me change my mind, and I started to feel a personal responsibility to take the Alien Abduction Lamp from concept to product.

Still just a concept?

I had a great time on a six month paternity leave with my little daughter this autumn. The paternity leave gave me less time to work on this and other projects than I had hoped for. In addition to this, the companies that I got in touch with last summer were all really busy. So a lot of time this autumn was spent waiting for communication in both directions between myself and the different companies.

The right path

There are several paths from idea to product, and I made the decision early on that I wanted to license the design to a company with a proven record of producing good products, rather than attempting to do it all myself. This will only give me a small percentage of the sales, but my biggest goal right now is to have the lamp made in the best quality possible. I do not have the time, the funds or the experience to go all the way by myself.

A UK based company

I have ended up selecting a quite small but very capable company based in the UK. They will be producing the lamp in China where they also have an office. I am licensing the design while keeping creative control, and we are now working closely together to make this the best product possible. Distribution and sales will be handled from their office in the UK.

Survey

There will probably be some differences between a 3D rendering based on a wild idea, and a real product based on the same drawings. Some design decisions and minor changes will have to be made, but I think it is very important that the final product becomes something that all the people who has shown a strong interest in the concept would still like and wish to own.

More than 1600 people had sent me an enthusiastic message from abductionlamp.com by the beginning of March. I found out that the best way to get the answers that I needed was to put together a small survey on the most important decisions that have to be made for the people that have expressed a wish to buy this lamp. I have summarised the survey, and I will publish the main findings here in the near future.

Next steps

The next step is to produce a working prototype. How long it will take from there until the lamp is ready for shipping is too early to say, but I hope that the lamp will be available some time during 2008 if everything goes well.

Stay tuned!

I will keep you informed on the progress if you send me a message with your email address from abductionlamp.com. I promise that you will only receive relevant messages from me.

Update

The Alien Abduction Lamp is now a physical prototype. Read more!

The response to The Alien Abduction Lamp has been overwhelming since I first posted it here two months ago. I have been very busy following up on it since then.

Thank you for your comments!

I have received more than a thousand emails from people wanting to buy the lamp. I am afraid there is no way that I will manage to personally reply to all the messages. So I wish to thank all of you who have posted a comment here and on abductionlamp.com for all your enthusiastic remarks and constructive feedback. You are in my database, so I will keep you informed of any major updates (and only that).

If you are interested in the lamp but have not sent me a message yet, please do so at abductionlamp.com to stay updated about the progress on getting the lamp produced. The more messages I get, the greater the chance of the lamp getting produced! You can rest assured that your email address will be kept safe, and that you will not receive any spam from me.

World press

The Alien Abduction Lamp appeared in hundreds of blogs in the first few days after I published it. I wish to thank all the bloggers who have written so many positive responses to the lamp!

The lamp has also been featured in printed press around the world, including La Repubblica in Italy, Il Mundo in Spain, WENN and Wizard in America, and Sydney Morning Herald, The Courier Mail and Penthouse in Australia. And FHM is featuring the lamp in their October issue, so make sure you grab a copy.

If you know of any other magazines or papers that have printed a story on the lamp, please let me know by commenting on this article.

The next step

I am currently doing my best to get the lamp produced, but it is still too early to say anything about the progress. Again – sign up at abductionlamp.com to stay informed!

I am happy to announce a project that I have been working on for a while now.

The Abduction Lamp is not meant to be a toy. It is supposed to be made in high quality from metal and glass. It is my hope that someone with a playful mind like yourself would want to have a lamp like this in their home.

How does it work?

A light source inside the UFO body lights up the windows and the cone shaped glass beam. The beam glass is frosted to diffuse the light enough to spread it in all directions.

A true UFO Lamp

I got the idea for the abduction lamp as I was driving past a lamp store one late evening and saw how the light fell from one of the lamps in the window. The idea stuck in my head, and I returned the day after and saw that it was a quite common lamp.

I have spent a while building and rendering it in Maya, and I will return with some of my experiences with the visualisation process in a future post.

A new theory on abduction

Visit abductionlamp.com for more images. You will also find my new theory on why aliens are busy abducting cows and people..

Update

The Alien Abduction Lamp is moving from concept to prototype.