Cantankerous and visionary, Dick Brewer wasn't the first eccentric shaper - arguably that accolade goes to Bob Simmons - but he did elevate the archetype to new heights.

Like Simmons, Brewer's shaping was exacting and grounded in scientific formula: he worked as a machinist and toolmaker before picking up a planer full time in 1960. For seven years he label-hopped, skirted legal problems, and was mentored by a number of different shapers, then, like McTavish and Nat Young on this side of the Pacific, he began experimenting with shorter, lighter, more responsive shortboards.

Brewer's status as shaping demigod was launched on the back of the Shortboard Revolution. Unlike the Aussies he never pushed the design to impractical extremes, instead evolving his ideas into the classic Hawaiian pocket rocket - beaked nose, forward weighted, pin tail. Broadly speaking, it was the planshape of choice until MR came along with his shorter, wider twin fin - ironically after MR spent two months with Brewer on a shaping trip.

Wherever new ideas went, Brewer was never too far from the picture: windsurfers, the longboard renaissance, tow surfing, paddle guns.

He's been the subject of many written features, most notably by Drew Kampion who penned an extensive piece for The Surfer's Journal, and later a book, plus he was a key figure in the film 'Going Vertical', about the Shortboard Revolution.

Over the last four years, ex-editor and publisher of Surfer Magazine, Jim Kempton, and producer Bob Campi have been working on 'The Shape Of Things: The Dick Brewer Story'.

The film recently premiered in the US and is doing the film festival circuit. There's no word yet on Aussie screenings but with summer coming we'll keep an eye on it.