Dear Esther
The illustration in Dear Esther, a remake of a Half Life 2 mod, is incredible.
I’ll definitely be purchasing the game, if only to gawp.
(via)
Sesame Street: Maurice Sendak “Bumble-Ardy” Animation
Inspired by Josh’s Maurice Sendak post (and by Casey’s link to the “Fresh Air” interview with Sendak).
Frank Chimero, The Shape of Design
I’ve become slightly obsessed with Frank Chimero’s talk on the purpose and philosophy of design:
To really think about design, you need to learn and think about everything other than it. Design is a vessel: the most important part is what it holds.
The first comment on the Vimeo landing is a single word: Nourishing. Such a perfect way to sum it all up.
Via: Swiss-Miss
It’s no biggie
It’s no biggie takes the art of the animated gif to another level.
(thanks, Garrett)
Phonograms
Patrick Feaster studies the culture of early phonography (the recording and reproduction of sound) and blogs at Phonozoic, where I’ve been hanging out for the past hour or so. At the 2011 conference of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections, Feaster shared “Phonogram Images on Paper: 1250-1950.” You can listen to his presentation and download slides here. Just scroll down a little ways and you’ll find the links.
(via Excavated Shellac)
Wil Freeborn’s Drawings Mapped
Our Wil is working on a new book of drawings that will include a map, and he’s been using Google Maps to create a place for his drawings.
photo out of context
(via)
A Sexy Little Halloween
Grace and I have been discussing tentative Halloween plans the last few days and the concept of “sexy” Halloween costumes inevitably came up – not the plan to wear them per se, but their origins. Has this always been a thing?
That illustration is by Jillian Tamaki.
the serial comma, a visual explanation
The utility of the serial comma has always made sense to me, the comments against it don’t.
(thanks, Kelsey)
photo out of context
KinectFusion
At SIGGRAPH 2011, Microsoft Research demonstrated some absolutely phenomenal 3D scanning with their Kinect device:
This is all with a $150 video game accessory. The multitouch demo at the 7 minute point is especially impressive.
Artifice and foam rubber
In fact, so much artifice and foam rubber is often used to create the sexually alluring woman that it’s sometimes difficult to know where the lady ends and the foam rubber begins.
Via dangerous minds by way of Roger Ebert.
Wendy MacNaughton’s snacks of the scribblers
Wendy MacNaughton:
When I sit down to work, I keep a small bowl of garlic croutons on my desk. These are little rewards for good ideas and strong lines, Pavlovian pellets to keep my spirits up. Recently, I began to wonder what fuel writers have relied on, and the answers turned out to be all over the culinary map.
(via, @tcarmody)
illustration out of context
Bill Murray (Vector Portrait)
Guess Who?: The Many Faces of Noma Bar features over 50 minimalist vector illustrations that encapsulate, with brilliant subtlety and visual eloquence, the essence of famous politicians, philosophers and pop culture legends — a masterpiece of capturing character and sentiment with uncanny precision.
Cindy?
justification for drawing within the chaos of visual experience
From a review of a new book, Field Notes on Science & Nature, edited by Michael Canfield:
Ecologist Jonathan Kingdon writes that drawing “represents a species of translation that is different from what emerges in photography. Given the new research on how the brain processes visual input and given that drawing is a mental process, no further justification need be made for the utility of drawing in lifting out relevance from within the chaos of actual visual experience.”
About the above illustration he writes, “The iconography of caracal ear- or head-flagging is intricately crafted, and fingers on a pencil can scarcely keep up with the rapidity of their flickering movements. Nonetheless, I believe drawings can be a clearer medium for exploring such a visual Morse code than laborious written accounts or quantified records of frequencies.”
from the comments
Elvish anger has been mounting for centuries. By the late nineteenth century, it had risen to a fair pitch. Those twee illustrations in all of those books kept under glass on shelves in the parlor. And it just got worse and worse. By the middle of the twentieth century they had Disney and Golden Books to contend with, so the only real mystery is how they were able to keep a lid on their fury till now.
Tat Musing
“O, lady on bus, I think one day you will regret your cupcake tattoo.”
My friend Alison. Musing en route home.
I told Alison I’d thought long and hard before I got my own tat back in the wayback days.
Read more
a comic book with invisible ink
Comics break the rules of storytelling, invent new ones, and break them again – more often than almost any other medium. This graphic novella is about looking – an investigation into perception, storytelling and optical experimentation that inherits some of the curiosities behind the previous work of BERG.
Litho printed on 115gsm silk paper in tones of black and blue, SVK uses a third ink invisible without the SVK object. The object is a UV light source which unlocks hidden layers woven throughout the comic book. Reading SVK becomes a unique and strange experience as you see the story unfold through the eyes of Thomas Woodwind.
First and foremost SVK is a modern detective story, one that Ellis describes as “Franz Kafka’s Bourne Identity”.
It’s a story about cities, technology and surveillance, mixed with human themes of the power, corruption and lies that lurk in the data-smog of our near-future.
Be sure to click through the link, scroll down a bit, and hover over the sample comic with your cursor for a test drive. (via Dave Gray)
How to Draw a Penguin
The Guardian is hosting a how-to series by children’s book illustrators. In this second installment Oliver Jeffers teaches us how to draw a penguin.
Reminds me a little of James Victore’s How to draw a chicken.
(thanks, Wil)
Animated Fowl and (or in) Trousers
“You’ll notice you never saw an animated duck wearing pants.”
Nope. Never. Same for animated parrots.
But take a look at the animated rooster, Panchito Pistoles, in this clip from Disney’s The Three Caballeros (1944).
“Get that cock into a pair of britches, fer crissake!”
892 Unique Ways to Partition A 3×4 Grid
painting out of context
In and Out with Dick and Jane
Ross MacDonald, the award-winning illustrator, and James Victore, the celebrated graphic designer, have gotten together to create a parody featuring the classic kids’ book characters Dick and Jane. This time around, though, our straitlaced protagonists are venturing into some rather dark, twisted, and bawdy places. The images are perfectly rendered in warm, nostalgic shades, and the tone of the text is sweet and simple, but the content leans toward sex, drugs, and violence, with healthy doses of innuendo. To top it off, this laugh-out-loud satire is situated inside a handsome, imitation-cloth volume resembling an old-fashioned kids’ book.
You can buy the book here.
(via @gary_hustwit)
Sendak’s Hobbit
In the late 1960s, Middle-earth enjoyed a renewed interest with the release of “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy in paperback. As “The Hobbit” neared its 30th anniversary, the American publisher invited Sendak to reimagine Bilbo Baggins and his classic quest.
(thanks, Josh)
