Categories
article Music

Joshua Bell Impromptu Street Performance Follow-Up

A follow-up to the Joshua Bell violinist story I posted a couple of days ago has Washington Post staff writer Gene Weingarten answering questions about the article.

Categories
Music

World Class Street Performer

Would you recognize the outstanding talents of one of the world’s great violinists if you caught him performing incognito during your rush-hour commute to work?

The Washington Post turned this hypothetical question into a reality: Pearls before Breakfast.

(via Kottke)

Categories
Art

Pysanky: The Art of Ukrainian Easter Eggs

Pysanky

These are some of the eggs that my sister and her oldest son, Ryker, made. Check out the fabulous Pysanky Pool on Flickr.

Categories
animation

The Process of Making Snow White

I love this eight-and-a-half minute infomercial about the making of Snow White. This clip illustrates the process from start to finish.

It turns out, the secret to making good cartoons is directly proportional to how many pretty girls you have inking the cells.

Hit play or watch at YouTube.

Categories
Photography

April Snow

Snowy Travels

They say April showers bring May flowers. What does April snow bring?

Categories
Art

Dirty Car Art

Scott Wade uses paint-brushes and his fingers to paint incredibly detailed art-scenes in the dust that accumulates on the back window of his car.

Dirty Car Window

Dirty Car Window with Artwork

Dirty Car Window with Dogs Playing Poker

This reproduction of Dogs Playing Poker is one of my favorites.

Like any reasonably creative and curious human, Scott can’t resist a dirty rear car window. We suspect that Scott started off with clever sayings, like, “wash me.” Probably his first image was the ubiquitous smiley face. Unlike most folks however, Scott lives on a mile and a half of dirt road—caliche, as the locals call it, road-base: a blend of limestone dust and gravel and clay. Driving over this surface results in a fine, white dust that billows up behind any vehicle driven faster than a galloping turtle, coating the rear window. Being an experienced artist (and let’s face it, a little… different), it wasn’t long before Scott was experimenting with techniques to achieve these amazingly detailed and shaded drawings.

Check out the gallery at Dirty Car Art. If you, like me, need to see it to believe it also check out the media section for videos and interviews.

Categories
Photography

Flickr Safe Searches

Lately, Flickr has been whipping out new features left and right. I particularly like their new “collections” feature for Pro account holders and the ability to mark images as either photos, screenshots, or art/illustration is also nice. With it comes the ability to search by image type as well.

flickr safe search screen cap

In addition users can now set their comfort levels for what kind of images they want to see.

Categories
animation

Le Building

Le Building screen cap

I can’t remember why I never posted a link to Le Building when I first saw it, so I’ll do it now, because it is such a fantastic animated short from the talented students at Gobelins.

For those of you that are curious, the pizza delivery kid is completely CG.

Categories
Art psychology

Artist Eye Tracking

Related to the post about eye-tracking for usability, you might be interested in eye tracking research that shows artists look at things differently.

Categories
animation

20 Second Animation Contest – Round 1

A couple of guys from down in California, Justin Ridge and Mike Roush, decided to have a contest where they would both animate the same 20 second clip of music. The results are beautiful. They plan to make it a regular event and I can’t wait to see the next submission—but in the meantime here are the results from round one.

I started my own little animation project, but after an unrecoverable hard drive crash, it looks like the project is toast.

Luckily I emailed a friend an early version so at least I have something, but after seeing such an early version again, it breaks my heart that it’s not even remotely close to what it had become. When the hard drive crashed, the project had triple the amount of frames and a more completed look and feel. For what it’s worth, here is my unfinished animation: The Jumper (220k animated gif).