They say April showers bring May flowers. What does April snow bring?
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.
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.
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.
In addition users can now set their comfort levels for what kind of images they want to see.
Le Building
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.
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.
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).
SxSW Typography Presentation
Every year for the past 3 or 4 years I have been disappointed that I’m not in a position to fly down to the South by Southwest Conference in Austin Texas.
However, I still enjoy following along with some of the interesting presentations such as this fabulous look at typography for the web by Richard Rutter and Mark Boulton.
Also to check out from SxSW 2007, Will Wright’s fantastic keynote address.
Disneyland Haunted Mansion Papercraft Model
Last summer, Ray Keim of Haunted Dimensions released an extremely cool paper model of the Disneyland Haunted Mansion in New Orleans Square.
My brother and I started working on it as a summer project, but since he was only here for one afternoon, we didn’t get very far. Lately he’s been back visiting and it got me back working on it again. Today, it’s finally finished and it looks great!
Captain Cunuck
I heard the news today that Captain America is dead1
This got me thinking about a Canadian I met when I lived in Utah, back in 1999. His “claim to fame” was that his dad, Richard Comely, created the comic book, Captain Cunuck (wikipedia).
This guy used to brag about how much better Canadians were than Americans. He relished in the pleasure of pointing out any remotely interesting Canadian accomplishment and all the while derided our neighbours to the south. While my primal instincts told me to admire this man for his obviously superior intellect, not so deep down I realized it was a pretty jerky way to be and I figured all he was really accomplishing was to make them dislike us. He didn’t care, and although he was friendly enough to me, he wasn’t a particularly popular guy living in middle America.
Canada/US relations aside, learning about Captain Cunuck was kind of intriguing. Here was this super hero that I had never heard of, and probably never would have heard of, but yet there was something alluring about the fact that there even exists a comic set in Canada. They used famous Canadian landmarks as backdrops and even the characters had particularly Canadian background—Captain Cunuck’s alter ego works for the RCMP—and yet, he is a super hero.
This might not seem like a big deal for American’s who have lived their lives seeing whom and what they expect to see; his or her country, familiar landmarks, and national in-jokes; casually depicted in TV, movies, and comic books. But for me, this was something completely new. The closest thing I had ever known as a Canadian super hero before this was Wolverine (this X-Men character is from southern Alberta), but despite the fact that he was born somewhere near Lethbridge, he’s still an American icon.
I found a tribute site for Captain Cunuck, and this is how that fan remembers the comic:
Captain Canuck was like its American progenitors: a pulpy, action-adventure series, with plenty of running about, narrow escapes, and two-fisted thrills. What made it “different” was a willingness to have actual plots!
How many U.S. superhero comics have you read where the first issue of a two-parter starts out great: intriguing set-up, interesting characters are introduced, you can’t wait for the continuation… and then you get the continuation and it’s just one long fight scene: no plot, no story development, no characterization. In Captain Canuck there were plot twists, surprising changes in direction, and a sense you were reading an actual story, not just a vignette. There was also some nice dialogue and easy badinage between the characters that a lot of U.S. comics lack, even today — a real plausibility to some of the lines.
Isn’t it telling how even in a comic book description, Canadians compare ourselves to the US. Anyway, here’s to Captain Cunuck, a true Canadian hero. Oh and Americans we’re sorry about your namesake super hero taking a bullet.
A little tidbit of my own Canadian-esque bragging… Superman—that’s right, the Man of Steel—was actually co-created by a Canadian. This pleases me, but I’ll be the first to admit: nothing says America more than Superman, so we can’t even pretend to claim him… at least not publicly. So every time he flies to his fortress of solitude up in the Canadian arctic, we can just quietly think to ourselves, welcome home, Superman.
- For those of you worried about the death of Captain America, don’t worry, this is just an old trick by the comic book industry to boost sales. Remember, resurrections are not exactly rare in the world of comics, and Marvel Entertainment editor in chief Joe Quesada has already stated that a Captain America comeback wasn’t impossible.[
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Burning Safari and Cocotte Minute
The animation students at Gobelins l’école de l’image are rolling out some fabulous work. Check out the fantastic student short: Burning Safari.
(Via | Previously)