Rabbit is a creepy remix of old graphics from 1950s illustrations that have been rendered into animation in Adobe After effects. It’s a beautifully creepy story—just in time for Halloween.
Update: PingMag has an interesting interview with director Run Wrake.
Originally uploaded by bcompetent.
Halloween pysanky by Becky! They’re a little scary looking, but I guess that’s the idea!
Here’s some photoshop artwork that I made today. I was just playing around with the brushes and then decided I would keep the end product.
Click for larger image.
I’ve been saving this little gem of a video much like a pirate hoarding gold. Today is the day I was planning to link to it and I almost forgot!
Enjoy: Pyrats, a swashbuckling animated short from those talented scallywags at Gobelins animation school.
Banksy is in the news for painting a live elephant as an artistic way to raise poverty awareness. A video of the elephant in question is available on Youtube.
While painting an elephant may have irked some animal rights activists, the video showing what he did with 500 of Paris Hilton’s CDs is much more interesting.
Remember what Banksy says, “Leave the house before you find something worth staying in for.” Something I should be taking to heart more often.
I’m not exactly a professional photographer even though I have a very nice digital SLR camera. However, very often people assume that seeing a person carrying a professional looking camera is seeing a person that takes professional looking photos. This can be good and bad, because while I have been known to get some pretty good captures, I feel a little intimidated that people expect all my photos to be great. (I do my best.)
This last week has been Whoop-Up Days in Lethbridge, which is to say the Rodeo has been on at the Stampede and Exhibition Park and though I’ve lived here for almost 4 years, this was the first time I’ve been to the Lethbridge Rodeo. I took a bunch of photos that even though I know will probably never win any awards, they do give a pleasant taste of what the rodeo is all about.
The rodeo I remember as a kid was not nearly as entertaining as my experience on Friday and Saturday night. I remember sitting through extremely long breaks where it seemed that nothing was happening followed by short bursts of entertainment which if you were not careful, you might miss completely because hey what’s going on UNDERNEATH the stands? Needless to say I was always looking for entertainment. The other thing I remember about the rodeo as a kid was that there were a lot of cowboys smoking cigarettes and drinking beer—which coming from a non-smoking, non-drinking, somewhat religious family—made me extremely uncomfortable. The other thing I didn’t like about the rodeo as a kid was that we always sat so far away from the action. It was hard to see what was really happening.
That all changed this weekend. Well the drinking and smoking didn’t, but I came to realize that the breaks are actually not that long and this time I didn’t waste my time with all the suckers up in the stands, I got down right beside the field because my plan was to get some really nice photos. I was a little nervous just heading down there, because I didn’t know if you needed special permission or what? Well, I guess people just saw my camera and assumed I was a seasoned photographer and obviously was supposed to be there taking photos. It turns out that’s all it takes.
I had such a good time at the Rodeo on Friday night, that when my brother arrived in Lethbridge on Saturday, I talked him in to going with me for another night of photography fun. He’s got a lens that lets in more light and therefore is able to take photos later into the evening after the sun has gone down and he actually is a seasoned photographer. He gave me lots of good tips.
Anyway, Gary and I, each had our cameras out, shooting next to the Global TV camera man when we met a friendly guy from the Canadian reserves. He asked if we would mind taking a few shots of their mascot for him, since we had fancier cameras, and then just emailing him. We agreed and he gave us his card.
Well a little while later someone official looking came up to us and asked us if we had press passes. The old “carry a fancy camera and get into restricted areas” trick had used up all its juice.
But as we were getting told that if we didn’t have press passes then we would have to leave, I whipped out the business card I had just been given and explained that this guy asked us to shoot photos for him. What a stroke of luck because the guy knew who we were talking about and all of a sudden it was fine for us to be there. We were rodeo photographers again!
But the fanciest camera and all the permission in the world won’t necessarily help one to remember to set his white balance properly. I can’t believe I shot the whole night with my white balance set for fluorescent lights. Luckily Photoshop is helpful at fixing such issues. We had a lot of fun at the rodeo and Gary, as expected, got some really great rodeo photos (which he hasn’t uploaded yet).
You can check out the rest of my rodeo photos in my flickr set: Whoop-Up Days 2006.
Interprété par Jean Leloup
I lost my baby
I lost my darling
I lost my friends
I lost my mind
Pour une fille d’Ottawa
grandit a Sainte-Foy
D’un père militaire
et d’une belle fille qui fut sa mère
Qui écoutait du country
Entre deux caisses de bières
Et partait le samedi
pour un lac d’Hawkesbury
Rejoindre la grand-mère and all the family…
And all the family…
Ah je ne peux vivre sans toi
Et je ne peux vivre avec toi
Mais tu peux très bien vivre sans moi
Je suis foutu dans les deux cas
I lost my baby
I lost my darling
I lost my friends
I lost my mind
Coup de fil de Jaimi
Qui un jour tomba
Pour une fille d’Ottawa
Grandie je ne sais pas
D’un père pilote de l’air
Et d’une mère je ne sais quoi
Tous deux aimaient le cinéma
Nous sommes habitants de la Terre
Il y a des milliers de frontières
Quelqu’un existe dans l’univers
Pour quelqu’un d’autre et c’est la guerre
I lost my baby
I lost my darling
I lost my friends
I lost my mind
Pour une fille d’Ottawa
Grandie à Ste-Foy
Et qui un jour tomba
Pour un chanteur populaire
Grandi en Algérie assez fucké merci
Et qui lui dit adieu je repars faire ma vie
À Hawkesbury
I lost my baby
I lost my darling
I lost my friends
I lost my mind
My red eye flight with Air Canada was, as is no surprise to any of you that have flown with Air Canada, delayed. I missed my connecting flight but caught the very next one (though my bags did not). Anyway, enough complaining about Government funded private ventures that are bound to fail…
Quebec has been more wonderful than I could ever have imagined. My host, Danny, is a fantastic cook and continues to surprise us with delicious recipes at every meal.
July 1st is known in Quebec as the moving day. People take it seriously and actually do move on Canada Day – there is probably some deep symbolism behind their choice of days – but I prefer not to think about it. My host, Danny, is also in the process of moving, so while he worked to get things transferred to his new apartment, I went for a walk in the old city of Quebec.
The old city or Vieux-Quebec is located beside the St. Lawrence river. The smaller width of the river as it enters the towns of Quebec and Lévis, on the opposite bank, provided the name given to the city, Kebec being the Algonquin word meaning “where the river narrows”. It doesn’t appear very narrow to me, but I guess it’s a relative thing.
Walking through the old city makes me feel like I’ve travelled back in time. Founded almost 400 years ago (1608), the old buildings and French architecture have a magic way of connecting me with my Canadian heritage. I spent the day walking around taking a plethora of photographs of Quebec.
That evening my new roommate and I walked down to The Plains of Abraham and enjoyed a free concert followed by Canada Day fireworks. As a note of potential interest I learned that the Plains of Abraham is the largest urban park in Canada, and repeating this fact at the Welcome Party last night won me a nice red University of Laval t-shirt.
On Sunday Danny took us to see La Chute Montmorency (Montmorency Falls). They were named in 1613 by Samuel de Champlain in honour of Henri II, duc de Montmorency, viceroy of New France. (That area of Canada used to be called New France).
It’s been too long since I’ve been around anything so breathtaking. There is a lot of water moving out into the St. Lawrence over the falls and I had a good time watching the hypnotic motion of the water falling so far down. Apparently early explorers were excited to have found such an abundant supply of fresh water so near the St. Lawrence River.
I’ve started my month long French immersion and I’m loving it! Of course I’m just at the elementary level, but I’m thrilled to have actual conversations with people in French. It’s a lot less stressful when you know the other person is just a nervous about their French as you are with yours.
Oh, and one last thing, the University pool is fantastique.
It’s fireworks season in Canada and the United States and for those of you that intend to photograph the pyrotechnic festivities, I recommend checking out How to Photograph Fireworks.
The photograph pictured here was taken on May 10th, 2006, celebrating the 100 year anniversary of Lethbridge. I didn’t have a tripod and didn’t know what I was doing, but even though this photo isn’t the greatest, I still consider myself to have been lucky getting it. I’m hoping that during the celebrations tomorrow in Quebec City, I’ll be able to capture some truly fantastic shots.
Cartoon film collector Joe Busam recently posted a slide show of his progress painting a nursery, in the style of a generic early-1930s cartoon, for his soon to be born grandson.
I think it looks really cool! When I worked at the YMCA swimming pool I’d spend a lot of my time thinking about how great it would be to create a masterpiece mural for their wall. (Hey, I can think about artwork and make sure people don’t run at the same time).
Joe gave Cartoon Brew the backstory on this home project:
When daughter Susi asked me to paint a mural for the nursery, she requested 1930s cartoon characters. Specifically she wanted the style of the Harman & Ising WB cartoons. We both have always love them for their style and unique energy. However she didn’t want recognizable characters. Once we established a theme I went to work researching the cartoons for barnyard animals. I then put together the farm kids who are actually the two main characters from Pagan Moon in disguise. Originally the colour scheme was going to be based on two strip Technicolour. As it turns out Susi liked the original B&W layouts so much that when I added colour it seemed anti climatic to her. Full spectrum colour turned out to be too much. In desperation, I added a tint to the original B&W art and that clicked with both of us. Now that I see it enlarged on the wall I think it was a wise choice. More colours would have been pretty overpowering.
Check out the collection of images of Joe Busam’s 1930’s Style Cartoon Mural.
Another fantastic mural I came across lately is this Super Mario World creation that includes green pipes affixed to the walls and ceiling and other Marioworld objects that add dimension.
This is pretty cool whether or not you are a fan of the game.
And to wrap up this post on murals, check out Lindsay’s Satellite Map Mural, a neat “reverse” going-away present by a young artist that wanted to leave something behind for her friends to remember her by.
One of the interesting decisions Lindsay made was how to orient the map on the wall. Instead of doing it with North facing up, she [put] South at the top. At first this is highly disorienting because of how accustomed we are to looking at maps North-up. But then, once you realize that up on the map is the direction you’re facing, everything seems to fall into place.
It’s neat stuff, and it’s got me thinking about a future mural project of my own.
