Category: Art

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Flickr Map GeoCoding Bookmarklet

My new favourite tool to go along with Flickr is the Flickr Map GeoCoding Bookmarklet. It’s a Google Maps/flickr mashup that let’s you easily add geocoding information to your picture and/or see where other people’s geocoded images were taken. Also it’s so easy to use that even my parents could do it.

geocoding screen shot

[The bookmarklet] enables mapping, geocoding and (of course) geotagging directly in your Flickr photo page. It works with all common browsers (Firefox, IE, Safari, Opera), so you do not need to install any extension to run it!

Once you’ve got it saved check out my collection of geotagged images.

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Cartoon Murals

1930's Style Cartoon Mural

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.

Mario 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.

mural

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.

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Prescription Drug Costs and other Linkity Goodness

From the best of my feeds:

Malcolm Gladwell calls the New York Times on their misleading story about the costs of prescription drugs.

Jason Kottke explains how brands that are so recognized actually run the risk of losing their trademarks due to people’s everyday usage of the words (did you know Escalator was a brand?)

Brad Bird’s classic The Family Dog on YouTube. Brad Bird directed Pixar’s “The Incredibles”. I remember watching the Family Dog as a kid on Stephen Spielberg’s Amazing Stories.

25 years in the making The Thief and the Cobbler (youtube playlist) is a collection an unofficial clips from a fan restoration of the world’s most ambitious animation project. Directed by Richard Williams (of Roger Rabbit fame), play all for an enchanting peek at what might have been.

Update: Cartoon Brew just posted a great interview with Garrett Gilchrist the person responsible for The Thief and the Cobbler Recobbled.

Even with the broken links, I’ve decide to leave this page up for posterity.

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Pixar’s New Movie a Winner

Movie Poster for Pixar's Cars Movie

I just read a “review on Cars” by Michael Howe and in case it’s hard to tell, I’m so excited to see this film I’m about to explode!

Cars

From the review:

It’s been over 1 ½ years since Pixar released their last film and — if anything — that last extra half-a-year has probably added to a growing eagerness to see this film. In this day and age, it’s difficult to find decent films, let alone those that will leave families feeling that their hard-earned money was well spent. For those who may be wondering, “Cars” is definitely worth it and more. Pixar has never talked down to their audiences, and it shows. The parents will get some of the jokes, and the kids will laugh at some, and then later — when they grow up — they’ll go “Oh, that’s what he meant.” I’m already planning to see it again with my friends when it comes out, and I know they’ll enjoy it as well. Personally, this is the first time this year I’ve been so eager to put down $9.50 to see a movie again!

Update: Ok, I went to see the show last night and I absolutely loved every minute of it. Actually there was one thing I did not love but I’ll get to that in a moment.

First off the technical aspects of the movie, (ie. the rendering and animation) are brilliant. Pixar has really outdone themselves on this one; if it wasn’t a great story, this movie would still be fun to watch just for the amazing imagery. The animation was also extremely well done. I love how something as stiff and inflexible as a car normally is can be turned into a living personality with feelings and emotions all the while keeping the cars realistic by not turning them into some kind of mushy mess.

You’ve also got to love the personalities in this movie. They all have their perfect place and I didn’t feel that any one character was overdone. I agree with Michael Howe’s review that Paul Newman did a particularly fantastic job as Doc Hudson, The Hudson Hornet. It was a magical moment seeing Doc race around the dirt track hitting that turn just right.

But the thing about this movie is that it’s FULL of magical moments. Every character has their moment and their chance to shine.

Now for the one thing that I did not love. I’m the kind of guy that occasionally likes to stay and watch the credits after a movie I liked has reached the end. For a Pixar movie, it’s a given that you’re going to stay to watch the cute “extra” jokes they through in at the end. I was particularly looking forward to it as I’ve heard from some of the early reviews that this movie has some good ones.

The credits came up and before they could even get going—SQUEEEEEEEERTCH! The focus went really bad as the film either jumped off its track or started to bunch up in the projector. Either way the show was over and I didn’t get to see the “post credits” jokes. I guess I’ll have something to look forward to the next time I watch Cars, because it’s worth seeing again. Seriously everyone who goes will love this movie—and if you don’t, well then, it’s time you started to let yourself feel again.

Oh I should also add the One Man Band short, while cute wasn’t nearly as memorable as the Boundin one from The Incredibles. Having said that, one pre-movie bit of entertainment that really stoked my fire was the sneak peak at Pixar’s Ratatouille (Apple Trailer) coming out in 2007.

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Links O’ Plenty

The following are a couple of the things I’ve been checking out lately:

No Tolls on the Internet by the brilliant Lawrence Lessig and Robert W. McChesney. I can hardly believe that American legislator’s are even thinking about ripping control of the Internet out of the hands of the people and bequeathing it to the telecoms.

Guy from the Train Effect is a good read on creating environments that juxtapose ideas and images not normally associated with each other creating a positive and memorable experience. I think Flickr does a great job of this.

Do it Yourself Impeachment, since I’m not a US citizen I can only watch from the sidelines, but for those of you that are, here’s your call to action; now is the time.

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If the Earth Were a Sandwich

I’ve been watching ZeFrank’s The Show for a couple of months now. I think he’s a brilliantly witty guy and I’m amazed at what appears to be the very little effort he seems to exert in coming up with clever and humorous shows on a daily basis.

A couple of weeks ago he discussed the possibility of “making the earth a sandwich” by placing two pieces of bread simultaneously directly opposite each other on the globe. I didn’t even bother investigating the “find the opposite tool” because (I thought) I knew that from here it was all just ocean on the other side of the world.

Now for the good news.

It turns out that near the small town of Manyberries, AB (just a short drive from Lethbridge) there is an area of land that is situated exactly tangent from a small island on the other side of the globe that google has labelled as French Southern & Antarctic Lands.

Do you know what this means?!!! Ladies and gentlemen there is a good chance that I’ll be able to help in MAKING THE EARTH A SANDWICH! I just need to discover who in French Southern & Antarctic Lands reads my website, and then see if they would be willing to lay a piece of bread on the ground at these coordinates: 49.34843 by 69.4363? Both pieces of bread need to be sitting there simultaneously for the sandwich to exist so one of us might have to go out in the dark, which I’m totally willing to do.

Earth Sandwich - Many Berries and French Southern & Antarctic Lands

Is there anybody out there on French Southern & Antarctic Lands? Hello? Anybody?

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Elephants Dream

elephants dream

Elephant’s Dream is a computer animated movie, released on DVD format and online under a Creative Commons license. That means even if you’re living in the States where peer-to-peer file sharing makes you feel all icky with downloader’s remorse, you can acquire a copy of Elephants Dream and still feel like a good netizen the next day.

‘Elephants Dream’ is the result of almost a year of work, a project initiated and coordinated by the Blender Foundation. Six people from the Blender user/development community were selected to come over to Amsterdam to work together on an animated short movie, utilizing Open Source tools only.

I haven’t watched the completed film yet, but the Elephants Dream teaser is intriguing.