Category: Art

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Disney Art Featured at the Met

The Metropolitan Museum of Art hopes to entice visitors with 150 Disney artifacts.

Watch a preview of the exhibition “Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts,” on view at The Met Fifth Avenue from December 10, 2021 through March 6, 2022.

Pink castles, talking sofas, and a prince transformed into a teapot: what sounds like fantasies from Walt Disney Animation Studios’ pioneering animations were in fact the figments of the colorful salons of Rococo Paris. The Met’s first-ever exhibition exploring the work of Walt Disney and the Walt Disney Animation Studios’ hand-drawn animation will examine Disney’s personal fascination with European art and the use of French motifs in his films and theme parks, drawing new parallels between the studios’ magical creations and their artistic models.

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DeLorean Time Travel Consultant

A couple of weeks ago I watched the movie “Driven” about John DeLorean and his run in with the law. It was an ok movie but not as exciting as I had hoped. I still liked it but I was hoping for something more like Ford vs. Ferrari.

Anyway, last night I happened to watch Back to the Future and felt particular appreciation for the genius idea to use a DeLorean as the time travel vehicle. It was perfect, right down to the fact the DeLoreans were/are notoriously unreliable which added to the suspense as lightning is moments away from striking and Marty can’t get the car started.

Anyway, after the movie was over I was grooving on Huey Lewis’ “Back in Time” and watching the credits roll when I noticed the name Ron Cobb beside the words, “DeLorean Time Travel Consultant”. What does that even mean? I did a quick search and found Ron Cobb’s website and wikipedia entry. It turns out he designed the concept for the DeLorean Time Machine. I also learned that unfortunately, he died just last year on his 83rd birthday, from complications of Lewy body dementia. From Wikipedia:

Ronald Ray Cobb (September 21, 1937 – September 21, 2020) was an American-Australian artist. As well as being an editorial cartoonist he worked on numerous major films including Dark Star (1974), Star Wars (1977), Alien (1979), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Conan the Barbarian (1982), Back to the Future (1985), The Abyss (1989), Total Recall (1990), and Southland Tales (2006). He had one credit as director, for the 1992 film Garbo.

It’s really neat to see the prop schematics for the DeLorean Time Machine. It’s extra fascinating to read all the names of the different time travel components. Be sure to check out the original design of the flux capacitor.

Continue reading “DeLorean Time Travel Consultant”

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Relm

Some friends of mine1 built a new kind of online meeting space. It’s called Relm. It’s a virtual space that brings people together in a game-like environment with live video chat. In a nutshell, it’s a playful virtual space for online events.

Relm is a community of artists, engineers, philosophers, and spiritual thinkers making a new kind of home on the internet. It’s a virtual world where you can commune with friends.

Updated video:

Just a couple of days ago they updated it to (sort of) work on iOS (iPhone, iPad). Safari is my browser of choice and while you can get basic functionality, it seems to work best in Chrome.

Try out this example world.

1. Duane Johnson is the main programmer behind Relm. There are others that I don’t really know that well. I’m closer friends with Duane’s brothers — I met Duane in person a few years ago in Utah.

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Crazy, Amazing, Drone Footage Videos

Scott Simmie, DroneDJ:

Odds are, you’ve seen that amazing bowling alley FPV video that was released in early March. It was a phenomenal piece of piloting and timing, showing off various attributes in the life of a bowling alley in Minnesota – all in a single shot lasting 87 seconds.

I had not seen the video, and if you also haven’t then I highly recommend you check it out. Here it is:

Next up, Mall of America:

The bowling alley video was all shot in a pretty confined space, which created numerous challenges for the pilot. The new video is located in the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. It’s a massive mall, complete with an indoor amusement park. And Jay takes us through it all.

Another video, this one of the Black Lives Matter protests:

Twin Cities 2020 is a powerful piece of work, telling the stories of those cities during one of the most momentous, tumultuous years in their history.