Category: Art

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Art

Watch the Celebrity-Filled Fan-Film Version of The Princess Bride

Westley and Princess Buttercup look at each other

Vanity Fair:

While stuck in quarantine over the past few months, some of the most famous performers in the world worked in secret to shoot a homemade fan-film version of the classic on their phones—which will be shown on Quibi chapter by chapter, day by day, for two weeks starting this Monday.

Filmmaker Jason Reitman devised the idea back in March, seeing it as a way to stay busy during the lockdown while raising funds for the World Central Kitchen charity, which has been helping thousands of restaurants stay afloat during the quarantine by paying them to provide millions of meals to the needy.

The creators hope the footage can also provide some laughter to viewers in a time of hardship. Their scrappy version of The Princess Bride leans into its continuity lapses, utilizes absurd household props and back-of-the-closet costumes, and deploys multiple castings of the same roles to show that in a true fantasy, anyone can play anything.

Super delightful project.

Categories
Art humor Politics

How to more cases than anybody in the world

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Art Disney education

Imagineering in a Box

Working with the Kahn Academy, Disney Imagineering released a free course on theme park design called Imagineering in a Box.

Imagineering in a Box is designed to pull back the curtain to show students how artists, designers and engineers work together to create theme parks. We take a behind-the-scenes look that learners love and make it an active experience through student-driven projects. We do this by weaving together videos and exercises into lessons that culminate in a long form project. The goal is to make students aware of careers they never knew existed and deepen their understanding of the process, concepts and terminology of the creative workplace.

The course is comprised of 32 videos designed to encourage viewers to think about a wide range of skills including story development and conceptual design, math, physics and engineering. Completing the first three lessons, I agree with the write-up… this course, “ignite[s] curiosity, inspire[s] creativity, and cultivate innovation in the minds of students and teachers alike”, all the while creating a fun and engaging opportunity to explore new concepts. They say it’s aimed at middle school or high school so I’m not sure I would present it to my grade five class, but I sure am tempted. I live for this kind of thing.

(via Waxy)

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video

One Second Everyday 2019

With the new year comes another episode of my One Second Everyday series.

Some highlights in 2019 include: a trip to Hawaii, teaching at a new school, many trips to Medicine Hat for work, traveling for the ATA, weekends at the lake with friends, the birth of our son, attending a speech by Barrack Obama, water park outings, a new iPhone 11 Pro, our trip to Palm Springs, and visiting with family and friends over the Christmas holidays.

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Politics writing

The Whistleblower Knows How to Write

Jane Rosenzweig, writing for The New York Times:

“I can’t tell you what’s going to happen to his blockbuster complaint about the president’s behavior, but I can tell you that the whistle-blower’s college writing instructor would be very proud of him.”

As a writing instructor myself for 20 years, I look at the complaint and see a model of clear writing that offers important lessons for aspiring writers”.

Rosenzweig’s breakdown makes me want to use this an illustrative guide in my classroom.

Categories
animation

The Lion King Opening Song Lyrics

To everyone singing along with The Lion King when the sun is rising: the words are “nants ingonayama, bagithi Baba” and it means “here comes a lion, father” “Sithi uhhmm ingonyama” – “Oh yes, it’s a lion”

It’s in Zulu, one of the official languages spoken in South Africa. And it makes sense if you think about it because — and I hope I’m not spoiling it for you — it’s a movie about a lion.

Categories
entertainment video

Picard

Star Trek Picard Title

I’m super excited about the new Star Trek. I love all of the surprises that come at the end of this trailer. I never got into Voyager so I’m not super into the backstory of Seven of Nine but I’m guessing Picard won’t be either. I was however, super into TNG and Picard centred episodes were my favourite. Here’s the trailer if you haven’t already watched it multiple times yet:

Categories
video

One Second Everyday 2018

I’m closing out the year with my annual One Second Everyday video (see below). Lots of exciting things for us this year — especially wonderful was the arrival of our little baby girl, Nesslin. Astute viewers will see foreshadowing that 2019 is also looking to be a great year.

Categories
Art technology

Adobe Max

Yesterday was day one of Adobe’s annual event Adobe Max in which they announce all of the neat things they’ve been up to. Here are a few of the highlights I’m most excited about in the new Adobe CC applications:

Photoshop:

  • select text with click and commit text by clicking
  • multiple undo function (just keep hitting Command Z to undo)
  • content aware fill
  • frame tool (much like indesign’s frame tool)
  • symmetry mode

Indesign:

  • automatically adjust layout when changing page sizes, margins, and bleeds
  • activate fonts within indesign
  • import and export comments into pdf format

XD:

  • auto-animation
  • add voice interactions
  • responsive resize tool
  • developer plugins

Illustrator CC

  • edit repeating objects across art boards with global edit
  • complex colour gradients
  • custom toolbar

And what’s very exciting (though not coming until next year) is the full version of Photoshop on iOS! But what’s the most exciting of all is that Typekit is now called Adobe Fonts and is part of all Creative Cloud plans. That means all 1500 fonts from Adobe are free to use with any Creative Cloud plan and there is no sync limit. They’ve also streamlined the way fonts are activated. Awesome!

Here’s the highlight reel from the keynote:

Categories
cooking recipe video

Chicken Taco Salad

I’ve been having fun with time-lapse videos lately. Here’s one of me making Chicken Taco Salad from this evening. All ingredients can be substituted as per what you have and how much you like it. This recipe was basically me just eyeballing it.

Recipe:

two large chicken breasts
1/2 cup corn (I used corn on the cob)
a head of romaine lettuce
1 tomato
1 avocado
1 cucumber
a couple handfuls of nacho chips
some grated cheese
a couple dollops of plain yogurt
an equal amount of your favourite salsa

Cook chicken until brown and reaching an internal temperature of at least 74°C. Mix the rest of the ingredients and serve.