HALLOWEEN BUGS

I remember being 4 or 5 years old and actually being frightened by the last of these 3 cartoons. Something had lifted the veil of comedy for me and I was filled with dread by two obese children, blinded by their greed, gorging themselves on candy, oblivious to the fact that a toothless old lady gleefully prepares to cook them alive and cannibalize them. All for our amusement.

How horrible.

I feel the need to listen to some Jacques Brel.

- Evil Scientist.

- Vampire.

- Wicked Witch.

(p.s. - that last line of dialogue = 1954)

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DRAGON SKETCH

In our media exploration class today (which is in session as I write this - sorry, Mike), our instructor had us go downstairs and draw on the wall which acts as an entrance to the current Illustration and Character design show. He suggested a Halloween-ish theme. When it was my turn I drew a dragon (I'll try to get a pic to post). In preparation I sketched this guy up in Photoshop.

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JOAN JETT

Hey, look! Barbie is releasing this line of 80's rock and roll icons. If anyone feels they absolutely need to purchase a Barbie for their kid, then I would have to recommend the Joan Jett doll, because let's face it, she kicks so much ass that your kid might turn out alright. In the picture below (click to enlarge) notice how she's the coolest person in the room at 16 years old when she was in the Runaways (watch for the movie next year), and see how she's still throwing down the "fuck you" in the bottom pic in which, if I'm doing my math right, she is 50 (that's right). If you're unfamiliar with her work, grab onto something heavy and watch this video.

Note the Chucks!

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PRE CRIT

Very click for very big.

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ETC

- Air's awesome video for Sing Sang Sung.
- Frank Soltesz's crazily detailed mid-century cutaway paintings from Saturday Evening Post.
- Chukwa's Approach III (The Final Encounter).

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TURNAROUND

Digital roughs for a 4-panel character study assignment.

Finished pics coming...

...well, before wednesday, at least.

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MONO NO AWARE BY HAMMOCK

David Altobelli directs a really nice video for

Hammock's track "Mono No Aware"

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VIJYO

This isn't animation as such, just playing around in photoshop. But it was fun; I'd like to keep adding frames between each keyframe until it's smooth.

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IN THE POCKET BY ETHAN GOLDHAMMER AND S. BURKE

Fender Rhodes + glitchy static = yes.

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STITCHING SCANS

It's frustrating that, at an art collage, there doesn't seem to be a large format scanner that I am aware of. Here's how to make due with scanners smaller than your artwork. Click any of the images for a closer look.

To demonstrate, I'm going to use this picture, which is all kinds of awesome, of Maria Germanova costumed for her role in the Mocsow Arts Theatre's 1908 production of Stanislavsky's Blue Bird. Badass.

Let's assume this pic is 10"x16". Scan the top and bottom sections of the image. Do a full bleed type scan; it's important to see the edges of the image, and enough shared content for the two images to overlap (I'm going to call the top part A and the bottom part B).

It's unlikely that both A and B are going to be perfectly straight, so let's straighten them. Under the Eyedropper tool is the Ruler tool. Click and drag the ruler tool along the longest straight edge of the images. Go to Image> Rotate Canvas> Arbitrary and we see it has automatically calculated how many degrees to rotate the image in order to make it straight. Be sure to rotate them in the right direction.

Both images should now be essentially at right angles. Crop off the leftover crooked part from image A (don't take off any more than necessary).

Leave image A for now and go to image B. Let's resize it using the Image>Canvas Size (NOT Image Size!) menu with the following settings (set units to "percent"): Height = 200%; Anchor = bottom. This will add enough blank space to the top of image B for us to paste image A in there.

Go to image A and Select>All; Copy>All. Go to the image B and Paste. It will automatically paste onto a new layer. Set this layer to Multiply so it becomes transparent .

Keystroke V activates the Move tool and will allow you to click and drag the top layer around to line it up with the bottom. Use the 4 arrow keys on the keyboard for the fine tuning.

In theory, we should be done here, but if you now set the top layer back to Normal you'll probably end up with something like this, an obvious seam:

That's just because, again, most of us don't have access to awesome scanners. So set the top layer back to Multiply and let's fix it.

Add a Layer Mask to the top layer by clicking this icon at the bottom of the Layers window.

Using the Marquee tool draw a box just like this (almost to the top of the overlapped area; slightly below the bottom), being sure the Layer mask is selected on the top layer.

Set your colors to black & white, and use the Gradient tool (found under the Bucket tool) to fill the Marquee. To be sure your gradient is going in the right direction, turn off the bottom layer. If the Layer Mask Gradient is successful, the top layer should look something like the image below, fading away at the bottom. If it's fading in the other direction, swap the black and white color boxes, or just click and drag the Gradient tool in the opposite direction.

Turn on the bottom layer, set both layers to Normal, and you should have a fairly seamless stitching together of the two sections. Go to Layers>Flatten to collapse into a single layer.

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WHAT WOULD BERNIE DO?

Nice set of large Bernie Fuchs scans on Flickr.

Commence swoonage.

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BLADE RUNNER STORYBOARDS

klikit

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A FOGGY DAY LIKE TODAY...

...calls for a Lighthouse!

Aw, yeah, that's like a bearded ray of sunshine right there.

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ANIMAL CHIN BY JAGGA JAZZIST

Collaging at school reminded me of this video.

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CHURAUMI AQUARIUM IN OKINAWA

That's one big fish tank.

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"DEADBEAT SUMMER" BY NEON INDIAN

Phew! This is a good one. Wish I'd come across this before summer ended.

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AMBUSH!

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IN REFERENCE TO...

...a discussion in school today:
"Jacek Utko is an extraordinary Polish newspaper designer whose redesigns for papers in Eastern Europe not only win awards, but increase circulation by up to 100%. Can good design save the newspaper?"

I thought it was a French guy and 300%, but my point stands, that is; If you give people the opportunity to appreciate good things, they will rise to the occasion. Don't underestimate your audience. Thankyouverymuch.

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ALSO...

...here's the song Cheerleader by Grizzly Bear.

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SHOPPING SPREE.

Okay, I authored a Photoshop Action. It will automatically take any image and separate the linework from the background onto separate layers, allowing you to color each independently of the other. Here's a little self portrait. You can see where I've colored some of the background green and some of the linework red.

Clicking here will download the file. Drop it into the following spot on your hard drive (you can really put it anywhere you will be able to find it later, but this is a good spot for it):
Macintosh HD> Applications> Adobe Photoshop CS3> Presets> Actions. (this path assumes you have a Mac)
Then, in Pshop, go to your Window menu and click on Actions. Find the little notepad icon in the top right of the new Actions window and click on it. Select "Load Actions" from the dropdown menu. Find the file where you downloaded it to a moment ago, click "open" to load, and you're all set. Open any image and "play" the Action.

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"WOOD" BY THE DEAD PIRATES.

Illustrators McBess & Simon have a band. Their song "Wood" has the coolest video I've seen in ages. Plus the song kicks a lot of ass, too. HD and Full Screen dat.

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ALEXEI ALEXEEV ANIMATIONS.

These guys just want to jam.

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ETC

- Little Dragon's "Blinking Pigs".
- Johnson Banks' "phonetikana".
- Font Bureau sues NBC for using trademarked typefaces.

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OLD SCHOOL

A couple of analog collages depicting high school days. The first is a self portrait, the second captures for posterity an early morning vehicular mishap. I wasn't driving.

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JUST SECONDS OLD

Some digi collage for ya.

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THE NEXT LEVEL

Feel like a sandwich? This guy made a BLT from scratch. When I say "from scratch," I mean from effing SCRATCH. Check it out here, and dig his cool BLT flow chart here.

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