Did you know that in 1969, Salvador Dali did a series of illustrations for that surreal classic, Alice in Wonderland? It is true, and the book itself is not cheap; the second video tells you how to identify it, so you don’t waste your $30K to $60K (depending on where you find a copy). The final video segment is from the 1933 version of Alice, with W.C. Fields and quite a few other folks you should have no problem recognizing.
Jellybean evidence has been requested by several folks who looked at the Shrek image the other day and contacted me to say they did not see the jellybeans I said it was made out of. So here is a smaller portion of the same picture, but not shrunk to avoid eradicating the details. It was actually missing from the window the final day I was there. When I inquired about it, I was told they had removed it to get the display area ready for their next creation; something in a Tardis, I believe.
Congratulations to Charles Csuri for receiving the 2011 Award for Lifetime Achievement in Digital Art. As far back as the 1960s he was introducing computers to artists and art to programmers, creating computer art and animations, and creating curriculum’s that would teach those skills to others. Any one who has been to the movies over the past 30 years has seen the results of his work in CGI special effects and animation, but it was equally important to the development of computer sciences, resulting in advances in flight simulators, computer-aided design, architecture, magnetic resonance imaging, and the visualization of scientific phenomena. The 2011 SIGGRAPH Conference is going on this week in Vancouver; check the video for some highlights of the presentations.
Beginning today, BBC4 Extra is running Bradbury 13, a series of 13 short stories from author Ray Bradbury adapted for radio. These are new productions never previously broadcast, starting out with his story The Ravine, and it looks like some of his Martian Chronicles tales are included in the collection. Warren Ellis announced that you could stop by Brian Wood’s site and download the Entire Public Domain 2 PDF, which represents around a decade worth of sketches and artwork from his collected works. It is 132 pages and fairly high rez of some really nice graphic novel level creations (although no actual graphic novels… it is way too random for that), and looks good on your Android or iDevice as well. If you like it, you can support his work by picking up the signed and numbered limited edition print version from the link on his page, until they run out.
Today, September 25th, is Museum Day; the museums you can find from that Smithsonian locator link are all free to the public today. All you have to do is download a ticket, print it out, and take it with you to get free access for two adults to any one of hundreds of museums coast to coast. Which should be a good warm up for next month’s event…
This one looks very interesting; from October 10th to the 24th this year the USA Science & Engineering Festival will take place in the Washington, D.C. area. Billing itself as the the country’s first national science festival, it already has over 500 organizations signed up to participate, and will end with a two day Expo in the nation’s capital. This event will give science & engineering groups the opportunity to present themselves to the public with hands-on science activities to inspire the next generation of researchers and developers. The teams involved are wide ranging, and include such diverse outfits and events as the 4H National Youth Science Day, the You Can Do The Cube competition, a presentation from Hollywood Movie Physics, and the Versatile Mr. Freeze from FermiLabs, to name but a few. And yes, you can follow them on a boatload of social media tools, including Twitter.
There is some wonderful science fiction art being produced continuously, and a lot of the world class artists who produce it have put tutorials online so you can learn how to build your own. My favorite magazine on the topic is ImagineFX, which at $16 dollars a copy US seems a little pricey. Until, that is, you notice the DVD each issue comes with has all the workshops for that issue, including all the resources you need to follow along and make your own version. It also includes various free resources, like Fonts, Brushes, video instructions, 3D models, Textures, open source free apps, and so forth. A lot of their Workshops go online so you can access them there, usually around three months after the magazine hits the news stand. In addition, many of the contributing artists like Henning or Tom Nelson also post their contributions on their own web sites (again with the three month pause; no one wants to discourage you from buying the magazine and actively supporting the artists and publisher).
I have posted about this magazine before of course; what made me think of it now? I just found a nice article called Beyond Cylons and Warp Drive: Phenomenal Sci-Fi Concept Art that showcases 40 incredible works by almost as many artists. Each of the images links back to the source page so you can learn more about the creator and the project. Some of these are book covers, some are matte paintings for the backgrounds in movies or TV shows, some are paintings or page illustrations for magazines, but they are all amazing. And did I mention the site that published the article also is full of tutorials? Just in case you were thinking of building your own…