The folks at APOD have done it again, with yet another amazing picture. This time Göran Strand did a mosaic image of the full moon over a snowfield, with the lights of Östersund, Sweden peeking over the horizon in all directions. Check out his other images at his site, he creates some truly astounding graphics.
Creating animations using buildings as your canvas… I had to say it right up front, because no matter how I worded the title of this post, it never actually meant what it really is, even though it may have accurately said it. As a person who created his very first animations by drawing pictures in the upper right corner of every fourth grade textbook page I was forced to use, and then flipped through them to see them actually move, these artists have my respect. They do a complete base painting on some large real world object, such as a building or vehicle, and take a picture. Then they change one or more parts of the painting, and take a picture. Then they change something else, and take a picture. Hundreds or sometimes thousands of pictures later, they have a video which can then be save as an animated GIF. When your canvas might be 30 foot tall by 50 foot wide or greater, this can turn into a time consuming process, to say the least. Even so, some amazing work has been done in this field, and more is being created every month. The original article telling us about this is courtesy of the Huffington Post, as many of the more unusual projects are.
If you appreciated the Doctor Who episode Vincent and the Doctor, you are going to love this. I should mention that the interactive part does NOT mean you can do this yourself with it, since it is just a streaming video. But I must add my voice to a bunch of folks, including Gizmodo, in urging the creator of this video to take the final step. The video is a capture of the authors results when he used an openframeworks environment to create an interface where he could edit in real time, for all of us to see. Now it needs to be converted to an App, suitable for running on I-Phones, Android, or Web-OS. I can’t wait to use it to create my own Sci-Fi favorite graphics files. *grin*
Starry Night (interactive animation) from Petros Vrellis on Vimeo.
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.
Are you a comics or graphics novel fan? Do you have any idea how much work, effort, and talent goes into creating even a single issue of a single title? If you comprehend that, did you notice how many of the best artists and story tellers are women in this male dominated marketplace? 140 of those women got together to work on the Womanthology Project, a massive graphics novel anthology created under the direction of Renae De Liz. I urge you to check out their new project, and contribute whatever you can through their Kickstarter Interface; since 100% of their proceeds will go to charity they need our donations to create this work in the first place. I should probably list the project participants and tell you what all else they have created, which is a big percentage of the comics you are reading today, but why should I when I can let a few of them speak for themselves in the videos below. That should give you a basic idea, and a few of these links should allow you to learn more. Thanks to The Nerdy Bird for the heads up on this one.
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.