Posted at 06:33 PM in Animated GIF, Photoshop | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: animated GIF, cave, lightning, metaphor
My friend Jake C was cooking recently when he noticed that his silicone oven mitt looked like the Loch Ness Monster. He followed a few simple steps to turn it into a real sea monster. Here's how you can do it at home:
Step 1: Put a silicone oven mitt on your hand and hold it out so it looks like a lizard.
Step 2: Put something on the mitt to make eyes and nostrils (buttons or olives, it doesn't really matter).
Step 3: Take a digital photograph of the mitt. (Jake used his cellphone to take and edit the photo, so you don't need to be a genius or rich, okay?)
Step 4: Import the photo into a digital art program and add a bunch of fog, hills, and waves. You can also add optional features like fish, boats, or the moon. Have fun!
Step 5: Send it to all your friends.
That's all there is to it. I hope you enjoyed learning how to make a sea monster.
Posted at 10:20 PM in Cellphone Art, Fantasy Art, Photoshop | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: fog, food art, iphone art, Loch Ness, Scotland, sea monster
Hey, everyone, I'm currently training to become a doctor, but instead of going to medical school, I've decided to figure everything out on my own. I created a series of animated diagrams illustrating the most critical bodily functions. These are the areas of the body I'll be working on every day in my clinic.
Blood
Blood is the fuel that powers the body and keeps all of the internal parts moist. The heart moves the blood around the body so that it doesn't slow down and stagnate. If blood sits in one spot for too long it turns blue.
If you lose blood, either through injury or blood donation, your body will eventually make more of it. I'm not exactly sure how that works.
Breath
After blood, breath is the most important bodily concern. The lungs create air, or "breath", and shoot it out into the atmosphere to collect oxygen molecules. You can think of breath like a swarm of bees that collect honey and bring it back to the hive. Your breath is always out there working hard, looking for oxygen.
Guts
The guts of a human body are incredibly complicated. Guts encompass all of the internal functions not related to breathing, blood, or your brain. Put your hand on your belly and push in. Everything you feel under there is your guts.
The most famous thing that guts do is turn food into waste. Your guts also alert you to throw up when you eat something rotten.
Nerves
Nerves are the invisible pathways that send and receive signals from the brain. Very little is known about how this works. For example, you can think about moving your foot, and it moves, but sometimes if you sit cross-legged for too long, your foot won't move even if you want it to. Stranger yet, if you poke a sleeping person in the foot with a stick, they will kick. That wasn't even their thought. They were asleep!
Hair
Hair is the most aesthetically pleasing bodily system, but it also plays a critical role in our survival. The body uses hair to regulate temperature. If you live in a cold climate, you will grow a lot of hair in the winter and shed it in the summer. People living in hot climates are practically hairless.
I hope you learned some things about the body that will help you live a healthy life.
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: While the information presented here is factually correct, I am not yet licensed to practice medicine and therefore cannot recommend the use of this information to diagnose or treat a medical condition. If you are experiencing a medical emergency, please call 911.
Posted at 10:51 PM in Animated GIF, Beards, Coloring, Photoshop | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: animated GIF, blood, brain, hair, health, lungs, medicine, nervous system, oxygen
This past January I participated in the annual Fun-A-Day art show. The event takes place in cities across the country and the only requirement is that participants create one art piece per day for the entire month of January. For my project, I created a daily animation based on the most notable thing that happened each day. At the end of the month I had thirty-one very short films that I stitched together into a silent movie that was shown on a loop at the Rock Paper Scissors Gallery in Oakland.
For the web version of the video, I asked my friend Carl W to help with a soundtrack. I was basically asking for Carl's interpretation of my interpretation of my month. It could have been a huge mess, but Carl came through with a big song that gives the animation some emotional depth. Slam dunk.
UPDATE: Here are some pictures from the show on February 4. (Photos courtesy of Nick L, the show's curator):
Posted at 11:16 PM in Animated GIF, Coloring, Comics, Doodle, Film, Music, Photoshop | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: Animation, cartoons, dating, Fun-A-Day, hawks, self-amusement, video
Animated GIFs, blog, new media, 2010
David N, a friend of my friends in Portland, has created a special website that harnesses the full potential of animated GIFs and uses them to tell poignant stories about real life in America. I'm not lying at all when I say this is my new favorite website:
I've presented a few selections here to give you a sense of the artwork, but it doesn't do justice to the site. You should really go straight there and see the entire collection. You'll feel like you are viewing the world three-dimensionally from inside the eyeballs of another person. It's much more interesting than the office work you should be doing right now.
David is also the creator of the excellent and mysterious Dickbird.org website. I strongly encourage you to spend a lot of time there, too.
Posted at 02:10 PM in Animated GIF, Photo, Photoshop | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: booze, diary, dogs, GIFs, golf, guns, photography
PowerPoint presentation, 500 x 300 pixels, 2010
I recently upgraded to Microsoft Office 2008. In this latest edition, there is a much larger selection of realistic-looking clip art and graphic design elements. It was a slow day at work, so I used some of the new features to make a PowerPoint presentation about donkeys:
Feel free to copy any of these slides for your own presentations. All you need to do is replace the pictures of the donkeys with whatever it is people talk about at your office. Or even better, keep the pictures of the donkeys, and at the end of the presentation, tell the audience that the donkeys are a metaphor. You might get a promotion.Posted at 02:39 PM in Photoshop | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: donkeys, metaphors, Office 2008, PowerPoint, synergy
iPhone painting, 800 x 550 pixels, 2009
In this digital painting by Jake C, a man takes some time to unwind and watch the waves. I'm guessing this guy's wife and four step-kids don't even know about this secret spot on the beach. It's the perfect place to chill-out.
Jake is pushing iPhone art to new limits. The depth and shading are amazing. Nice work!
Posted at 01:18 PM in Cellphone Art, Doodle, Painting, Photoshop | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: beach, beer, brushes, iPhone art, me-time, relaxation, step-kids
VLADIMIR PUTIN IN THE LAND OF DRAGONS
Posted at 12:05 AM in Current Affairs, Doodle, Found Stuff, Photoshop | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
In June, I posted ten submissions for the Faces in the Mist: Reimagining Sasquatch collaborative art project. Morit G, a frequent contributor, was traveling abroad at the time and missed the deadline. After returning, she was bogged down by a broken computer. Undeterred, this week she fixed her computer and completed her Sasquatch face.
My submission, while it may appear crude, pays homage to the closest I have ever come to the mythical man-beast, which was a story told to me by a decidedly real man-beast about an encounter he had with Sasquatch while working as a wildland firefighter in the mountains of Northern California's redwood country. Among his less spurious claims was that bigfoot gave off the aroma of "50 dead sea lions". I feel the green stink lines and buzzing flies help to bring this multi-sensory experience to the viewer. I also think sasquatch probably has pretty bushy eyebrows, and yellow teeth, since he/she likely hasn't developed dental hygiene technology.
Posted at 12:28 PM in Photoshop, The Buddy System | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Here is the fourth installment of The Buddy System, the series where I send out the start of a drawing and ask friends to respond however they wish.
The shape of the man reminded Seth L of the brightly colored spiders that crawled all over his body one night at a college party back in the 1990s. He may have eaten something bad that evening, I don't know. Seth said that despite their scary look, the spiders were actually pretty friendly.
UPDATE Saturday, July 25: René S, a photographer from Rotterdam, Netherlands, was following along over Twitter and decided to join in the fun. René incorporated the image of the man into two of his photographs. One shows a spectacular back-flip dive into a canal and the other shows a crowd of tourists marveling at the giant marshmallow man that is about to crush them. (Click the images to see larger versions.)
Posted at 02:58 PM in Doodle, Photoshop, The Buddy System | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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