Michael Sowa

 

 

I remember seeing Michael Sowa’s work many years ago but like all good things that I am exposed to, Sowa’s work got buried deep within my brain and was forgotten for some time. It wasn’t until Amazon recommended my friend to purchase on of his prints (the fowl with the pearl necklace) that I was reintroduced to this wonderful artist. What I love about Michael Sowa’s work is surreal and fanciful drawings of cute little animals. I can sense of bit of Magritte in his scenes and a bit of Vermeer in his portrait works. Its a strange combination but it works!

Creativity!

There’s a lesson to be learned here, I think 🙂

—Katrina

Old-School Animation

This video is pretty fantastic. It’s amazing to see how animation worked before there were computers… it blows my mind to see these details: the painted glass, the hand cranking, the ingenuity of the layered planes. I really wish I could have worked on these films in that time period!

—Katrina

Kina Grannis / In Your Arms

Another sweet animated video! I hadn’t thought of this or seen anything like this before… I mean, stop-motion with a mosaic of beans! It reminds me of kindergarten, and in a good way 🙂

—Katrina

World Population Infographic

http://www.npr.org/player/embeddable/video/player.html?i=141816460&m=141848264

I saw this on NPR and thought it was pretty amazing. I loved how the creators of this piece used the analogy of pouring water into a leaking cup to illustrate the complex dynamics of the world population problem.

–Jimmy

And his legend lives on…

In stop motion and legos? But who could resist? Oh, the joys of animation…

Happy Halloween, kiddos 🙂

—Katrina

Dreams of Black

Found this on FastCo the other day. The above video talks about Google’s WebGL technology and how it was used to create the music video Dreams of Black. Supposedly, the idea is to create an interactive music video. The idea sounds great but so far I haven’t been able to access it since it keeps on crashing my computer. If any of you are able to get it work, tell me how the experience is.

DMY Berlin is an international design network for contemporary product design. At the yearly DMY International Design Festival Berlin both renowned and young designers launch new products and prototypes. I totally wish I could go to a design festival like this one. Sadly, I’m too poor. Oh well, at least the above video can keep me in the loop as to what is going on in the European design scene.

—Jimmy

 

Kinetic Type!

Awesome stuff. It’s so fascinating!

Sean Freeman

I remember seeing Sean Freeman’s type illustrations not too long ago in an issue of Computer Arts. It was the issue where the cover that had a lower case g covered in red paint. I remembered thinking “Hey thats like my frozen type project.” Except Freeman’s work was far more elaborate and better executed. Reading the article on him, I learned several things: 1) he has more experience than me in the area of 3D type illustration; 2) sometimes he uses photoshop to give the image an extra oomph; and 3) he has a fancy studio with fancy equipment which makes it possible to do this kind of work. In knowing this, I feel less defeated now and hope that one day I can execute crazy type illustrations like him,

–Jimmy