// March 1st, 2010 // No Comments » // art, music, painters, painting
Nice video by Hold your Horses! recreating some classic paintings. Can you spot them all? The two paintings I don’t recognize are in the screengrabs below the video. Any takers?
// February 26th, 2010 // No Comments » // art
Lot’s of very cool videos of projections mapped onto buildings doing the rounds in the last few months. If you’ve not seen any yet, here are some of my favourites.
555 KUBIK | facade projection | from urbanscreen on Vimeo.
Projection on Buildings from NuFormer Projection on Vimeo.
Battle of Branchage from seeper on Vimeo.
// November 24th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // art, design, photos
I haven’t really done much print design but the Missus had her 40th a couple of weeks ago and I had a bit of fun printing a few things for the party. Got a bit carried away actually, it was almost like a branded event in the end. I did invitations, a kid’s t-shirt, a window decal, stickers and a bib! Mostly via cafepress.
// June 10th, 2009 // No Comments » // art, news, video
Stunning animation by the Black Heart Gang, almost looks like a Bosch or Brueghel painting brought to life. The making of is well worth a look too. It’s only one part of a three part series, you can buy the whole package as a book / dvd.
The Tale of How from Shy the Sun on Vimeo.
// June 8th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // art, drawing
I always manage to make use of the sketchbook at least once on the summer hols.
// March 27th, 2009 // 5 Comments » // art
Sometimes a painting just makes me go WOW.
I love really messy splashy stuff with a touch of realism. More at The Black Rat Press .
// August 23rd, 2008 // 4 Comments » // art, movies, waffle
There’s this theory in robotics called the Uncanny Valley. It’s now well acknowledged in computer graphics too. It’s when a human character looks and moves almost realistically lifelike yet not quite perfect. And this somethings-not-quite-right can be a bit jarring to watch. So in 3D animation, unless you can depict a human in flawless reality, you shouldn’t even bother. Take a step back.
Pixar know this. They can do perfectly realistic landscapes, seascapes, objects, hair etc – but they keep their distance from lifelike humans and instead have fun with caricatures. Many feature length movies have completely flopped because they dared to walk the valley, like Final Fantasy.
Now meet Emily.
The first question is has she climbed out of the valley. And the second one is, what’s the point? Why not use real actors? Unless you’re talking about actual in-game playing. That could be pretty amazing but I reckon it’d be fad you’d tire of quickly. Of course this technology will most likely be used for some weird-assed porn.
It’s a bit like photorealistic paintings? What’s the point? I still wow at the technical ability of photorealistic paintings but they’re a bit pointless really.
I do enjoy a good dose of twisted hypereality though. Like that Spanish guy who does it all in biros. Juan Franciscoasas, and of course Ron Mueck’s sculptures fucking rock. And there’s a huge photorealistic painting of an old woman in some gallery in Washington DC that I love – it’s made from nothing but thumbprints (and can *not* be found after twenty frigging minutes with Inspector Google).
But when it comes to straight up painting, give me Kandinsky’s bubbles, De Chirico’s dummies, a fractured nude descending a staircase, or Bacon’s twisted torsos any day of the week. Hell even hit me with some Rothko. And what do you mean you could paint that!? Well you didn’t! And more to the point, you couldn’t. Unless he picked out the colours and mixed them for you but you never even considered that monumental part of the process, did you dipwad!?
Way to go on a tangent AND state the obvious.
// July 28th, 2008 // 3 Comments » // art
My second attempt at some claymation…
// July 7th, 2008 // 16 Comments » // art
Arrived home on Friday to find that junior had beent treated to some plasticine. And as ever I had more fun with his toys than he did…
Had a quick go at some clay animation too. Always wanted to have a go at that. Dying to get a bit of time to give it a proper go though…
// July 1st, 2008 // 7 Comments » // art, drawing, flash
Not sure what this is. It started out as a sketch (yes that thing on the right there) and turned into what I guess you could call a multimedia doodle (need sound).
// May 12th, 2008 // 6 Comments » // art, graffiti, street art, videos
Blu has released a new stop-motion graffiti animation. Each frame of this would stand up as decent graffiti. Yet its also an animation. Which is fairly amazing. I originally posted about Blu on my Graffiti 2.0 post and there’s some footage from the first one mixed in to this much bigger piece:
MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.
Speaking of graffiti, apparantly this wounded Celtic Tiger is somewhere around Dublin. Anyone see it?
// April 25th, 2008 // No Comments » // art, gaming, multimedia, videos
We’ve had a video camera for years. Six or seven years. I only got around to getting a firewire card last year. Then a few months ago I got a firewire cable and then this week I got the correct firewire cable. Organised or what?! So straight to business when I got it – I wanted to test it straight away and the clip below was the first tape I grabbed from the pile.
It’s the game, SuperFlyGuy, that four of us made in college a couple of years ago for the end of year exhibition. You could fly around the city we built, using gloves that had a sensor inside (Wii had a spy in our camp!). So you could just fly around by doing Superman motions. If you look closely, you can see a few dublin-inspired buildings. Irishstu, did some sterling work on it, including the spaceship and the monorail/trains.
// April 21st, 2008 // 9 Comments » // art, books, design
Yeay my first published graphic work (well first time in a book anyway). Much bigger news of course is that the first copies of the book have arrived. Congrats again to the Missus. Booyakasha!
I reckon my images would have been a fair bit different had I not read Tufte’s classic Visual Display of Quantitative Information last year.Very worthwhile read.
// March 30th, 2008 // 3 Comments » // art, street art
Here’s some amazingly creative street art from Joshua Allen Harris. He makes shapes out of plastic bags and ties them to air vents above the subway. Watch what happens to this plastic dog when a train goes by underneath. (There is no sound)
.
Via the wonderful Wooster Collective.
// March 7th, 2008 // 2 Comments » // art, films, waffle
I found myself with a day off midweek that I didn’t really need in the end, but I took it anyway. It just seemed too complicated to unbook it! So I got to potter around town. I can never decide what to do with precious moments like that (if you don’t have children, you won’t be able to relish just how precious they are – those moments, not the rug rats).
I remembered an announcement that the Dublin Improv Movement were looking for secret agents to turn up with some travel money and that sounded like a great adventure. But when I checked it was Thursday morning (anyone know what happened there?). Very dissapointed I resumed my pottering. Walking along Grafton street, I tried to figure out why people gave money to a woman who did nothing but paint herself gold. But at least the Spanish Goatboy with the wooden mouth wasn’t around, that thing gives me the creep. I don’t know if it’s rooted in some Spanish folklore or what – but it should never have been allowed off the Ramblas. Please don’t feed it silver. He might just go away forever.
The sun was shining, so a I bought a book and went to Stephen’s Green. That’s what has me halfway through a gazullion different books and to the end of none. A woman and her mother sat on the bench beside me to feed a Twix to the pigeons. One of them surprised me by perching on my shoe! I asked her to get off…and stop creating diabetic monster-pigeons.
I had a hankering to see some Art but Kilmainham was too far without car. I pottered around the Original Print gallery and then onto the Temple Bar Gallery. Niamh O’Malley’s a situation, a situation, and a story was on show. I tripped over the first A situation, didn’t know what to make of the Second but liked A Story. The first piece (A situation) doesn’t work in the sunlight, it’s a clouded image with coloured slides projected onto it. I’m sure it was great on the opening night but they need to black out the windows or move it into one of the back rooms. A story is a simple but elegantly executed allegory of butterflies and time.
From one butterfly to another, I went to see The diving bell and the Butterfly (Butterflies have to be the most common metaphors in art). It’s a wonderful film, but unlike some reviews would have you believe, I did not leap from the IFI imbibed with the zest for life. I just fancied some soup. (Cafe Café Irie spoiled the run of things by not having any butterfly soup but their replacement was still yum). I found the camerawork in The Diving Bell as fascinating as the story though. They seemed to use the same kind of tilt-shift method that can be used to make fake-model photos. Like the ones I did here. In the The Diving Bell, the effect you get is a realisticly claustrophobic first-person view.
I accidentally typed castrophobic there at first. I think Freud is trying to tell me something. The family jewels will be well-guarded this weekend.
// February 27th, 2008 // 2 Comments » // art, design
Less because I think my 100th post is a huge milestone and more to do with the fact that I like making images. And this is as good an excuse as any. I’m not sure why it’s made entirely of insects. Slightly inspired by some great typography.
// January 16th, 2008 // 3 Comments » // art, design
I like making images. Was thinking of doing an image-a-week kinda thing. Here’s a good excuse for some image-making. I saw this idea on (the gorgeously designed) Sabrinadent.com recently but Grandad sent out an open invitation to join in. The idea is that you go to three different random link generators to get your band title, album title and album photo, then go makey makey.
I got very lucky landing on that great photo and the title fits in by chance but the album title makes no sense whatsover!
// December 4th, 2007 // No Comments » // art, wallpaper
I seem to get a lot of people coming here from www.irishblogs.ie/categories/wallpaper/ looking for wallpaper and I’ve just got one measly post tagged with wallpaper, so I’ve done up a few more tiled wallpaper images…
And here are some drawings, photos and photoshoppery that could be used as wallpaper:
// November 29th, 2007 // No Comments » // art, photos, photoshop
Had a bit of Photoshop fun making holiday snaps look like model towns. Here’s two of the better ones:
Worked well on Nerja. Looks more like Lego land.
Large version.
Original image.
A riverside in Stockholm looks like a Guinea pig is about to arrive on a boat.
Large version.
There are some great one’s on the
Tilt-shift miniature fakes Flickr group.
Here’s a video featuring the original Tilt-Shift photographic technique.
// October 4th, 2007 // No Comments » // art, funnee, random
The Perry Bible Fellowship, BY FAR my favourite comic strip, has finally gone to print.
Pre-order one now. I’ve got two on the way.
Christ, that’s definitely the earliest I’ve bought a “that’ll-be-a-good-christmas-present-for-someone-better-buy-two!”.
// October 2nd, 2007 // No Comments » // art, graffiti, light graffiti, reverse graffiti, street art
Take some glowsticks, set a long exposure time on your camera, then start
painting the air and what have you got…. Light Graffiti!
First two videos are by Blu. Amazing stuff.
More pictures and videos at
www.blublu.org/blog.
The third one is at the side of a railtrack in Germany and the last is
Mark Ronson’s fantastic remix of Radiohead’s Just done by the
The Motion Group/Abbey Road Video Services.
The logical progression of fingering Wash Me on a dirty car.
Lots of photos on weburbanist.com
Ok this is pushing it. Not it’s exactly graffiti and I might as well start talking about stencilling and
Banksy but everyone and their dog knows about all that. Anyway I love
Mark Jenkin’s street art
and would love to have the time and the nerve to try something similar. If you like this, keep an eye on
www.woostercollective.com
It’s just good old 2D graffiti but as someone else put it, it’s like an illustrator got bored of working indoors.
// September 4th, 2007 // 3 Comments » // art, books, brain training, master your memory, memory, painters, painting, tony buzan, waffle
A few years ago I got sick of having a terrible memory. I’ve since nailed it down to a slighlty bizarre portion of bad memory in that I can’t for the life of me remember proper nouns. So I can’t remember names of pubs, shops, roads, restaurants, people etc. However, like most people I’m better with faces, much better though, I could see a bloke walk by in the street and remember that he was two people ahead of me, in a queue in a chipper, in Dun Laoighre, eight years ago.
So I have a good visual memory and when I came across a book called Master Your Memory by Tony Buzan, I scanned the back cover and saw that it had a system to improve your memory through your visual memory. So you could remember long numbers as images in a story for example. But it didn’t really make any sense without it’s precursor Use your memory. So I bought that and spent every morning on the bus to work practising the techniques in both. And they are fairly amazing techniques. Definitely a step above your average self help book.
The first thing I memorised, just for practise, was Pi to 500 decimal places.
The second half of Master Your Memory contains lists of trivia to memorize so
I went to work on them.
For the list of painters, I tracked down all the paintings on the web to make it a bit easier, and then discovered that the a lot of the data isn’t that well researched on any of the lists. When I reviewed the book on Amazon, I slated the content (while praising the system) for not researching any of the material properly even in it’s later editions. And Tony Buzan is definitely not short on pennies.
So, after quite a bit of waffle, the main point of this post is that list of paintings – if you’re looking for all the paintings in this list like I did, or just want to have a look through 100 famous paintings, here’s my list of 100 Artists, thoroughly researched, and backed up by a few books I’ve read over the years. And more importantly, there’s an image to go with each painting. There were a few cases where I couldn’t find the famous work that Tony Buzan chose, the fact that they were so hard to find was testamant in itself that they weren’t the most relevant works. In a couple of other cases I chose a different painting anyway just because it seemed much more relevant – but in most cases, I stuck to the original list as much as possible – apart from correcting all the mistakes, which were mostly dates and locations of paintings.
By the way, after years of this ‘Brain Training’ I still have a terrible memory! It didn’t do a thing to improve my day to day memory. Arsebags! Still an amusing way to pass the time at the bus stop though as you have to keep going through these lists in your head. Specially if you have a head like a sieve, like I do.
// August 17th, 2007 // No Comments » // art, flash, web
Can you remember zoomquilt from a few years ago? Well zoomquilt2 is here and it’s bigger, badder and better.
// July 26th, 2007 // No Comments » // Chirico, Metaphysical, art, design, painting, waffle
This post would probably be more at home on homebug – but I’ll take the conch on this one – every morning I walk by Clerys on O’Connel street and wonder WTF are they thinking!? D’you ever see a big company do something very wrong and you can’t figure out why no one has told them yet? Or even more likely is that every body knows the blunder yet some middle-mismanagement or office politico prevents it from happening. So here’s the thing; they gutted the inside of the shop and got the decoraters in. Grand. Paid a small fortune no doubt. Yet Jo-walking-by-Soap wouldn’t know any different because their shop windows look like they’re still being decorated by the same dusty old window dresser for the last 30 years. They need to take a walk up Grafton street or rent a copy of Mannequin!
I spy with my little eye an opportunity to BIG UP one of my favourite dead artists, Giorgio de Chirico. He had a thing for mannequins you see. De Chirico is one of the few surreal artists who managed to capture the essence of dreams. People say that about Dali but his paintings were way too polished and detailed to vaguely resemble any dream. Chirico was a big influence to Dali, as well as Max Ernst, and Magritte to name a few, and some of them directly copied his Metaphysical style. Every time I see that tower from the LUAS, (somewhere between Windy Arbour and Cowper ), I’m reminded of his Nostalgia of the Infinite (below) even though they’re nothing alike. Actually I think every time I see a tower I’m reminded of it.
// July 22nd, 2007 // No Comments » // art, design, films
Love this. Can you remember that childhood game you used to play where you’d fold a piece of paper in three, and one of you would draw the legs, then another the body, another the head? (Child hood game? Pretty sure I played that recently!)Well here’s a video version. PSST! Pass it on is a collaboration between different teams of designers, animators, directors and 3D artists. I love the end of the clip below.
Well worth going to the Pass it on website to see the new batch in hi res.
// July 12th, 2007 // No Comments » // art, photoshop
I like this peeling sticker tutorial
http://www.photoshoplab.com/peeled-sticker-style-effect.html
// July 4th, 2007 // 3 Comments » // art, design, wallpaper
Had a go at designing some wallpaper. Was really for a website but I reckon it’d look alright in a living room! Maybe. And works ok as a desktop wallpaper.
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