Gosh, is that the time?
Sorry, sorry…I’ve had my nose in tutorials all evening and I lost track of the time. Blender again — the free, Open Source 3D modeling and animation package.
I don’t do New Year’s resolutions, but I have promised myself I’ll slog through some tutorials this year and brush up on some of the tools I’ve used since forever. Sometimes, you learn one little trick and it opens whole worlds of possibilities.
Alas, I’m a long way from giving Mister Disney a run for his money.
Remember – here, tomorrow, six sharp Weasel Blog Time. NEW DEAD POOL!
February 8, 2013 — 12:05 am
Comments: 16
And then there was this
Eh, I got nothing interesting, so let’s stick with Doom for the weekend. So, there was a comic. Did you know that? A couple of years after the game, id software released it. God alone knows why.
What do you do for dialogue when your plot consists of some guy running at full tilt through a building shooting stuff? Well, these folks decided to go with Doom Guy’s stream of consciousness.
I’m cookin’ with gas! I’ve gotta handful of vertebrae and a headful of mad! Yeah. That’s your spinal cord, baby! Dig it! Who’s the man? I’m the man! I’m a bad man! How bad? Real bad! I’m 12.0 on the 10.0 scale of badness! Don’t need a gun…guns are for wusses!
Huh? Whuzzat? Whuzzat? I like what I see! An important looking door…
Knock Knock. Who’s there? ME! ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME
This is something between Ripley’s hissed version of You Are My Lucky Star while she shoots the alien out the airlock, and that dog who REALLY fucking wants him some Kibbles ‘n’ Bits.
My favorite part is toward the end, when he splashes radioactive goo on himself and gives a speech about protecting the environment. It’s like his meds kick in for thirty seconds. Just go read it.
Have a great weekend. And remember, kids — rip and tear!
January 11, 2013 — 11:48 pm
Comments: 19
Toys have changed a lot since my day
Okay, boys ‘n’ girls…are you ready for something more than a little scary to head into the weekend? Click here to see this action figure in full.
Aiiiiii!
Welcome to the world of collectible high-detail Japanese bishoujo figure sculptures. Hand painted and not cheap. This one will set you back ¥9,333, or about $110. Have a look around; they have a lot on offer.
Ha! Ha! I’m pretty sure just clicking that link put you on Interpol’s special perv list. Bishoujo is Japanese for jail bait.
Though this girl has clearly hit puberty. Or been hit by it. Really hard. Oh, did I mention the costume comes off?
Have a good weekend, my special pervs!
November 23, 2012 — 11:19 pm
Comments: 42
Moo, boo…what’s the diff?
Phew! I thought there wouldn’t be a post tonight…stupid blog’s been down for an hour.
These things? They’re usually painted to look vaguely like cows. Really lumpy, ugly-ass cows. They’re in Milton Keynes, North of London, and they’re made of cement and fiberglass and…I dunno…bits of junk and FAIL.
A vandal did this to them. A wonderful, magical vandal.
The locals liked the paint job so much, they’re going to leave it this way. At least through Hallowe’en.
October 15, 2012 — 11:33 pm
Comments: 13
Something thoughtful for the weekend
I’ve posted about Richard Johnson before — like, five years ago. He’s a National Post (of Canada) illustrator who, in the tradition of the war artists of old, has embedded himself with Canadian troops in Afghanistan to…well, draw pictures of stuff. He’s good.
About six weeks ago, he emailed to say he was going back (not me personally; I’m on his mailing list) and I keep forgetting to post. So here, for the weekend, is a link to his Kandahar Journal in the Post. Also, his own website. If you’re of a Twittering frame of mind, you can follow him thusly: @newsillustrator.
Something a little more worthy to think about for a while. Good weekend, folks!
October 5, 2012 — 10:16 pm
Comments: 17
Most unsatisfactory
Hello. Remember this guy? This is a mug shot of Shepard Fairey, the HOPE poster dude. And the Feds want him to do time in federal pound me in the ass prison.
The Associated Press took him to court for tracing the Obama picture used in the poster, which belonged to AP. You’ll find the court docs at the link. I gather (though I am no law-talking weasel), the main points are:
- He claimed he used the photo as reference, but it’s pretty obvious it’s a straight up trace (see overlay)
- He claimed he made around $150,000 off the image, but his companies seem to have pulled off a profit of around $12 million over three years, which surely wouldn’t have happened without the iconic poster
- Based on the above, he offered AP a settlement of a weak $100K, when they probably would have gone away for a substantially bigger sum
- He already has convictions for (reading between the lines, what I assume to be) public graffiti (that was his main gig before the poster: “street artist”
But the Feds are opting to ignore all that. They want him to do time for deleting some emails and fabricating others trying to game the case.
Sure. Okay. Fair enough. Coverup worse than the crime and all that, but leaving the whole rest of it unaddressed is really unsatisfactory. Because I (and millions like me) do what he did, every day — snag news photos, P’shop all over them and post them on the web. It’s a whole cottage industry. And we would really like some guidelines here.
How strong was the AP’s claim? Would any amount of artsy transformation weaken that claim? Did the fact Fairey made a shitload of money make a legal difference? They brought all these questions up, and then left them dangling.
Years ago, when I made art for a big corporation with deep pockets, I wouldn’t go NEAR anyone else’s copyrighted content. Not even for the most ephemeral images. The very idea gave me the shivers. And for the longest time, I wouldn’t do it as a blogger, either. And then I realized everyone — EVERYONE — was having a blast P’shopping photos and nobody was going to federal pound me in the ass prison and I was totally left out of the fun. So I gave in.
But there’s still that worried corner of my mind that knows everybody else does it is a lousy legal defense.
Okay. Back here. Tomorrow. Six sharp, WBT. Round Bzillion of the Dead Pool!
September 6, 2012 — 11:05 pm
Comments: 16
A little something saucy from the seaside
For years and years, the tradition here was to send home a saucy postcard from your seaside holiday. Which is where everybody went for their holidays, always. And the undisputed king of the saucy postcard was a man named Donald McGill (link goes to a Google Images search; click for an amusing hour of postcard browsing).
He was born in 1875 and was a draughtsman in the Navy when he drew a little get well card for a sick nephew in 1904 and kinfolk said, “Jed, move away from there.”
Fat ladies, drunks, vicars, honeymooning couples, wartime propaganda…he poured out tons of the damn things. The ruder they were the better they sold, though he only got pennies for each design.
He is author of the famous joke “Do you like Kipling?” / “I don’t know, you naughty boy, I’ve never kippled!” which sold a record-holding six million copies.
He went on merrily until the Fifties, when the authorities decided to clean up all this disgusting smut and conducted a series of raids on seaside postcard shops. Some of the naughty designs had been on sale for decades without apparently causing riots. They confiscated thousands, mostly McGill’s, and took him to court.
He admitted breaking the Obscene Publications Act, but his defense was, “holy shit! REALLY? NAUGHTY DOUBLE MEANINGS? ZOMG, I had no idea until you pointed it out. Boy, is my face red!” Also, he was pushing eighty. So he pretty much got off, except for the lost revenue.
You still see McGill’s designs on cards and packaging (I saw a box of candy with a McGill wrapper the other day, which resulted in this post). Some say the vacation postcard is making a comeback, but I think the Royal Mail should be so lucky.
So. There. Something fun for the weekend. Have a good one!
August 3, 2012 — 10:41 pm
Comments: 19
Anybody know where I can get a tiny coyote?
I has an anvil! It is a tiny, tiny anvil, and it is mine.
Turns out, the general shape of thing worked out by generations of blacksmiths is equally useful on the miniature scale. These things are intended for jewelers.
I’ve always wanted one for, like, generally doing tiny things to tiny things, but I specifically bought this one as an aid to hand-cutting pearl. I’ve cut a few bits to replace missing inlays on an old banjo, and I was forever trying to find the edge of a book or something to prop the blank against. Then I thought, hey, I know…
If you’ve got twenty minutes, this is an interesting little film showing Vietnamese young ‘uns cutting pearl inlay sets for instruments the West. These are for de Paule Luthier Supply in the States. To see how cheaply you can really get this many man-hours of pearl cutting, you have to check eBay.
Income disparity, the ancient friend of the arts.
July 23, 2012 — 10:09 pm
Comments: 21
Kilroy, B.C.
This spooky image was made by one man (a man, I assume), about 5’10” tall, using just his right hand to apply pigment…
…upwards of 30,000 years ago, making this thing and all the artwork in Chauvet Cave about twice as old as that in the famous Lascaux caves, discovered in 1940. Actually, it looks to me like there were two pigments, a dark charcoal-y pigment followed by a pale yellow one, giving the drop shadow effect that makes these pop off the wall in such an alarming way. Chauvet was discovered (also by accident) in 1994 and there has been controversy about the dates, but the carbon dating of pigments and bones has been repeated several times from many different spots in the cave.
I actually think the drawings in Chauvet are more sophisticated than Lascaux (though similar in style), and beautiful…and I’m not just saying that because you’re supposed to think ugly, primitive crap is wonderful. I generally hate folk art in all its ugly, primitive crappiness. These drawings are well-observed and rendered in a suprisingly sophisticated way, given that the artist(s) had nothing but dirt and soot to work with.
If you like this kind of thing, you can burn many a happy hour at Don’s Maps, the website of Don Hitchcock. who I assume is an archeologist (a modest fellow with no About Me page). Yes, there are maps, but mostly there are hundreds of pictures of archeological sites and artifacts from around the world.
UPDATE: oh, pooh! Fie! And also piffle! That hands image isn’t a real cave image, it’s a computer reconstruction of how the “bison made of dots of red” wall art was created. Thanks to Crabby Old Bat for swinging the clue bat. The rest of the art is still way cool, though.
July 2, 2012 — 10:16 pm
Comments: 21
For no particular reason, John Buscema
Burned my usual post-creating time cruising this random collection of John Buscema drawings. I suppose it’s kinda, sorta timely, since he did a lot of the iconic work on the Avengers comics (now a major motion picture!).
Me, I spent the long Summer between the end of High School and the beginning of college with Conan the Barbarian. Hey, when you’re going away to art school, you can do this and call it studying. Score!
Now don’t you feel silly about that stupid law or engineering degree, Sir or Madam?
Lookit the pictures, and have a good weekend!
Wait, if you haven’t seen the Hating Breitbart trailers, go and do that thing also.
May 11, 2012 — 10:31 pm
Comments: 31