Fallen Art

Thomasz Baginski wrote and directed a short animated piece titled ‘Fallen Art‘. The piece was created by Platige Image, a Polish visual effects company.

Fallen Art is a story about generals, soldiers, and a very special project (watch the video — I will not ruin the surprise for you!). Baginski uses sound to weave this tale. High atop a make-shift wooden tower you can hear the wind screaming. The ribbit of a frog signals the next step in an on-going tale. Plus the crazy ballet/dance of music of the ‘very special project’.
Background

According to the very short Wikipedia ‘Thomas Baginski’ article: Thomas was born in 1976, is Polish, and received an oscar nomination for his other short animated piece titled The Cathedral.

Boinx iStopMotion

Boinx iStopMotion is a fun piece of software that enables you to create stop motion and time lapse animations using your iSight or DV camera. Creating stop motion animations can be fun for both kids, parents and teachers. The software also comes with a great tool for printing Flipbooks of your animations. iStopMotion retails for $39.95.

BlueSky Studios Challenge

Over the past few weeks a new favorite web site has crept into my daily web lurking. BlueSky Studios Challenge is a blog run by staff of BlueSky Studios (the folks who made ‘Ice Age’ and ‘Robots). Each week, the brilliant illustrators and animators from BlueSky challenge each other to draw clever and unique illustrations. Past contests have included Halloween, The Wizard of Oz, Saturday Morning Cartoons. In one contest titled “Superheros” brave new heros such as ‘Mapple Syrup Man’ and ‘The Incredible Close Talking Carl’ were born.

A few years back I induldged in months of fun and humorous ‘photoshoping’ contests hosted at Fark.com. Making unique and creative illustrations seems like a much steeper challenge. Viewing the wonderful creations of the BlueSky staff builds a desire within me to hone my own drawing skills so that I too may one day participate!

From the BlueSky Studios Challenge web site, their mission is described as follows:

Every monday a new challenge is posted. The participants do their “take” on the subject matter and post it. Challenges are open ended, meaning any participant can go back and draw something from a previous week. Email Jake for new challenge suggestions. This is for BlueSky kids only. Though anyone can participate at home. Or if you want to, post a link to your peice in the comments section.

J.W.’s “The Daily Drawing”

This evening I came across a really neat set of videos on YouTube.com that were posted from TheDailyDrawing.com. The videos were of a very talented artist, who goes by the handle “J.W.”, sketching Nintendo characters Mario and Samus. I really enjoyed getting to see how these sketches were done from start to finish. J.W. has posted multiple videos demonstrating sketches as well as 3D modeling using Pixologic’s Zbrush.

Drawing Restraint 9

I received an invitation from a friend to see Matthew Barney’s new film “Drawing Restraing 9″. Barney has become well known in the art and culture community for his Cremaster series. Based on what I have read online it appears that most of Barney’s work revolves around building complex and expensive things and filming visually odd and interesting subjects.
Movie review links

• Variety: “Drawing Restraint 9“
• Village Voice review: “Barney’s Rubble Cremasturbatory art film exercises no restraint” by Ed Halter
• Cinematical: “Reviewing Restraint 9” by Ryan Stewart
  
• Rotten Tomatoes review of Drawing Restraint 9
  

Media links

• YouTube: Drawing Restraint 9 Trailer
• Drawing Restraing 9: Whats your opinion? (Interactive Form)
  

About Matthew Barney

• Cremaster Cycle web site
• Wikipedia: “Matthew Barney“
• PBS Art:21: “Matthew Barney“