James Hance paints what might be the best part (for some of us) of being young, and oh, heck, being old, too.
I’m inspired by television and movies from my childhood. It’s funny how you watch some of those things today and wonder why you were so obsessed with them at the time. I remember the Fonz being SO much cooler than he actually was. My paintings are basically just placards screaming ‘Childhood! It was amazing! I want it forever, please!’
We found James and his Star Wars paintings over on ‘Geeks are Sexy‘ (dare you to argue with that) and although here at MAS Star Wars is an easy sell, we dare you to not find James’ work worthy of awesome saucin’.
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One of the great things about Youtube is that it lets people see things like this.
“The Tale of Orpheus and Eurydice” is a five-minute silent film by Megan Curtin, Ben Dallman, Clarice Elliot, Kelsey Kloc, Michelle Kozubek. It’s an art school project, and has some of the rough edges and tight constraints of something done for an assignment.
It’s also breathtakingly beautiful.
There’s something about the combination of the shadowcast-style puppetry, the careful and funny little details, the way the music (by the Tallywood Strings) meshes so perfectly, the way the absence of a dialogue track requires symbolism, environment, posture to carry everything; the way the light flickers, and the whole thing looks like it’s shot on old film, or through a billowing, hazy lace curtain.
It’s eerie and sweet and captivating, and I hope dearly they make more.
So ages ago, Dave Howard suggested to me that it might be an interesting idea for cartoonists to try adapting a part of a novel they liked. And then recently when JD Sallinger died, that notion came back to me, and then I thought oh it might be interesting to attempt to do a comic of some portion of one of his books. And as I sat on the couch staring at the shelves of books, I thought it might be fun to try it with different books. Maybe just a page. Maybe the SAME PAGE from each book. Say, page 100.
Thus, the Page 100 Project was born. A few people have posted the results of theirs to Jason’s LiveJournal thread–why not post your own? (My favorite so far is from The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins.)
Guys, I can’t tell you how hard it was to pick just one thing from the Lost Myths site to feature here. You’re just going to have to go explore, because I’m telling you, Claude Lalumière and Rupert Bottenberg make Awesome Sauce in a lot of different flavors. But since I had to pick one, why not begin at the beginning? The Beginning of Time.
What is Lost Myths?
A playful medley of cryptomythological fiction, pantheons, bestiaries, comics, art, games, readings, performances, and more by Claude Lalumière and Rupert Bottenberg.
Part flash fiction, part web comic, part craft zine, part podcast (they narrate some of their stories) Lost Myths is a collaboration between two apparent geniuses bent on creating a new mythology.
Omniglot is usually a very useful website, with starter information on writing systems, useful phrases in a variety of languages, and general language information.
The Internet is truly a place where you can find all things. Such as, for example, The Great Lakes Shipwreck File, the most complete and accurate compilation of commercial shipwrecks on the Great Lakes ever. So that’s from 1679 to, well, about now.
Compiler David D. Swayze has put 13 years of work into documenting, researching, and listing shipwrecks, and there are about a million stories in here, all tucked away in the corners. That’s some dedicated work, even if you’re not a shipwreck nerd. Hats off, Mr. Swayze.
U.S.E.D. is another design company we sniffed out at the One of a Kind Show last month (for values of sniffed out that equal “walked past their booth and ogled”). What do they do? Well. They take old seatbelts out of cars that have been sent to the Big Autowrecker in the Sky. And then they make awesome bags out of them. Custom awesome bags. Although the colours depend on what they can find at the autowrecker.
Yeah, see?
Artisans and owners Trevor Kehler & Betty Funk are pretty cagey about what they tell the Internet – just that this venture, which is both snazzy and green, is a family-owned and operated one – but this is totally the spirit we love here at MAS: taking things that would be garbage and finding excellent, creative new uses for them. We salute you, U.S.E.D.
Since we’re on the topic of interactive comics, which we totally were, take a gander at MS Paint Adventures. It’s a set of comics in a few different genres – high fantasy, hardboiled detective noir – which artist Andrew Hussie draws based on a set of old text adventure commands. That he got from a suggestion box populated by Viewers Like You. You click on the next text adventure command to get to the next panel in the story.
They also look like, yes, MS Paint. There is so much old-school chic to love in here.
You don't know why you are assuming the door will be locked. You don't usually keep the door to your office locked. Nonetheless, a guy this hard boiled doesn't go messing around with totally unmanly things like knobs. You send your meaty fist glass-ward.
The first complete adventure, Problem Sleuth, is now out in book form, and the newest one, Homestuck, includes new features like animation and original music – which you can get in soundtrack form. The project keeps evolving, so even if you don’t want to toss in suggestions, it’s plenty of fun to just sit back and see what they come up with next.
NPR is reporting on a species of solitary bee that builds beautiful individual nests out of flower petals, using what amounts to a Papier-mâché technique. Photo: Jerome Rozen/American Museum of Natural History
She then shapes the multi-colored petals into a cocoon-like structure, laying one petal on top of the other and occasionally using some nectar as glue. When the outer petal casing is complete, she reinforces the inside with a paper-thin layer of mud, and then another layer of petals, so both the outside and inside are wallpapered — a potpourri of purple, pink and yellow.
The nests were discovered independently (and simultaneously!) in Turkey and Iran. Each of these delicate nests will house only one egg. I am reasonably certain that they are later up-cycled into couture for fairies.
James Hance paints what might be the best part (for some of us) of being young, and oh, heck, being old, too.
I’m inspired by television and movies from my childhood. It’s funny how you watch some of those things today and wonder why you were so obsessed with them at the time. I remember the Fonz being SO much cooler than he actually was. My paintings are basically just placards screaming ‘Childhood! It was amazing! I want it forever, please!’
We found James and his Star Wars paintings over on ‘Geeks are Sexy‘ (dare you to argue with that) and although here at MAS Star Wars is an easy sell, we dare you to not find James’ work worthy of awesome saucin’.
There is a lot of geek music out there. Some of it is pretty explicit, like Jonathan Coulton. Some of it is subtler. And by me at least, a little more rewarding.
Aside from being an adorable, three-piece-suited, Suzuki violin-trained, gangly, multi-instrument-playing, whistling, gobsmacking genius? Bird writes lyrics about tardive dyskenesia, or where the Enigma project works as a metaphor for a failing relationship, or manages to work in a hand of glory reference, a Gorey reference, and a Brothers Grimm reference into two lines, while making the lyric actually work for people who wouldn’t get any of those.
He is a scary genius and I love him.
Here’s his MySpace, containing a good starter set of songs. I bet you a shiny penny you will love him too.
Or maybe you’re an awesome sauce hunter, with a nose for sniffing out the awesomest stuff on the whole entire world, maybe even the galaxy? Submit a link.
