Arts and Spacecrafts

Star Wars Kites.

2009-01-30T09:19:00.000-08:00

Use the ~~Force~~ Wind Power, Luke. 40 credits at ThinkGeek.

Vintage Vietnam-Era Camera Gun.

2009-01-28T13:23:00.000-08:00

"No doubt, the gun is a notion synonymous to death, but a movie camera in the shape of a gun is really a pleasing idea. The rare movie camera that simulates a military gun is a true handiwork with a black case and 5x lenses mounted on the wooden rifle stock. The rifle stock cameras were used by reporters during the Vietnam War. The weird but attractive gun movie camera, which is available on eBay for a decent $1,318, is a blend of guerrilla art and homemade gadget awesomeness that you can take out in public places and capture your favorite moments with a click of the trigger."

Me want.

WWII Propaganda Posters.

2009-01-28T07:36:00.000-08:00

Via Animation Archive:

"By the end of the First World War, the techniques of waging war in the hearts and minds of the public had entered the modern era. Propaganda had become much more sophisticated and powerful. By WWII, leaders realized that battles could be fought and won on the homefront. Propaganda became an important part of motivating the population to work together toward the common goal of defeating the axis powers. Compare the WWI posters in this and the previous post to the examples from WWII presented here. Notice how the design and layout enhance the emotional impact of the concepts. Many of these posters still pack a wallop."

Guac Bowl!

2009-01-26T07:43:00.000-08:00

Guac Bowl is this Sunday. And it's just about the most important thing to happen to holidays (if you, like me, consider Super Bowl sunday a holiday) since, well, Halloween. The rules are simple: bring a guac, try everyone else’s guac, then vote. There are four categories open to competition:

•Best Traditional Guac (no weird ingredients),
•Best Alternative Guac (some special ingredient, or prepared unusually),
•Best Presentation (which has become, over the years, the most creative and impressive category -- see photos),
•The Icarus Award (for the guac that attempts to fly the highest, only to fall the furthest).

Last year I won Best Presentation for my GuacAlien, and I'm hard at work creating this year's entry. It's a secret for now, but I'll keep you posted on how it turns out. Meanwhile, check Adam's Guac Bowl site for more information, ideas on hosting your own Guac Bowl, and tons of pictures from years past.

www.guacbowl.com

Golden-Age Papercrafts.

2009-01-22T13:54:00.000-08:00

Some really cool paper models of Golden Age superheroes.

Happy Inauguration Day.

2009-01-20T18:35:00.001-08:00

Poster from ironicsans.com

Brick to the Future.

2009-01-20T10:52:00.001-08:00

"You made a time machine out of... Legos!?"

Keep Calm and Carry On.

2009-01-19T12:54:00.000-08:00

Local Silver Lake art gallery Reform School is selling reproductions of the famous British WWII propaganda poster that can serve as a great daily reminder that everything is going to be just fine.

$24 at Reform School.

Ralph McQuarrie's Battlestar Galactica.

2009-01-19T12:20:00.000-08:00

Ralph McQuarrie is a concept artist/futurist best known for his design work on the Original Star Wars Trilogy (pictured below). Recently discovered, however, was a whole stash of his concept art for the original "Battlestar Galactica" tv series (above). No wonder the Battlestar Vipers look so much like X-Wings.

Browse the galleries at the following links:

Concept Sketches | Concept Paintings

Return of the Blog.

2009-01-19T12:17:00.000-08:00

After a very long, wonderful Holiday vacation--the Blog is back!

Happy New Year!

Vast Food Nation.

2008-11-18T09:32:00.001-08:00

My friend Adam is super talented. Check out his new series, Vast Food Nation. Episodes 1, 2, and 3 are part of your complete breakfast.

Episode 1 - The Green Death

Episode 2 - The "Fun" in Funeral

Episode 3 - Kidnapatorious

While the voices are mostly Adam's friends (listen for me as both a Budweiser Frog and Paparazzo) and the always-hilarious Bill Dwyer, I still think the greatest part is the character designs. What a challenge it must have been to create characters that have just the right amount of "same-yet-different-ness" to their corporate counterparts.

Anyway, enjoy the episodes, and help Vast Food Nation achieve its rightful moment of internet glory.

Multiple Endings.

2008-11-17T19:54:00.001-08:00

Flickr gallery of "The End" in TV shows and movies.

Fun with Post-Its.

2008-11-14T09:30:00.000-08:00

See more here.

Who's Johnny?

2008-11-13T11:27:00.001-08:00

I like Johnny Yanok's artwork.

Eric Tan's Poster Art.

2008-11-12T10:04:00.000-08:00

Eric Tan creates posters for Pixar. On his work, he says:

"The bright colors and flat shapes were inspired by the Disneyland attraction posters you see when going through the tunnels at the entrance of the park. Even when I was 6, I remember thinking those things were amazing, so getting to reference them for this project was a thrill in itself."

I love those old Disney posters too, Eric. See more examples of Tan's work here and here.

Wall•E Papercrafts.

2008-11-11T09:30:00.000-08:00

Paper-replika.com has pretty much the entire cast of Wall•E as free papercraft models. Just hit the "download" button, print up, cut out, and put together!

My Superman Poster.

2008-11-10T09:48:00.000-08:00

Last month I posted on the artwork of Tom Whalen, who makes posters for classic movies. I said that I'd love to try to do one for Superman: The Movie in this style... so here it is. I'm not 100% sold on the look of the text yet, but overall, I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. Click the image for a larger view.

Ray Gun, #002.

2008-11-08T07:40:00.001-08:00

Smoke Ring Gun, Nu-Age Prod., 1950s.

Hitchfont.

2008-11-07T10:28:00.000-08:00

Download Mac Postscript | Windows TrueType

"Hitchcock" was created by designer Matt Terich as an homage to the iconic lettering that so often appeared in Bass’ title work. The font is not a faithful digitization of any particular title sequence or poster — in fact, type designer Nick Shinn notes that Bass didn’t do the actual lettering and veteran Robert Trogman adds that Dave Nagata did most of the drawings — but it does give a general sense of Bass’ rough, hand-cut style.

Jump to Typographica for more Bass-inspired fonts, like this one:

Download "Vertigo."

Helbotica.

2008-11-06T16:12:00.000-08:00

Robot made out of Helvetica characters. Because it's cool.

Nananananananana.... Bat-Manga!

2008-10-30T10:16:00.000-07:00

Via BoingBoing:

In 1966, manga prodigy Jiro Kuwata was commissioned to do a regular Japanese manga version of Bob Kane's Batman comics, to tie in with the Japanese launch of the Batman TV show. Kuwata quickly decided that Kane's scripts wouldn't play to a Japanese audience, so he remade the Dark Knight for the expectations of a mid-sixties, manga-familiarized audience. The result was stunning: a weird blend of genius suspense and gonzo weirdness, as villains turn into dinosaurs, commit strange crimes, rise from the dead, and rampage through a mangified Gotham City that has the streamlined wonderfulness of space-age Japanese pop culture.

These comics were lost for decades, but they have resurfaced now, recovered from private collections and reprinted in Bat-Manga, a new anthology from Pantheon edited by Chip Kidd. Kidd has supplemented the material with fantastic photo spreads (by Geoff Spear) of collectible Japanese Batman toys from the era. The reproductions themselves are only minimally cleaned up, leaving intact the yellowing paper, the wildly variable print-quality, the strange nostalgic quirks of printing from that era.

Read the rest of BoingBoing's article here.

Ray Gun Patents from the 50s.

2008-10-28T17:18:00.000-07:00

Wonderful collection of 1950s-era toy ray gun schematics from the US Patent Office. These would look super-cool printed up on parchment and framed. Check out their other collections, too.

Be Like Don Draper.

2008-10-27T13:47:00.000-07:00

Don Draper's Guide to Picking Up Women.

Thanks, Jim.

A Font We Can Believe In.

2008-10-22T11:08:00.000-07:00

Via Helvetica Film News:

Unless you’ve been avoiding television, newspapers, and all other forms of mass media for the past few months, you’ve probably seen Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s “Change We Can Believe In” and “Stand for Change” banners. The typophiles among you may have realized that the “change” font Obama’s campaign uses is Gotham, designed by Hoefler & Frere-Jones, originally as a commission for GQ Magazine.

Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones spoke about the creation of Gotham during their interview for Helvetica the film, and looking back at their description of what GQ wanted from the font, it sounds surprisingly Obama-esque. “GQ had a dual agenda of wanting something that would look very fresh, yet very established, to have a credible voice to it,” says Hoefler. It also needed to look very masculine and “of-the-moment.”

Mission accomplished.

The conversation about the origins of Gotham didn’t make it into the film, but was included among the 41 bonus features on the Helvetica DVD. I’ve posted part of the interview above. Watching this clip, I think it’s interesting that the design of Gotham was influenced by early Modernism, another movement that was about change and social idealism. And I like that the design aesthetic that may help move Obama into the White House was inspired by the humble NY Port Authority Bus Terminal sign.

* * *

Are you now curious where the other campaign fonts come from? Check out this LA Times piece.

Faux Disney Attraction Posters.

2008-10-22T09:32:00.000-07:00

Artist Greg Maletic created these faux, retro-style posters emulating the silk-screened look of the early Disneyland attraction posters (a design I love enough to have prints of the Haunted Mansion, Submarine Voyage, and Monorail hanging in my bedroom). He's got a great story, too--apparently Disney execs saw these posters, and hired him to do it for real.

Jules Verne Festival

2008-10-18T08:25:00.000-07:00

The Jules Verne Festival, Oct 23-25, in downtown LA. Movies screening at The Edison and the Imaginasian Center (Yeah, I've never heard of it either. But "Imaginasian" sure is fun to say) include personal favorites 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Superman: The Movie and Superman II, and Planet of the Apes. Looks like they're also honoring Roy Disney, as well as Battlestar Galactica showrunner Ron Moore.

Truthful TV Title Cards.

2008-10-18T08:17:00.000-07:00

Adam points to these truthful TV title cards, boiling each show down to its essence:

More after the jump.

Wristwatches of War.

2008-10-16T13:21:00.000-07:00

From The Watchismo Times:

Pocket watches were a pain in the ass to fumble around for during battle, something needed to be done to keep soldiers hands on their guns as well as synchronize combat.

"When German Emperor Wilhelm I visited the Berlin Trade Fair and saw some experimental wrist watches made by Girard-Perregaux of La Chaux de Fonds in Switzerland. He gave an order for 1,000 of these for the German Imperial Navy, and as many as 2,000 such wristwatches were delivered in 1880. This began to change in the nineteenth century when watches were first used to co-ordinate military operations. Pocket watches were awkward to use in combat situations; under a great-coat, on horseback, or under fire, and so military men began fitting pocket watches into cups on specially made leather straps, or asking manufacturers to fit them with chains or straps, so that they could be worn on the wrist."

Many military watches had a special feature for those "in the shit." A "trench guard," (or "grid" or "grille") covered and protected the dial with medieval-style armor. Those not intended for war were classified as "hunter" cased, often more decorative than protective.

Read the full article here.

Battlestar Galactica Propaganda Posters.

2008-10-14T08:55:00.001-07:00

ThinkGeek is selling this set of 5 Battlestar Galactica posters, inspired by Russian propagandist imagery. Show your support in the war against Cylon terror.

Robot Papercrafts

2008-10-10T09:20:00.000-07:00

Here's a ton of retro-style robots for you to fold and construct, so you can build a papercraft army to defend your desk from world domination.

The site's in Japanese, but pretty simple to navigate, and the patterns are free to download. Click on the image of the robot you want, then the underlined link, then the PDF file. Then just print it up, cut it out, and glue it together.

Ray Gun, #001.

2008-10-09T11:42:00.000-07:00

Superman Krypto-Raygun, Daisy Mfg. 1940s.

More Bass.

2008-10-08T23:00:00.000-07:00

I haven't been to the movies in a while, which is probably why I haven't seen this Burn After Reading poster. I feel like I've seen this style somewhere else... kind of like the same way Jimmy Stewart, in Hitchcock's Vertigo, sees Kim Novak as Judy, but she reminds him so much of Madeline... Gosh, I wish I could remember, where have I seen this style before?

Cool Business Cards, Parts 1 and 2.

2008-10-08T10:39:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about redesigning my business card lately. These designs are inspiring.

Cool business cards Part 1 and Part 2.

Mad Men Illustrated.

2008-10-07T10:27:00.000-07:00

Brandon just sent me a link to this wonderful Flickr gallery of artwork based on the most stylish show on tv, AMC's Mad Men. Artist Dyna Moe:

I'm basing the look on (but don't come within one iota of the amazingness of) illustrators Aurelius Battaglia, Alice & Martin Provensen, and J. P. Miller (among others) who did advertising and commercial art during the era the show is set.

I'm sure Shag is one of her influences, too.

More Saul Bass.

2008-10-07T08:22:00.001-07:00

Most of my friends have seen these already, but it makes a nice companion piece to yesterday's posting; specifically the Star Wars posters redone in a Saul Bass style. Here's the credit sequence for Star Wars that never was:

Saul Bass v. Star Wars

Saul Bass v. Star Wars: Special Edition

Saul Bass-Inspired Movie Poster Remixes.

2008-10-06T10:26:00.000-07:00

Artist Tom Whalen makes new posters for old movies. Heavily inspired by the original poster master Saul Bass -- as well as Russian constructivist poster art, comic books, and his "unhealthy obsession with Japanese monster movies" -- these are truly a sight to behold.

I love, love, LOVE this technique. Simple, bold, and effective. I feel that Saul Bass, propaganda posters, and comics heavily influence my graphic design work, too... maybe I'll try to do a Superman: The Movie poster in this style as a side project.

Visit Tom's Portfolio, his Design Blog, and this article /Film did about him (and dig that Dawn of the Dead poster!)

A More Civilized Age.

2008-10-05T17:33:00.000-07:00

A Pacific Electric Red Car atop a steel bridge above Fletcher Drive in Atwater Village, Los Angeles, California.

My neighborhood, a long time ago.

Courtesy Atwater Village Newbie.

Bacon-Infused Bourbon.

2008-10-05T16:56:00.000-07:00

That's right. You heard me. Bacon. Infused. Bourbon. Watch Don Lee of PDT in NYC's East Village put a new twist on an Old-Fashioned. If bourbon's not your style, try bacon-infused vodka instead.

Star Wars Papercrafts

2008-10-05T16:20:00.000-07:00

Could there be a more fitting first post? Beautiful, fantastically detailed Star Wars Papercraft models at this site. I don't see an X-Wing (booooooo!), but they do have a certain time-traveling DeLorean... so we'll call it even. Anyway, just print them up, cut them out, and tape 'em together. Luckily, the Japanese instructions aren't too hard to figure out.

Cleared for Launch!

2008-10-05T15:55:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my new blog! I decided to open up a space where I can take interesting things I find (or should I say, things I find interesting?) and share them with other people. Hopefully, you'll find them interesting, too.