December 25, 2006
Letter from Santa
Here's a letter Santa left us today. It turns out Santa Claus and Paul Cezanne had the same handwriting. Merry Christmas!
Posted by digital artform at 01:15 PM | Comments (0)
January 22, 2006
Bar Code Art by Scott Blake
I got a nice postcard from artist Scott Blake. I had written to tell him how much I enjoyed his Bar Code Art. We share a common interest in exotic halftones.
Posted by digital artform at 02:04 PM | Comments (3)
January 08, 2006
Test to link digitalArtform to flickr.com
I just signed up for a flickr pro account. One of the functions of the account is the ability to blog photos.
I'm curious to see exactly what this entails.
I've composed this blog entry on flickr.com, instead of through my usual blogging software.
end of entry ----X
I'm editing the entry in my usual Movable Type blogging software now. The entry above is more complexly formatted than those I usually make.
It'll take some getting used to, but I suppose it has its uses.
Posted by digital artform at 06:28 PM | Comments (0)
July 20, 2005
San Diego Comic-Con 2005
I've always had a bit of a soft spot in my (head?) for comics, so I thought I'd check out the 2005 San Diego Comic-Con last weekend.
Parking in San Diego was scarce that weekend. I took a hint from the Comic-Con web site, parked in a distant lot (still paid $14 for the day), and walked to the covention itself.
I registered on-site and although the line looked like it could represent a 2-3 hour wait, it moved so fast that I was inside in more like 30 minutes.
I only budgeted about four hours for my entire visit, so I skipped the many presentations and classes and confined myself to the exhibition floor.
I think on some level I imagine myself making a comic of my own some time down the line. I found myself interested not so much in the slick presentations of major corporations, but in the stories of the smaller imprints.
Here's a sampling of some of the people I met:
Joshua Cottingham and Stephanie Lantry came to the convention to build awareness for an anthology of stories called Journey Into Misery (a play on the old Marvel Comics title, Journey Into Mystery. According to Mr. Cottingham, they launched their new title at WonderCon, where they sold about a hundred copies. That sounds like a pretty good start.
Next I spoke a bit with Karen Knighton (left). She and four other graduate students in animation at a Southern California film school have pooled their resources and put together a presentation in the small press pavilion at the convention. Their main goal wasn't so much to launch a particular comic, as to network and expose their artwork to a wider audience.
Hae Eun Park uses small self-produced comics to sell merchandise. (Or is it the other way around?)
She's spun imaginative stories about the world in which her plush toys live.
She makes each toy by hand, and I can personally report that "Beetamim" is a big hit with my daughter.
At the other end of the extreme, Robh at Broadview Graphics likes to make slick posters in a cartoony vintage style of books that don't actually exist. I like his drawing style.
Not nearly as slick (and all the more charming for it) is the work of Dan Goodsell.
I hadn't seen Mr. Toast and company before (so they may be bigger than I realize), but Goodsell seems to have created a set of characters people instinctively enjoy.
I never had more than a vague notion of what H. P. Lovecraft was all about, but I am from Providence, so I picked up Mac Carter and Adam Byrne's preview issue of The Strange Adventures of H. P. Lovecraft. Tickled with the idea that it might actually hang in Providence, they wanted me to take a poster instead, but I live in Los Angeles now, so I opted for the comic. Besides, I already have a Providence poster.
The creators describe the comic as a sort of Shakespeare in Love take on his biography in which supernatural elements from his fiction are based on real and secret events in the author's own life. I usually like that sort of thing.
Some more established artists at the Comic-Con whose work impressed me included Brandon Ragnar Johnson, Tara McPherson
Posted by digital artform at 08:58 AM | Comments (0)
June 01, 2005
Make Your Own ViewMaster Reels
It'll take an investment in some specialized equipment (courtesy of eBay) but you can make your own View-Master reels.
View-Master cameras come in two varieties: Personal and Mark II. A 1952 Personal View-Master camera is pictured above.
You'll use your camera to shoot slides. Make sure when you have your film developed that you specify "do not mount," you'll want it returned to you in a continuous uncut strip, not mounted into individual slides.
In order to precisely cut your film into little TV-screen shaped chips suitable for View-Master reels you'll also need a View-Master Film Cutter. Keep your eye out on eBay for one of these.
Like the cameras, the film cutters also come in in two varieties, Personal and Mark II. Personal cameras and cutters expect stereo image pairs to be laid down in a horizontal format. Mark II equipment uses a diagonal format.
The two formats are not interoperable. Both your camera and cutter must be of the same type.
Once you've cut your film into chips, you'll need to insert those chips into blank View-Master Personal Reels.
These reels can be hard to come by now. The machine that used to manufacture them no longer exists, so they are out of production now, and the world supply of blank reels is becoming scarce. The last time I bought any, a few years ago, they were about a dollar each, but i noticed recently (7/4/2005) they were going on eBay for $4 and more per reel.
You must insert the film chips into small pockets on the side of each reel. Wear finger cots or gloves.
Sometimes the pockets are hard to open. You may not need a film inserter (see envelope above) but you should at least have a thin strip of metal useful for prying open pockets which may have sealed together with age.
The metal object in the picture above is not an original film inserter, but a more recently made device called a Spee-D Pocket Expanding Tool.
You can view them in a standard View-Master viewer, available at any toy store. You can even have your own reels mass-produced by Fisher-Price's custom orders department. Nowadays, with a deposit, they'll rent you a Stereo Realist camera.
Here's another View-Master Resource where you can even find scans of vintage operating manuals for the equipment.
UPDATE 5/5/2006
Here's a place that contacted me recently by email. Nan Peng Stereoscopic Picture & Culture Transmission Company I have no further details than what is available on their web site.
Posted by digital artform at 10:01 AM | Comments (13)
May 23, 2005
E3 2005 Photos
There's plenty of E3 2005 photos on the net. Here's a few more for the pile.
Posted by digital artform at 08:16 AM | Comments (0)
January 15, 2005
Outpost Sign
In 1924, the Hollywood sign had a companion, a giant red neon sign that dominated the hilly terrain above Hollywood Boulevard's Chinese Theater. In its day it was more noticeable than the "Hollywoodland" sign. Whatever happened to it?
If you hike up the hillside near my home known as Runyon Canyon, you can see the over 80-year-old remains of the sign, rusting on the hillside to this very day.
People hike past this ancient twisted metal every day without realizing what a piece of Hollywood History it is.
If you'd like more information about The Outpost Sign, there's a Visiting with Huell Howser episode (#1029) devoted to its recent "rediscovery" by the residents of Outpost Estates.
Posted by digital artform at 10:52 PM | Comments (8)
December 08, 2004
Darkness and Light
Compare a county-by-county 2004 electoral map with a NASA satellite photo of the United States at night.
*** UPDATE 3/31/2005 ***
Following a link from the Air America web site on the eve of its first anniversary, I see the "purple map guy," Robert Vanderbei, also made this comparison
http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/JAVA/election2004/
*** UPDATE 6/6/2005 ***
Even more on US state maps and their statistical interpretations. Link.
Posted by digital artform at 01:38 PM | Comments (0)
November 11, 2004
Red vs Blue: One More Time!
Yes it's another electoral map.
I've seen blended red, blue, and purple maps, and I've seen maps with surface area altered to reflect population, but I haven't seen any map address the fundamental unfairness of comparing a strong red to a strong blue.
Google "RGB to Luminosity" and you'll see that there is a weighted average that represents the relative strengths of colors in human perception. The common equation for converting RGB to Luminosity according to the National Television Standards Committee (NTSC) is:
luminosity = 0.299 x red + 0.587 x green + 0.114 x blue
To put this equation to use in Photoshop, use Image > Mode > Grayscale. Do not use Image > Adjustments > Desaturate -- that is the wrong equation. To see why it's wrong to use "desaturate," check here.
You can see from the maps above that a strong blue has the same luminosity as -- not a strong red -- but a pretty dull red.
Posted by digital artform at 10:04 AM | Comments (0)
November 09, 2004
Hollywood Glamour Photos
It was twenty years ago in the Summer of 1984 that Charlotte and I first met in Providence, Rhode Island. She had just graduated from RISD, and I was home for the summer from Duke. The two of us were working in a sandwich shop called Penguins on Thayer Street across from the Avon movie theater.
I recently saw an exhibit called Return to Elegance in the Lobby of the Arclight Theater in Hollywood. It was the work of local photographer Roger Gania James -- a collection of Hurrell-style Hollywood glamour photos with a vintage 1940's look. As a 20th wedding anniversary gift to me, Charlotte agreed to sit for him. Some of the results are above.
UPDATE 6/1/2005:
You wouldn't know it from Google, but he has a web site. http://www.rogerganiajames.com Thanks to one of the commentors below for finding it.
Here is the contact info he provides: http://rogerganiajames.com/inquiries.html
He's really great.
UPDATE 5/1/2006
Some other California photographers working in a vintage style.
Film Noir Portraiture by Jim Ferreira
UPDATE 8/13/2006
Mark Wangerin has an Amphoto book coming out late in 2007 entitled How To Create Vintage Hollywood Lighting in the Digital Age according to his web site.
Posted by digital artform at 08:45 AM | Comments (10)
October 20, 2004
Locas: Jaime Hernandez Art Book
I saw on one of my favorite blogs, boingboing.net
that one of my favorite comic artists, Jaime Hernandez, co-creator of Love and Rockets, has a new 700+ page anthology of his work on sale, Locas, courtesy of Fantagraphics Books.
I've illustrated this entry with a piece of Jaime Hernandez's original art I bought a few years back. I love his draftsmanship and economy of line.
update:
My copy of this book arrived from Amazon the other day. It is a beautifully put together 700 page collection of Jaime Hernandez's work. If you are a fan, you should get yourself a copy.
Posted by digital artform at 09:42 AM | Comments (0)
October 10, 2004
Julia Sweeney: Letting Go of God
Julia Sweeney's latest one-woman show, Letting Go of God, opened this weekend at the Hudson Theater in Hollywood. I was lucky enough to get tickets to her sold out performance this afternoon, which included an invitation to a party afterwards in celebration of her show's premiere, and of her birthday, which also falls today.
In Letting Go of God Sweeney traces her journey from devout Catholic, through her explorations of various alternative religions, to (as you might surmise from the title) her ultimate arrival at atheism. She handles potentially difficult material with skill, conveying with neither arrogance nor bitterness how she comes to believe what she does. She infuses her skepticism with a sense of wonder and awe at the natural order of things. She covers her subject with depth and craft, thoroughly exploring the emotional highs and lows of the material. She's touching, and very funny, and the audience rewarded her with an enthusiastic standing ovation. If I have one criticism, it is that she should pause during laughter and applause so that we don't miss anything.
It was fun to go to the party afterwards at a coffeeshop adjacent to the theatre. I recognized a few people in the room, including Michael Shermer of Skeptic Magazine.
The show has been extended through January 2005. I recommend it.
http://www.plays411.com/website/htmlconsumer/play_info.asp?show_id=139
UPDATE 12/24/2004:
I pass along the following excerpt from E-Skeptic #47
Permission to print, distribute, and post with proper citation and acknowledgment. Copyright 2004 Michael Shermer, Skeptics Society, Skeptic magazine, e-Skeptic magazine. Contact at www.skeptic.com and skepticmag@aol.com.
Great Reviews for Julia Sweeney's Letting Go of God
Julia Sweeney's one-woman show, Letting Go of God, began over a year ago as a work in progress at a hilarious Skeptics Society lecture. Now it's a full-fledged Los Angeles production, and a critical hit. Like excited grandparents showing baby pictures, we present the following great notices, and urge you to go see it if you're anywhere near LA.
The Los Angeles Times, in a review by Rob Kendt, (Oct. 14, 2004) titled "Finding God's Funny Bone" calls her show "brave, hilarious" and a "gale-force breath of fresh air." Kendt noted that "the humbly sage Sweeney has needling questions that can't be swatted away... While she scores some easy, flawlessly deadpan laughs at the expense of Mormonism, Deepak Chopra, astrology and Catholicism, the tradition she says she was happily raised in, she is after much bigger game than cheap disdain. As she says to an imaginary God she's at last parting with near show's end: 'It's because I take you so seriously that I can't bring myself to believe in you."
Notes Kendt, "Sweeney delivers her monologue with her trademark blend of ironic confidentiality and best friend candor. "Believers of all stripes and intensities, as well as non-believers who may scoff a little too facilely will be challenged and disarmed with stick-in-your-throat laughter by Sweeney's utterly uncynical, blusteringly honest testimony."
The L.A. Weekly placed "Letting Go Of God" in its Pick Of The Week and then its "recommended" spot. L.A. Weekly's Steve Mikulan wrote: "At times 'Letting Go Of God' is gruesomely funny, especially when, during a Bible Study Class, Sweeney discovers the Old Testament's Cro-Magnon bigotry, while imagining the Christian Book of Revelation as a bad acid trip."
Wenzel Jones, for Backstage West (Oct. 20, 2004) began his review by saying: "My vocabulary is deficient in superlatives... What she achieves, though, is a quiet perfection, accompanied rich laughter, which gently takes you by the hand and leads you through -- to employ the previous working title of the piece -- her beautiful loss-of-faith story."
Jones adds, "Watching Sweeney shamble about the lovely set, which is piled high with books and religious imagery, is like being privileged to spend a couple of hours alone with your very favorite person as she putts about her way-cool house." He concluded, "Sweeney may have lost her faith in God, but she's certainly restored mine in theater."
Julio Martinez wrote in Variety, "Sweeney is a consummate storyteller with exquisite comic timing." Jeff Favre, writing for The Daily Breeze wrote: "This show is one of the most captivating, intelligent and emotionally honest pieces of theatre to come along in many years." Les Spindle, in Frontiers, wrote "This heartfelt and cerebral show leaves one with the warm glow of a consummate artist at the peak of her craft."
Tickets are available at plays411.com/god or by calling 323-960-4420, and there's more info at LettingGoOfGod.com Plus, there will be eggnog and cookies at the December 25th performance for all good skeptics. It only runs through January, so don't miss it!
UPDATE 2/19/2006
Julia Sweeney has a blog now. News of her forthcoming CD and movie can be found there.
Posted by digital artform at 09:24 PM | Comments (5)