Blu: Muto

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

This one has been picked up not only by our good friend John Martz, but erstwhile lexiconnoisseur Tycho over at Penny Arcade has been enraptured by it as well. And with good reason. A wonderfully inventive surreal stream of consciousness short on its own, made all the more inventive by the fact that it was animated in graffiti on public walls in Buenos Ares. Link to the artist's site here. Enjoy.

Romain Segaud: Radio NOVA spot

John Martz over at Drawn just did a post about Romain Segaud's commercial work, and it brought back some warm 'n fuzzies about BipBip! and TimTom...so naturally I had to track down some of his newer stuff on the YouTubes. Here in this spot for Radio NOVA, Romain is employing his trademark style of animating clipped images (in this case he's going with a cool illustrated style rather than photos) to show the action on various music theme 'islands'...check out those pool toys on Rap Island. Hop on over to his personal site for more.

Cintiq 12wx: it's a grand, baby!

Hate to nick shit from John Martz over there at Drawn, but all you TAIS members gotta know about this. The Cintiq 12wx is a sketchbook-sized version of Wacom's awesome draw-on lcd monitors, with a 12.1 inch diagonal screen...essentially you've got 8 1/2 x 11 inches to draw on. The bonus is that the unit is small and light enough to be spun round on a table top, so hard-to-draw angles are no sweat. Everything I've heard about performance is telling me that this is the same Cintiq quality that has made this the digital art tool to have, just more compact.

Here's the kicker: the e-mail I got from Wacom yesterday lists this lil' darlin' at $999 canuck bucks! It ain't cheap, but it's definetly sumthin' you could save yer nickels for over a few months and own. Good on ya, Wacom! I'll be getting one of these lil' beauts for me birthday, I thinks. There's a bit of a demo courtesy of them there YouTubes below. And here Christmas is right 'round the corner. If you've got a flash animator or digital artist on yer shoppin' list, a slightly overweight wallet and a need to be a holiday hero this year, well, hop on over to the Wacom E-Shop and get you one!

Happy Beaver is mine!!! Muhhahahaha...

Okay, after seein' this lil' dood on Jeff Pidgeon's blog yesterday (hopped over from that there Drawn article on his toy collection), I just couldn't help meself. I jumped into Firebird and got my erstwhile buddy and all-round good fella Jey to order me up one. Hey, and Jeff's even gonna sign the box! Happy, happy, joy, joy! Here's a few shots courtesy of a website called Plastic and Plush.

Few notes: It's a 5" rotocast vinyl (whatever that be meanin') figger with no movable parts (like it's gotta move...look at that toofy grin! Tail detail is beauty too...John K. would be proud). Although it's a character that Jeff designed hisself, along with the box-art, the modelin' kudos go to a fella by the name of Vin Teng. Note that there's only gonna be 500 of these lil' fellers made up, so get yers now! It'll cost ya just over fitty bones to get your very own Happy Beaver just in time for the Holidays. Or, y'know, fer whenever...whenever's good, right?

Jeff's had a perty storied career....just check out that IMDB page! Hopefully Happy is the first in a long line of figgers he'll be whippin' up for us, him and Ving. Meanwhile, I read that once all the Orange Happies sell out, we may be seein' him in other colors of the rainbow. Good on ya, Jeff! I'll post a pic of Happy on the Bloor Subway once I gets him. Late.

p.s.: Hate to be spurious here, but doin' a search for 'Happy Beaver' and 'Plastic and Plush' or any combo thereof without your Google filters on is not recommended for the faint of heart or the non-ironically inclined. Just use my handy article links, and be safe from all them yiffers out there.

Jeff Pidgeon: have Beaver, will travel

I hate toy packrats...y'know, the doods what will obsessively collect toys n' action figgers n' stuff just so they can have the whole series, r' whatnot. Guys with a discernin' eye, who pick up shtuff because it looks great, now, they're fairly rare.

Doods who collect and create, now they're a rare breed indeed. Meet a member of the species, or at least his work. Jeff Pidgeon, animation writer from California, is also an avid collector of the cool and cute, as well as a designer. Check out his super-groovy Happy Beaver vinyl, seen here posin' in Vancouver, all travellin' gnome styles. I've sent Mr. Pidgeon the e-mail in a brazen attempt to aquire one of these limited edition orange rodents fer my very own. I'll keep y'all posted. Meanwhile, check out Jeff's collection on Flikr. Link courtesy of the master of all things drawn, John Martz.

more Dave goodness...

First off, it's VICE, not Vibe. Vibe's about black music n' culture n' that kinda hotness. VICE is about...well, click on the above image to enlarge what Dave done fer 'em and their Free Comic Day 2007 issue, and you'll see what VICE be about. Forewarned, it's as filthy as the day is long. Funny as hell, though.

For those of you with the weaker constitutions (a.k.a. a sense of taste...sorry Dave, but "inserrrt"? Just yech. Still funny as hell, though), here's a link to some classic Dave, animated by Mr. Man's Steve Whitehouse, no less.



Lastly, if you visit Dave's site, you'll note that he's been off the collective radar screens of his fans for some time, which he apologizes fer. Seems he's been pretty damn busy with new gallery openings and a kid's book (penned under a pseudonym) due out...well, hell, it could be out now. There's no date on this, so there's no way to tell when he penned this missive about his whereabouts. A June 2007 post on Drawn!, John Martz's web stompin' ground, covers his creative process developing a series of paintings for a 2008 exhibition at Billy Shire Fine Arts in LA. Here's a sample of his work in progress:



Click the pic and it'll link ya to the Drawn! post, from there you can hop on over to Dave's Flikr page and check out more of what Dave's workin' on. More OIAF poster madness next week!