Yulia Brodskaya.

I like paper.

There is this amazing artist, Yulia Brodskaya.

I really wanted just a shot from her website of “The Magic is in the Telling”. ‘Cause it is. And it’s beautiful.

If you want to see it, which you should/must, it lives with her Paper art at this place.

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger.

No, I’m not talking about the I-Phone.

I’m talking about this:

Though not talking much, ’cause it speaks for itself. He’s a friend of a friend.

Damn!

Dark Hand and Lamplight.

It’s been awhile folks. Sorry for that. Many, many things to blog in the coming days. Maker Faire photos coming soon!!!

For today, I will share one of the most thrilling discoveries of my recent life. There is an artist musician duo out of Toronto that uses shadow theater. Brilliant brilliant brilliant.

I sigh. ‘Tis a beautiful thing.

You can find them on the MySpace.

Los dientes!

This is supposed to help kids brush their teeth? I found it roaming on ebaumsworld. More horrors can be sought here.

I don’t want to brush my teeth let alone go to bed ever again after watching this. WTF is wrong with the puppeteer? No more Novocaine for that guy.

Michel Gagné is Insanely Twisted.

I really wish I had the skill to imbed the video for this. I don’t, yet, so here is a teaser image:

Artist Michel Gagné created this series of shorts for Nickelodeon’s Halloween Shriekin’ Weekend in 2005. You can watch this amazing piece of flash animation here.

They are also available in individual format at his website, here.

Thanks to the brilliant no fat clips!!! video blog for this. Check it out.

Score one for liars.

Everyone should listen to Radiolab. Their website is here.

Today I was listening to their episode “Deception”.

It turns out that people who can effectively lie to themselves are happier. Those who see the reality of life, in all its cruelty and tragedy, are bound to be depressed. Just great.

We can also tell who those happy people are, thanks to the science of microexpressions (among other things). Paul Eckman is one of the premier researchers in this field:

Luck Dragon, anyone?

We all know he’s out there, just waiting to befriend one of us and give free rides through the clouds.

Really the reason for this post is because I stumbled upon the Cloud Appreciation Society, formed to “fight the banality of ‘blue sky’ thinking”.

Lame.

However, they take amazing pictures, just look.

“Evidence”…

…of how we’ve been numbed since the beginning.

The kid with the gray and red plaid shirt…that’s me. I literally had that shirt. I watched so much television as a kid that it’s kind of surreal I’m even able to type without electrical prompting. The question of how/if I’ve been scarred irrevocably by all of those hours in front of the box is the sort of thing that keeps a body up at night.

This video is compliments of my friend Jess Smith at Seattle Repertory Theatre. You can find out about them here, since I can’t link you to her non-existent website.

Harryhausen montage.

Ray Harryhausen was one of the few film artists I knew anything about as a kid. And I only knew because so many of the things I loved in features I watched over and over were his creations. Clash of the Titans and Jason and the Argonauts are two of the more well known examples. If you want to learn about his work, visit his website. That’s right, he’s 88 and he has a website. I quote, ” I hope you enjoy the site and will visit it often.” Click here.

There are so many of the animations in this video that I’ve never seen before.  I’ve got work to do.

It’s also a good intro, visually, for the Harryhausen neophyte:

I was there: Dalaipalooza 2008.

I went to see the Dalai Lama speak at Qwest Field. I know I should have been inspired, or awed, or at the very least attentive. But the fact is you could barely hear him due to a sound-system that’s designed for raging football announcers and jock jams, not soft-spoken spiritual leaders with thick accents.

Due to this fact, and a resurgence of latent childhood boredom, I made my own fun and took some pictures of shadows with my sister’s phone. Mine died early on in the game, I mean landmark cultural event.