PAX East and shameless filler... I mean, Links of Interest!

It's the weekend of my birthday holy cow! March 11-13 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center (right across the street from where Comicon was last year.) More information at the official website. The events that most directly tie into illustration are on Sunday morning (and, of course, I have a prior commitment that day. Wah.)

And now, since this would be a very short post otherwise, here are random interesting links for you.

First off, there is a review of a very weird Canadian children's film over at the Realm of Mad-Ness.

This weekend is the Great Backyard Bird Count! I'm not going to be able to do my usual live-blog of the event, but there is an excellent reason for that. Hopefully I'll have some great stories afterward.

I am a sucker for interesting (but still recognizable) variations on fantastic creatures, and Art Evolved guest artist Midhat Kapetanovic delivered with his unusual unicorns. If you love different takes on mythical beasts, check out the Alphabeastiary blog.

Everything is Terrible is a wonderful website that shares clips from the world of bizarre direct-to-video productions. (They were the ones who dug up that wondrous "Kids Inc." clip I shared during the Superbowl live-blog.) This week, they found something very special. At first I thought this was a straight random weird kids movie that decided, just because, to spend several lines of dialogue in the beginning explaining why their aliens happen to speak English. And then...

So how does one actor play a pair of twins? The answer is a heady combination of trick photography, animation, and lots of cooperation. I feel a little bad for Josh Pence here, but this clip is still fascinating.

Tipping Forties just finished their play through of "Super Mario Bros. Wii" and... it's something to see. (NSFW language.)

Over at Gurney Journey, a fan wrote in to ask why illustrators are so often ignored in art history courses, and prompted a much-needed list of good books on the history of illustration.

TetZoo has a brief but interesting article about avian display structures. Go forth and be inspired.

It is also the 150'th anniversary of the naming of Archaeopteryx. Those commemorative coins are amazing..

CHUD did a double-feature of "The Secret of N.I.M.H." and "The Plague Dogs", and expresses the confusion we all feel over a certain less-loved Pixar film.

Apparently there was a musical award show or something this weekend. Cee Lo Green did an awesome tribute to the well-loved Elton John episode of "The Muppet Show" (although, dear mainstream press, those were not Muppets. Stop being wrong.) Also, Lady Gaga finally turned into a giant bird. (Incidentally, her song doesn't sound like "Express Yourself" any more than "California Girls" [the Katy Perry one] sounds like "Tik Tok" sounds like "Just Dance" sounds like "Love at First Sight"...)

Toontown in Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom has been shut down to make room for the great Fantasyland expansion, and Progress City has a fun look back at the strange little mini-park's history. I remember seeing that exact play once. It didn't get any less weird.

This is too cool not to share and it tells me that I need to get reacquainted with my friends who live in California. One of them works at Stargate Studios, which recently released a demonstration / promotional video that got some attention at The Best Week Ever. It's kind of mind-blowing.

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Feederwatch / Sketch of the Day Supercombo!

I looked out my window and saw this:

Artsy (or not) Things I Got for Christmas!

As you'll see, this also serves as kind of a "2009 wrap-up" post. Some of these will demand longer posts later on after I've watched/read/played with them:

I got the collection of Chuck Jones' "Tom and Jerry" cartoons on DVD. I know these shorts have their detractors, but I like them. I haven't watched this yet but it looks like it may be similar to the excellent "Droopy" collection they put out last year (well, LAST last year).
I also got the four-disk Blu-ray edition of "Up". "But Trish, you don't have a Blu-ray player!" You're right but Disney has decided to do something neat to wean people onto the new format: regular DVDs come packaged with the movie and not a whole lot else but the Blu-ray DVDs come with the movie (both on Blu-ray and unleaded DVD format) and a whole lot of goodies.
Wait, did I say neat? What I meant was unnecessarily confusing.
Anyway, as you know I enjoyed "Up" and the disk is very nice.

Man, I can NOT wait to plow through these! I've thumbed through these books and they all look to be amazing. The two-volume Drawn To Life books are about as daunting as the Greg S. Paul textbook I unwittingly got a while back, but I think I can take my medicine. The Goldberg and the Gurney (I have started in on the latter and it may be the best "how to paint" book I've ever read) are shorter but very nice and packed with rare artwork.

These are a little more personal/in-jokey, but I had to share how awesome my sister is. She made a lovely photo album of our family reunion. My godfather gave me the cookbook, knowing I've started getting serious about expanding beyond my "heat up a can of Cream of Mushroom soup, cook frozen spinach, mix and dump in some spaghetti" repertoire. The random loose photographs are from my participation in LAST last year's Comicazi.con. I also got a copy of Inventory (not pictured but very nice and funny as to be expected from The Onion), and Obligatory (but useful) Gift Cards to GameStop - destined to take a chunk off the cost of "Soul Silver" (if it has the more interesting version exclusives) - and to the Apple store. Hmmm... why would I need that?

For my new toy badass art-making machine, of course.
I am... REALLY excited to start playing with this. I shall gush when she's fully set up.
Here's today's Sketch of the Day (or Whatever)!

Not sure what part of the creative process this gives insight into but that rabiescorn may need to be colored in soon.
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Oh gosh I just learned -like, literally just learned- that Arisia is this weekend! I don't know much beyond the fact that this is a huge sci-fi/fantasy convention in Cambridge, MA, they will be showing "Zombieland" and "Moon" among other films, and I missed the registration deadline. Wah. (To be fair, spring tends to be the start of convention season around here. Oh well.) Still, this may be a fun time for those of you in the general MIT vicinity.

It's 4/20! Let's talk about that animated Tiger Woods Commercial!

Obligatory, "LOL it's 4/20" nonsense:

For those who have not seen the very awesome commercial alluded to in the title yet:



You know, even as I little kid I noticed that there was more gorgeous animation in commercials than in some of the cartoon series they'd interrupt. This commercial reminds me of those days. Anyone know what studio did this? Look for the scene about 47 minutes in, where there are dozens and dozens of Disney-style animated characters onscreen at once. That would have taken ages and ages to do back in the day.

And as a funny aside, as memorable and wonderful as this commercial is, it isn't doing it's job. I spent fifteen minutes searching in vain for "Tiger Woods Vitamin Water Ad"...

Unexpected Opportunities.

This helps to illustrate the advantage of being able to schedule when your posts are to be published. While Monday's post was going live, I was waking up sick as a dog, and while Wednesday's post was appearing here, I was getting an x-ray of my torso.
Here's your title significance: Me being the kind of person I am, I naturally asked for a copy of the images. To draw from. Of course.
Now of course I don't want anyone out there to have to get an x-ray; I'm just saying that if you happen to be an artist who's about to get intense about anatomical studies, and if such an opportunity pops up for you, don't be afraid to ask. (Worst case scenario, the radiologists will probably assume it's only the lack of eating talking.) They were nice enough to give me a CD and I have already done a really cool quick sketch based on one of the images of my lower torso.
I'm debating whether to upload it to Flickr. I think it's awesome, and it isn't graphic or anything; not everyone might agree. I can also see where it might be a little too personal (after all, it'd literally be my guts up onscreen for all to see.) I probably will end up not posting it anywhere, but until I decide for sure, have some pretty Unicorns (click for big):

Did anyone else catch "Secrets of the Furious Five" last night? I did, thanks to... channel surfing and finding out that it was on. I can now say that there is a direct-to-DVD animated sequel that I actually like better than the original film. (I'm not too proud to say that Tigress' story made my eyes rain.)
Feederwatch Friday
Eh... not much that I was able to notice, I'm afraid. The storm this weekend might bring more customers.