Never heard of it, actually, but Zip sent it to me (I don't even remember zipping it) and I really enjoyed it. Halle Berry is muted and kind of cold and hard throughout much of the film but strong, Benecio del Torro is fantastic as a heroin addict trying to get his life back on track. About loss, redemption, and recovery. The story chronicles a woman who loses her husband (David Duchovny) and tries to help her husband's best friend who she finds in a dumpy drug infested rathole in suburban Seattle.
for Christmas!!
Just a re-blog of Media Militia's giveaway for today, Drips and Spray Paint brushes for Photoshop.
A few weeks ago, I was a friend's house who had made this really good soup. She roughly outlined the recipe and a few days later, I tried it. It was great! Then yesterday, I was at lunch with some colleagues and mentioned the recipe and how easy and delicious it was. Today, when I popped into the office, two different people told me they had gone home and made the soup. Then they had brought some and shared it with the office. Everyone was raving about it.
Ok so I've had plenty of references to artists I like over the years. Of course they all have great influences over my own art, just like every artist. But I thought I'd take a moment today to write about some specific influences that have gotten my creative juices flowing lately (past few months) Its only fair to give these guys/gals recognition for their wonderful art! :D
One artist that I like for obvious reasons, is from Switzerland. I found his site via Media Militia's periodical "get inspired" posts. His name is Patrik but goes by the name of 2much as an artist. You can find his work following the post in the links.
An online comic book I ended up reading in its entirety in about a week, is called Megatokyo and is by artist and writer Fred Gallagher. It is a manga-style comic book and I say "manga-style" as it is written and drawn by someone other than an Asian writer and I know that for some that might make it an "impure" manga, but if you ask me, its ever bit as good as a Japanese, Korean or other manga you might find. The art is very well drawn but although it has the Asian "look", Fred has gone to great lengths apparently in creating his own flair to his art and I admire him very much for it.
Creaturebox is a site by artists Dave Guertin and Greg Baldwin. Well-established character designers and artists with Insomniac games. (Insomniac Games is responsible for such huge titles as Ratchet and Clank and Resistance for the Sony Playstation systems.)
Enjoy!
Busy days! Been wrapping up two semesters, finishing up a big project and Thursday I start working at that new Quebec company. But after Friday, the next two weeks should be smooth sailing. Looking forward to it. All I have to do is work a bit, write a book review, and watch some movies.
Ok I'll admit I've been out of it for awhile when it comes to the toy scene and I've had a bit of a sour taste in my mouth about the whole deal. Because of the over-saturation of artists and the many of the companies becoming so close to mainstream (IMO)... I just have been bored with it for the most part.
This made me smile.
Ok so when I first read about something called Generative Art in Wired magazine many months ago I was mildly interested but only til the end of that article. I never thought to try my hand at it or find out more about how it works. Well I've been following articles on a pretty cool blog: Media Militia* lately and most recently one of the authors wrote about generative art. With a little free time, I toyed with a couple of the different programs that are available for Windows (since that's what I'm stuck with right now, lol) and found that it was more fun than I had thought. Of course, I might add that I do some (not complex) web programming using vb.net so I enjoy a bit of coding anyway. (That's a warning to the non-programmer graphic designers, in case you hate numbers.. )
If you're interested in seeing some of the programs listed on Media Militia's site, follow the link afterward. For this image I used a program called context free, and this is only a sample, using their tutorial with my own embellishments to the program (how I got the curvature in the tree). Nothing complicated!
Here is the simple program:
startshape trunk
rule trunk
{
SQUARE{}
trunk{ rotate .25 y .4 size .99 brightness .005}
}rule trunk .01
{
SQUARE{}
branch { rotate 25 }
trunk{ y .4 s .99 brightness .005 }
}rule trunk .03
{
SQUARE{}
branch{ rotate -25 }
trunk{ y .4 s .99 brightness .005 |hue 40 |sat .5 }
}rule branch
{
SQUARE{}
trunk {y .4 s .99 brightness .005 }
}
Here is the article that got me started, at Media Militia and the programs I've tried:
- Processing
- Structure Synth
- and of course Context Free
