Totally fun, concise work from Sincerely, Truman:

[YouTube] [Via]

Ronald Blakey, illustrator of Ancient Landscapes of the Colorado Plateau, creates some interesting visualizations:

I actually forget when I first started with Photoshop — probably in the mid-1990s. When I found that, I just thought, wow: the power of this is incredible. I quickly learned how to use the cloning tool, so that I could clone modern topography onto ancient maps, and that made things even simpler yet.

Check out the whole piece on The Atlantic.

Annette Jung is an absolute madwoman:

[Vimeo] [Via]

Klaatu barada nikto! Our friends at Chopping Block are Kickstarting a cool “illustrated map of America populated with the legendary events and characters from popular science-fiction, horror and fantasy.” Check out the fun video:

Hmm—this is kind of interesting:

Melbhattan is part homage, part pastiche of the opening sequence of Woody Allen’s seminal 1979 film Manhattan.

Drawn and animated by Melbourne-based cartoonist and illustrator Oslo Davis, Melbhattan features more than sixty black and white tableaux of Melbourne each composed to mimic images in Allen’s film.

[Via]

The new drawing app Black Ink features a node-based visual editor for creating brushes, letting you “Tweak, combine, create new tools and discover the power of generative art!”

“Custom brushes can then be shared with the community,” the creators write, “giving everyone a wide choice of tools.” The Windows-only (yeah, I know) app can be downloaded in tryout mode or purchased for €35.
Generative-art tools are as old as the hills (e.g. on my hard drive I just stumbled across a screenshot of Nowhouse Propeller—from 12 years ago), and they always seem to hang out on the periphery. Hmm—is now the time for one to become more popular?
[Via Jerry Harris]

• Matt Molloy creates gorgeous skies by stacking hundreds of time-lapse photos. Here’s a bit more about his process.
• Diggable dimensionality, palettes, and textures: “Andrew Lyons’ illustration is shaped by a passion for music.”
• I love Petri Damstén’s simple, graphical rendering in Lego, Opposite Directions.

Heh—today’s Google Doodle honors Erwin Schrödinger (who would have turned 126 years old today) and the notional cat of his hypothetical experiment:

This is weirdly great:

“During a slideshow presentation while previewing the different patch options, the student presenter threw the ‘My Little Pilot’ patch design into the mix as an ironic joke,” Barger said. “That patch made it all the way through the approval process and is even more ironic since the class never really wanted it in the first place.”

• “Be water, my friend.” Okay, Bruce Lee—and you be milk. French artist Vivi Mac uses milk, chewing gum, honey, and all sorts of odd media to create interesting portraits. (Reminds me of the time in college I drew a letter to my girlfriend using tiny Camemberts handed out in flight. By the time she received it I think the “art” had been reduced to grease stains. In retrospect I’m surprised we didn’t break up sooner).
• Samantha Lee makes her kids meals that are too cute to eat. I kind of have to hate her. (More ripped-up cheese & bread, Micronaxx? Works for me.)
• Sarah Rosado has created “Dirty Little Secrets,” drawing using dirt gathered in NY parks. “There is no cropping, or digital enhancements before or after. It’s all real.” Love those ants!

That’s what Australian company Shark Attack Mitigation Systems claims with their new wetsuits. Seems like dazzle camouflage for humans—though hopefully more effective. Design Taxi writes,

Sharks rely on their vision when going in for the kill, so the two new designs work to confuse and counter a shark’s dependence on its vision.
The first design, the ‘Cryptic Pattern’, is meant for divers and swimmers. Researchers say that “sharks have trouble seeing this pattern because of its disruptive coloration blends into the background”.
The ‘Warning Pattern’, designed for surfers, warns the shark against the wearer by imitating the warning patterns of fish that send out a “stay away” message.

[YouTube] [Via]

“I came here to pimp Adobe products & chew bubblegum—and I’m all out of Adobe products…” Well no, but I like being reminded that tools are just tools, and artists can make beauty from the simplest of media. As Colossal explains,

Meet Hal Lasko, mostly known as Grandpa, a 97-year-old man who uses Microsoft Paint from Windows ’95 to create artwork that has been described as “a collision of pointillism and 8-Bit art.” Lasko, who is legally blind, served in WWII drafting directional and weather maps for bombing raids and later worked as a typographer (back when everything is done by hand) for clients such as General Tire, Goodyear and The Cleveland Browns before retiring in the 1970s. Decades after his retirement his family introduced him to Microsoft Paint and he never looked back. 

[Vimeo] [Via]

Remember that “live Photoshop” bus stop prank that went viral a couple of months ago?

The Photoshop team has posted an interview with the Swedish artist who was working the controls, Erik Johansson, talking about his life & work creating surreal imagery.

For a video & more about Erik, see previous.

Christian Borstlap & “Part Of A Bigger Plan” created this piece for the new Rijksmuseum project Rijksstudio. According to Looks Like Good Design, “The film includes 211 artworks from the museum’s online collection.
Isn’t it weird that shape morphing now feels about as dated as the illustration styles shown here?

I like the style of this cute, 1-minute student film from Olesya Shchukina:

[Via]

Alex Dukal shows a clever hack using Smart Objects to enable symmetrical, if not quite real-time drawing & painting in Photoshop. Check it out, including the how-to part that starts around the 2-minute mark. I followed his steps to create a simple PSD that’s set up as described.

[Via reader Marcel]

Maurice Sendak: a man who could take a compliment. Check it:

[Via]

Yep—it’s nice & weird. From Laura Sicouri & Kadavre Exquis.

[Vimeo] [Via Wayne White]

Evan Roth’s Graffiti Analysis project features a playback engine that reproduces artists’ strokes in 3D space:

[Via Lee Thomason]

Holger Winnemoeller shows off new tech for producing painterly strokes. What do you think? (Besides about the lame Rainn Wilson banter, I mean. Yes yes, noted, moving on…)

I meant to share this back in May when Google posted it for Saul Bass‘s birthday. Things got, uh, a touch busy around then, so here it is now:

Of Coca-Cola’s “Wearable Movie,” Design Taxi writes,

[E]ach of the animation’s frames was printed on a T-shirt, and sent to people all over the world to participate in making the movie. Those who received a shirt had to wear the shirt and take a photo with it. The photos of the shirt were then stitched together to put together the short film of a pair of friends and a dog, trying to get a pair of lips to smile.

[Vimeo]

The new app Mischief promises “the richness of pixel-based brushes AND the scalability of vectors” in a GPU-accelerated drawing environment. What do you think?

Diggable work from Al Boardman, though I’m inclined to agree with The Fox Is Black calling Trump Tower “a giant, glazed turd.” (Where’s Big Stan? The Water Tower? Lake Point Tower? But I digress.)

Chicago – Five Great Buildings from Al Boardman on Vimeo.

Enjoy.

[Via]

Check out this interesting project on Kickstarter:

The what?
The camera lucida.
It’s a prism on a stick! For making realistic drawings!
It used to be everywhere.
A portable version hasn’t been manufactured in generations.
And we’re bringing it back.
Really inexpensively.
For artists and art students everywhere.

The crew at Second Home Studios animated Su Blackwell‘s paper sculpture for Pilsner Urquell:

It’s all the more impressive when you look the scenes:

[Via]

Lovely work (great shapes, palettes) from Lukas Vojir:

Bonus: I dig the lovingly rendered physicality of the widgets on display here, too:

Heh. The creator writes,

9-bit colour, divvied up into 4 palettes of 15+alpha colours each, just like momma used to make. the song was made with an emulator for the Yamaha YM2612, the chip used to create the sound in the sega genesis.

Note: It’s just the intro graphics plus three minutes of song, and sadly not a deeper re-enactment of the movie in this style—though wouldn’t that be amazing?

[Via]

The phrase “nekkid A-Ha” comes to my juvenile mind. 

“Every easel in a life drawing class captures a different angle of the model. We created the film by editing each drawing with the next, moving around the circle of easels.”

[Via]

Dove smartly uses a forensic sketch artist to show women how their own self images compare to what others see:

And here’s the inevitable parody featuring a bunch of dudes:

[Via]

Great work from Gmunk & team:

The Vimeo page features some making-of details. [Via]

Check out this neat little piece from BBC Knowledge and Learning. Director Will Samuel of Territory Studio says,

We wanted to create nostalgia; taking the audience back to the days of textbook diagrams and old science documentaries, such as Carl Sagan’s COSMOS and IBM’s POWER OF TEN (1977). Using the double helix circular theme as a core design we focused on form, movement and colour to create a consistent flow to the animation, drawing on references from nature, illustrating how DNA is the core to everything around us. 

[Via]

“I don’t even think that’s Photoshop,” says Jon Stewart of North Korea’s recent efforts. “That s*** looks like MS Paint!” Skip to about 3:30 in the first clip, then jump to the last 20s in the second.

“Now that is some MF’ing Photoshop!”