The folks at Linden Lab have whipped up Creatorverse, what looks to be a super simple way to create drawing imbued with physics. Here, I’ll let them explain:

This fun little bit from Marion Deuchars reminds me of the great old Compaq birds animation.

[Via]

Is there any reason I should get such a large kick out of the punking of unsuspecting people who want free Photoshop work? No. Is that going to stop me? No. (Here’s my favorite I’ve seen so far.)

This certainly won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, and you’d do well to skip right ahead to 1:20 or so, but at that point it showcases some great illustrations: “The animation section was created by taking illustrations by Adam Relf, prepping them in Photoshop then animating and compositing in After Effects. I did the final compile in Adobe Premiere.”

Beatles fan Peter Dean enlisted woodcarver Andy English in re-creating a Victorian circus poster that inspired John Lennon to write the song Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!, which appeared on The Beatles’ 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band:

Lennon bought the poster in an antiques shop and hung it in his music room. While writing for Sgt. Pepper one day, he drew inspiration from the quirky, old-fashioned language and set the words to music… It is printed in a limited edition of 1,967.

Make Productions nicely tells the story:

[Via]

 Peter Saville talks about the iconic cover design (based on a computer-generated signal from the first pulsar ever discovered) that’s gone on to spread through our culture (showing up as tattoos, sneaker treads, & much more).

[Via]

Looks like a deep & interesting tour from Adrian Taylor. Says Smashing Magazine,

This extended video tutorial covers a wide variety of topics including basic gradient tools (0:30), the appearance pannel and multiple gradient fill layers (2:30), creating gradients with the blending tool (3:45), gradient strokes (6:30), gradient mesh (7:45), using gradients with type (14:00), wrapping gradients with envelope distort (16:30), and using opacity masks.

Check out this lovely trailer for The Where, the Why, and the How: 75 Artists Illustrate Wondrous Mysteries of Science:

[Via]

USA Today has rebranded with what’s almost the most minimal logo one can imagine: a pure blue circle. The press release states, “USA TODAY’s logo was redesigned to be as dynamic as the news itself. The logo will be a live infographic that can change with the news.” Armin Vit provides lots of details & perspective at Under Consideration. Here’s a taste of how the logo evolves:

I also enjoyed Stephen Colbert’s somewhat less appreciative take:

• Gorgeous: “American artist Tauba Auerbach presents the 8 x 8 x 8-inch hard-back cubes illustrating the RGB color scheme in a page-by-page medium. a digital offset print on paper with airbrushed cloth cover and book edges create a colorful reference volume of all the colors in existence.” [Via Chris Peppel]

• 99 Shades of Grey: As CreativePro writes, “For pledges ranging from $1 to $99, backers can get the book in soft-cover, hard-cover, or ebook formats, t-shirts, posters, and the privilege of naming a particular shade of grey.”

Or as someone just quipped about the Illustrator 1.0 video I uploaded a while back, “ANY SHADE OF GREY I WANT! <3”

Heh—this takes me back to my painfully ambitious childhood attempts at flipbook animation: the Nissan Note site tells a story as you scroll (and scroll, and scroll) down the page. In all my years online I can’t say I remember seeing this done before—and that’s saying something. [Via]

Props to Pete Candeland & Passion Pictures.

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I came to Adobe specifically to democratize animation, to tear down barriers that crippled Flash back then. There can be a fine line, though, between “democratizing” and “cheapening the coin,” as this funny, profane little piece from Harry Partridge illustrates:

[Via David Simons]

French artist Jérôme Bareille is a gradient-mesh ninja:

[Via Stéphane Baril]

The Chemical Brothers teamed up with Crystal CG to create this piece. It’s slow to start, but hang in there a bit. “Played in the Velodrome before every session,” the creators say, “the video shows the Velodrome as never before, literally pulsating with excitement. ‘We’ve created sweeping contours and sleek surfaces as the backdrop for an intense, futuristic cycling ‘duel’ as two animated riders power round the track,’ said Darren Groucutt, creative director at Crystal. ‘It truly brings the Velodrome to life.’”

[Via]

Brilliant: the Guardian’s Brick-by-Brick feature uses uses Legos + real audio from the games to re-enact the triumphs of Usain Bolt, the agonies of a South Korean fencer (sporting a stormtrooper helmet), and more. And how about Phelps putting away those turkey legs? [Via A. Jeremy P. Lawrence]

I’m guessing that Timothy LaPointe, like me, sees these things when he’s falling asleep. The difference is, he can show you:

Check out URBANSCREEN’s giant projection work, “Lighting of the Sails”:

[Via]

Marion Deuchars puts a bunch of kids (and a few grown-ups) to the test:

[Warning: Content may include brief glimpses of Bart Simpson, Uncle Sam, and boobs.]

“This animation is made of 3285 aquarelle paintings,” writes Anders Ramsell, “and form the very beginning of my paraphrase on the motion picture Blade Runner.” Nothing the god of watery pigments wouldn’t let you into heaven for.

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Here’s “an abridged history of video games in under three minutes. Made using only sounds, music and video from the video games themselves.”

Showing my age, I find the first half or so much more compelling than the latter. Hadouken!!

In 6 years of daily blogging, I’ve never gotten deluged more than I did when revealing the CS3 icons.  After 500+ comments, I even got turned into icons myself. Suffice it to say, people have strong opinions.

These designs don’t happen by accident–quite the opposite.  Adobe XD (Experience Design) manager Shawn Cheris has posted a thorough tour of how CS6 branding evolved & the thinking that went into it.  He talks about how they started with color, moved into shapes, and ultimately created thousands of individual graphics across the entire Suite.

As the world probably doesn’t need more nail-biting anxiety, I almost hesitate to share this one–but all’s well that ends well:

[Via Dan Mall]

Charming: Adam Ladd showed his 5-year-old daughter logos for 5 seconds apiece, then asked her to draw what she remembered:

[Via Carolina de Bartolo]

This is “The second in a series of hand-painted studies,” writes Matt Box, “that aim to psychedelically capture the individual styles of influential skateboarders.”

[Via]