A mother made a homemade variation of Angry Birds with the birds made out of various household items. Angry Birds Live, she calls it.
I used a tennis ball for the red bird, a ping-pong ball for the blue bird, modeling clay for the yellow bird, an Easter egg for the chicken, and a black dodge ball for the bomb bird. I had an old set of cardboard blocks that they never really used, and they were perfect. I printed out pictures of the pigs on labels and stuck them on paper bags.
To do light painting well, it takes , planning, coordination and patience. Achieved with long exposures and a bright, glowing source of light moving in front of a camera, cool things can happen. But what if you could program your light source to emit patterns of light? That’s about what you get below.
Making Future Magic: iPad light painting from Dentsu London on Vimeo.
Lost World’s Fairs show cases how damn awesome HTML5 is in the hands of a capable designer. Initially, the project came about when Microsoft asked the designers to showcase Internet Explorer 9’s support for WOFF.
Says Jason Santa Maria:
Today marks the beta launch of Internet Explorer 9. To celebrate the release, Nishant Kothary from the MIX Online team at Microsoft reached out to me to help showcase its support of WOFF.
Atlantis is the most clever of the trio, using page scrolling to the effect of traveling down, down, down to the ocean floor.
The Arcade Fire released their second video for their latest album The Suburbs with, The Wilderness Downtown. It’s a synthesis of web technology, music and video to create an experience. It uses HTML 5 to drive much of video so for now Google Chrome or Safari 5 are the only browsers that can play it fully. (Firefox can, albeit somewhat lacking).
Before the video begins, you’re asked to enter the street you grew up on, and then the video begins to load. In the video, multiple screens pop up, one with video of a unisex person running through a suburban street and other windows playing animations. You’ll write a message to your younger self, and that address you entered will appear as a Google Earth flyover.
This isn’t their first foray into viral, interactive videos. With their last album, they released a web video, Neon Biblethat let you interact with Win Butler’s hands.
Jason Z. of the 37 Signals crew writes when web developing, the first step is to start.
While it would be easy to recommend stacks of books, and dozens of articles with 55 tips for being 115% better than the next guy, the truth is that you don’t need learn anything new in order to begin. The most important thing is simply to start.
I’d go one step further and say this is true for any creative project. Just start. Don’t worry about what you don’t know and focus on what you do know and build from there. There will be moments when you’ll need to learn something, but to think you need to know everything up front will only fuel the analysis paralysis, or bluntly, instigate the fear of failure.
Scott Pilgrim – The Movie is a fun, hilarious adventure, action, nerd fest. Colorful visuals and engaging action sequences support a well directed cast as Scott Pilgrim must defeat seven evil exes. Indeed, Michael Cera plays the same character he always plays, but Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Ramona steals the movie with a great performance. Purists will decry that the plot differs from the books and lacks the emotional core Brian O’Malley conveyed in the original plot, but the core of the story–an apathetic, mooch of a loser, learning to love others and respecting himself–is still there.
Batwoman: Elegy tells two stories. The first is of Batwoman taking on a villainess named Alice who has plans to gas Gotham City with chemical weapons. The second story tells of how Kate Kane took up the mantle of Batwoman. In the first, the action occurs quickly and ends half way through the book after Alice’s failed attempt to unleash the weapons, but strands of the Alice plot line interweave into the second story as we find out who Alice might be. Told in a series of flash backs, Kate Kane grew up a military brat with a twin sister, Beth. Her father received a promotion to be stationed over seas. There, she, her mother and sister are kidnapped, and the bloody rescue only saves Kate. Later, upon nearing graduation from West Point, we find that she’s a lesbian after refusing to lie under the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Determined to serve, she becomes a vigilante, supported by her father’s military connections and her own variation of the Batman symbol to show “whose side” she’s on.
The story by Greg Rucka tells an origin in an interesting way, but as interesting as Kate’s origin is, it feels like one long denouement. Perhaps it could have been woven better with the Alice story. J.H. Williams III’s art actively moves around the page, but at times it seems too frenetic with overzealous layouts. However, Batwoman/Kate Kane are drawn realistically, unlike some comically drawn, female super heroines.
Tucked away in a small strip center South of downtown Dallas (Peak and Elm), Paper Arts offers a mind boggling selection of papers from all over the world. One of a kind, hand crafted, exotic, off beat, special purpose–they have it or can get it. In my own impromptu tour, I was told that “we have access to 8000 different kinds of paper, but only have 1500 in stock” at the store. In a sense, if you like paper, you’d be like a kid in a candy store with the ceiling high cabinets full of brightly colored offerings.
In meandering the store, looking at what there is to offer, scrap bookers have options with patterns and brightly colored stock, but the heart of the store is for those that need a unique feel, beyond what the paper aisle at Hobby Lobby or Micheal’s offers. Wedding invitation designers can find elegant and contemporary stock for the occasion. Collage artists can find one of a kind (literally, there’s only one sheet with that pattern), hand marbled papers and papers with various thicknesses, translucence and tension. Origami folders can find wet and dry folding stock. Book makers can find cloth papers with special backings to prevent glue from seeping through. Papers are sold in half sheet or whole sheet options, sizes ranging from 8.5″ x 11″ to 32″ x 40″. Prices vary from $1.99 a sheet (basic papers) to $20 a sheet (specialty, exotic paper).
The owners are friendly, extremely knowledgeable and willing to help you find what you’re looking for. Mention you want something like XYZ but in a different ABC or 123, and they’ll guide you to a cabinet with suggestions.
Paper Arts is open Tuesday through Saturday and can be reached by phone at 214-828-9494
A debut album from a Seattle sextet is perfect for those late summer drives at dusk. The sun fades into the horizon while warm shades of yellow, orange and red light up the sky. The Head and the Heart’s self titled clocks in at 9 tracks, spanning 35 minutes. In that time, the harmonies come together, comforting and uplifting with folksy pop arrangements reminiscent of the Beatles or Simon and Garfunkel. In the Sounds Like section on their MySpace page, they list: “melodies, harmonies, shakers, foot stomps, beautiful things, epic things.”
The album begins with a sprightly track, Cats and Dogs with the timbre of Josiah Johnson’s vocals warming up to lead a backing of “ooo-ooo’s” as a kick drum thumps and the rest of the band joins in on the fun. This seamlessly transitions to the next track, Coeur D’Alene where the keyboards and bass line drive the song’s catchy hook. The rest of the album has a rhythm, steady and buoyant and never strains. If anything, the album peaks with Lost In My Mind and glides to a safe landing during the last three tracks, closing with a reverent finale in Heaven Go Easy on Me.
Here they are performing live for KEXP:
Jakob Dylan’s Women and Country album feels good on the first listen. There’s no trying too hard, no songs with the familiar country, singer songwriter tropes. It’s paced well, with diverse arrangements. Nothing But the Whole Wide World and Holy Rollers for Love stand out.