A is for April Fool

The first of April is one 

of the Creative's better days 

be it for fun or 

just to hype a brand.

Here is a pick of this

year's crop. 

Clear Marmite

Source

The Force is found at Cern,
a great article with some clever references
including these are not the droids you are looking for!

The RNIB
releases CatNav
for the Blind
 

RNIB

Dragons are real

according to Nature 

Playstation Flow

immersive gameplay 

(YouTube & Playstation)

Amazon Dash

the button

(Youtube & Amazon)

And not forgetting 

Google Maps Pac Man

(was this not a subtle advert for 

a film called Pixels?)

What did I miss out?

Bookmarks of inspiration - Peter Elliott

In trying to close my Internet browser, I thought it might be an idea to record some of the blogs and other links that I use for inspiration. I hope you get some use from this or if not, sorry to have wasted your time but you must admit that there are some lovely pieces of work:

Jamie Hewlett Instagram Account and Jamie Hewlett on Pinterest

Glen Keane's Duet

Glen Keane, an animator of note who has worked with Disney and is responsible for the Beast in Beauty and the Beast as well as many other characters. He was asked by Google's ATAP (Advanced Technology and Projects) Group to create a hand-drawn cartoon so that screen interactivity could be added. 

Glen Keane's Hand Drawn Duet

Glen Keane's Coloured Duet

And here is an excerpt from the talk at Google

Here is the link to page 1 of 4 of quotes from Luis Brunel and one great quote is here:

“I have a soft spot for secret passageways, bookshelves that open into silence, staircases that go down into a void, and hidden safes.”

"Sex without religion is like cooking an egg without salt. Sin gives more chances to desire."

I loved the idea that he filled his pockets with rocks to defend his ideas at his film premiere, but you will need to read the page to find out why on earth he took rocks to a premiere.

Comic Book Legends Number 511

Neil Gaiman took Bill Sienkiewicz's story pages in The Sandman: Endless Nights out of order. 

The Roland Collection

A friend has done all the behind the scenes work on this gamulfry of films on art, architecture and modern authors including Will Eisner, Moebius and Alan Moore

A collection of writings by the elusive coder Kai Krause, he was the architect behind some of the photoshop filters and meta tools, this collection includes how he gets other countries into the map of the African continent. 

The Tooninator's Gallery 

I just love this drawing of a young lady. Well all of his drawings. I like the third drawing down, the one with the auburn haired girl. 

Films on Art, Architecture and Modern Authors

Claudia Pomowski - examples of her work

Claudia Pomowski - Delicate Sketcher, Clever Compositor,

Resourceful Recycler 

The delicate lines form an intimate portrait.

Her web page brings you more of her work.

Google will translate this - try here.

A sombre sketch with the addition of a reversed eye, 

this is where Claudia comes into her own category of work.

The addition of a photographic pair of lips adds another 

dimension to this historical sketch.

Who needs paper, when you can re-use a book?

An avian sketch.

Have a look at Claudia's profile from this blog.

The composition of both photographic elements and drawn animals

adds further depth.

Once again, the photographic element behind 

the sketch of the boy plays with the 

viewer.

Claudia's work can be found on the Handmade Art Facebook

Group.

Have a look at another collection of Claudia's

collages - they play with your mind.

Her Flickr album takes you further into 

Claudia's imagination.

She can be contacted here.

Exquisite Corpse Panel 5

In our first regular art project, the collected creatives who use the Blackwing pencil, we bring you the fourth panel by the digital artist, Tim Seelig. Tim exhibits his work on his website. Tim very kindly showed us the detail from his Exquisite Corpse panel in a few days before he revealed the full piece. 

Detail of Tim Seelig's Exquisite Corpse Panel

In both Greek and Roman Mythology, the Harpy was a winged monster, more avian like than Pegasus,  with a human face and it was thought that name meant "snatchers".

The Full Image of Tim Seelig's Exquisite Corpse

When asked for his inspirations and his working on the piece, Tim very kindly wrote the following:

"In term of ideas for my take on the exquisite corpse, I was thrilled to hear from Giuseppe the direction he was going in was taking elements of the previous entries, but he hadn't come up with a Harpy. 

I told him this is what i planned to do (and in fact it's something I'd had in my head from the moment Simon posted his picture). 

Unlike the previous pieces mine started as a small sketch on an A3 pad (drawn with the Blackwing), just to give me an idea of what I was doing in order to compose the Harpy. I then started going through various classical renditions of Harpies via Google and (the) few books I have on Mythology. Most were shown as half women and half bird. But for me, whenever I thought Harpy, I automatically thought of Ray Harryhausen's miniatures from Jason and the Argonauts (bat wings and rough, possibly scaly skin).  I wanted to go down the more traditional route of a bird with a woman's torso and head.  

There were a lot of layers in this before I started merging them in Photoshop. At one point, it was taking up a couple of Gig of RAM. The head, shoulder, and arms used belong to a friend of mine and the latter appendage were used as the feet of the Harpy. The wings took 3-4 hours alone and are a mishmash of ceramic wings from my Mum's garden, crow's wings, raven's wings and painted textures I'd done with acrylics. 

I used a mixture of mouse and Wacom tablet and pen in the composition. The beak and the feathers around the face are taken from a Harpy Eagle, I thought given the name, it was suitably fitting. At some point I may return to this and do a more detailed setting for the backdrop."