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Thursday, December 31, 2009
Since the inception of this spaceship art blog, I've not had much time for my own personal art. So, I thought I'd start the new year off and running.
This is a vector ship I drew up in 2005 using CorelDRAW. I rasterized individual components of the ship and lit them up in Lightwave. I then comped all of the shapes in Aftereffects, animated a camera zoom and recomposed in Flash.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Sweet alien landscape painting by Andree Wallin!
Keywords: animated concept vector spaceship flash loop art for 2010 new year weekly header ship in flight with camera zoom depth of field dof background matte painting by andree wallin composite by igorstshirts.com igor tkac
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
The first papercraft I posted in 2009 was a Tron papercraft, so I suppose it is fitting that I end the year with another Tron model. Anyone remember my WIP post for this? I started working on the template for this lightcyclist bust mid-year sometime, started building the model in September and have only finished just now. Except for the eyes and some portions of the hair, the build process is relatively simple. Lightcyclists such as this one appear only briefly in the Tron 2.0 video game and come in several different colors such as red, blue, green and yellow. The template information is as follows:
Finished Size: 24"(61 cm) width x 13"(33 cm) depth x 15"(38 cm) height
Number of sheets: 24
Number of parts: 96
Difficulty: 4/5
Download (includes lined & unlined PDF's and a PDO)
Previous Tron 2.0 papercraft:
Alan Bradley's Helmet
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Your story is eerily similar to mine. I was leading a completely stressful life - a LOT of drinking, smoking, zero exercise, eating crap. And then, I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. I instantly changed, did a complete 180 didn't touch a single beer or a cigarette or a slice of pizza. All I ate were cupfuls of cheerios, protein etc. No more than one slice of bread per day. I exercised 2 hours daily. In 3 months I dropped 55 lbs, and my doctor said my blood sugar was back to normal and I wouldnt need medication to control it anymore. He even wanted to do a case study on how I did that.
And then - I graduated, got my PhD. A month later, it started with one beer. and now a year later, I am pretty much an alcoholic and a heavy smoker. No more exercise and lots of crappy food. I gained back all the weight. I cough, freak out for a while, throw my cigarettes out. and then go search for them in the garbage. I use my asthma inhaler and then go and smoke. I don't even know why I do this. The entire duality of my personality has me beat.
When I was taking care of myself - i was a LOT calmer, reading philosophy, whatnot. BUT I was nowhere as creative as i am now. Iam a musician (stereotypes woohoo), and I find myself writing more often when I am drunk and disoriented and so on.
Now which life do I choose? I guess it all comes down to balance - but HOW? balance seems forced. balance seems complacent. or is it? It seems so to me - the other desperate life is much more interesting - but it just might kill me.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts - a friend suggested your blog to me. If you find balance, tell us how.
I was moved by the comment and wanted to answer the commenter's questions to the best of my ability. Here is my response:
Please do not take this response to mean I have all the answers, I certainly do not. But I'm living as you are, and trying to cope with many of the same things, i.e. quitting unhealthy behaviors and adopting healthy ones.
You say, "I guess it all comes down to balance."
Here I'm tempted to say, "No, it all comes down to timing."
In an ideal world, I think all of us would want to lead more balanced lives--eating moderately, exercising moderately, working less, and so on.
But in the day-to-day business of living, I feel balance is not so much of a choice we have. We just deal. As you said in your comment, any attempt to create balance, feels forced.
I re-read "The Divided Self" after I read you comment. It is very similar to an essay I just posted, called "The Undiscovered Self".
I'm looking at my life now from the perspective of these two essays, which essentially try to grasp the same problem.
It's strange. I don't even think about smoking anymore. I quit. It's been three or four weeks now. I just don't think about it. Which is very strange in light of the essay, "The Divided Self". Because in that essay, I'm describing what appears to be my utter inability to quit smoking.
I'm reading John Dewey's seminal work, Art as Experience, and he talks a lot about the ebb and flow of human experience, nature, and life. As humans, we really do have to go through these revolutions, these cycles. Granted some people with have more accentuated rhythms than others, higher peaks, lower valleys--all of us are familiar with these cycles.
Listen to how Dewey describes it. He's wonderfully accurate:
Life itself consists of phases in which the organism falls out of step with the march of surrounding things and then recovers unison with it—either through effort or by some happy chance. And, in a growing life, the recovery is never mere return to a prior state, for it is enriched by the state of disparity and resistance through which it has successfully passed.And here:
Nevertheless, if life continues and if in continuing it expands, there is an overcoming of factors of opposition and conflict; there is a transformation of them into differentiated aspects of a higher powered and more significant life. The marvel of organic, of vital, adaptation through expansion (instead of by contraction and passive accommodation) actually takes place. Here in germ are balance and harmony attained through rhythm. Equilibrium comes about not mechanically and inertly but out of, and because of, tension.And so, from these passages, you can infer that there is meaning behind our "bad periods"--that is, the periods where we pick up smoking again, have lots of casual sex, drink too much, etc. This does not mean unhealthy, compulsive, addictive behavior is acceptable. It just means that the human being can be understood as moving through phases of order and disorder, but that each stage of disorder has the potential to lead to a higher stage of order, a higher level of consciousness.
To see the following video you should enlarge it (double-click once playing).
The above is a compilation of works by the Swiss artist Zimoun.
1. Funny, one keeps telling oneself, enough of the minimal already, somehow feeling that less is a bore should be embraced, and the outrageously overflowing art of the recent years - appreciated and encouraged. And then, something like this appears, and it's irresistible. We've seen things from this universe before, also on this blog, and yet, the simplicity, yes, the damn purity takes over again.
2. I had a chance, recently, to visit several large factories. There were wonders there that could probably match most of the things on this video. Yet there was one thing they couldn't do: be useless. It's the sheer uselessness of it that gives it the power. We are not attached to anything but the thing. Art as the thing-that-cannot-be-used? Not necessarily, not in some purist sense. Great industrial design is to be cherished. And yet, there is a level of insanity here, of out-of-this-world-ness, that takes us to an exotic land, allowing for the silliest and most delicious connections to be made.
3. Luxury requires waste. A truly luxurious lifestyle is one where perfectly good things get wasted, as if to outplay their natural use and dying away. The true master of luxury seems to be saying her opulence is so great, the very perseverence of things is no match - they lose their original function and only exist to the extent they are participating in this out-of-this-world-ness of luxury.
You know what I'm aiming at? Here's the hypothesis:
4. This, this minimalist joyful pleasure-making, is the true luxury. Not the apparent richness of the new complexities. In the world of useless purity, everything only serves the joy of simple aesthetic pleasure. More complex works are not quite like that - they have an inner game to play. The elements enter a dialogue, start relations and societies, with their conflicts and functions and disruptions. Here, there is only the ping of a shot of pleasure. This engine moves nothing. It is here to make me smile (or bring inspiration, or scare) - and I turn it off as soon as I have. And don't be mistaken - if I had one of those and got bored with and could afford it, it would go to waste.
4a. Ah, you might say, but the truly great art is one we don't get bored with. Possibly. Yet how often do we actually go back to contemplate (not just think about or admire or analyze) a work of contemporary "minimalist" art? Does it mean it's because it's not that great? What if it's about something else? What if it is an element of luxury, a game we play with ourselves, to feel the exquisite taste of the sophisticated dish, and then to ditch it as soon as we're fed up? It wouldn't be a question of bluff, of fakeness, of shallowness. It would be a question of use. Of why we crave it, this new. Of how we make it useful after all.
David Foldvari, Wrestler
(via)
Monday, December 28, 2009
Despite the detailed appearance of this papercraft Lamborghini Countach LP400, it is actually a fairly simple build with only 26 parts. My favorite part of the model is that the template gives the option of having the headlights in either an open or closed position. Another nice touch is that there are three body color options: red, yellow and white. Created way back in 2000 by Japanese designer, Yasu Tanaka, the template for this 1:30 scale model is available for download here.
Here we have a set of ten scatter and five art water splash brushes for Adobe Illustrator from r2010. You can use them for decorating your artwork or designing abstract background elements...
To use expand the ZIP archive, load the .AI file in Adobe Illustrator and open the brushes palette (Window>Brushes / F5). Download
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Now you have new brushes for your web design, it's time to look for web hosting plans that will fit your budget.
In this tutorial Jacob Cass takes us through the different stages of the logo design process: researching, composing a design brief, sketching, reflecting, developing, color brainstorming and presentation...
"Logo design in today’s world is totally underrated. People don’t understand how important a good logo is and how valuable it is to their business. Let me guide you through the basics of what makes a good logo, while also walking you through the process of creating the identity and logo design for one of my recent clients, Vero, a limited liability company based in Miami, Florida. Hopefully, this will give you an understanding of what actually goes on behind the scenes while creating a professionally designed logo..." Proceed to tutorial page
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Examine the spirits that speak in you. Become critical. --Carl Jung
When the fantasies reach a certain level of intensity, they begin to break through into consciousness and create a conflict situation that becomes perceptible to the patient himself, splitting him into two personalities with different characters.
This task is so exacting, and its fulfillment so advantageous, that he forgets himself in the process, losing sight of his instinctual nature and putting his own conception of himself in place of his real being. In this way he slips imperceptibly into a purely conceptual world where the products of his conscious activity progressively replace reality.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
One of my favorite science fiction movies is The Fifth Element, but papercraft models based on the film are virtually non-existent. This paper toy is one of the few examples I have come across. Now the face of this "Lila" Russian paper toy doesn't look much like Milla Jojovich in my opinion, but the costume and the orange hair are give aways that it is meant to be the character "Leeloo" from The Fifth Element. From the front, the oddly distorted body of the paper toy makes it look somewhat like an Egyptian sphinx. The easy one piece template may be found here.
Gabriel Cornelius von Max, Monkeys as Judges of Art (1840)
(I'm the small one watching the work, the one in the middle, whose profile can be seen behind the bent knee)
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Everyone loves sock monkeys. A unique North American craft item, the first sock monkeys are thought to have been created sometime in the early 20th Century. Sock monkeys are crafted from the signature red heeled socks manufactured by the Nelson Knitting Mills (now Fox River Mills). The stuffed monkeys had become popular enough by 1920 that the Nelson Knitting Mills began including instructions on how to build them with every pair of red heeled socks they sold. This simple papercraft sock monkey was created by Tyler Tinsley in 2008 and may be downloaded here.
Dug up a header from last year... Merry Christmas to all of the CS readers and thanks to all of the ridiculous artists for the amazing support. I appreciate it!!!
Look for a new header before the new year as well as a little paragraph about what is to come in 2010... Later!
Santa illustration by Kirsten Zirngibl.
Keywords: Merry Christmas from conceptships! santa over city in rocket powered sleigh by kirsten zirngibl for provantage catalog cover
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Monday, December 21, 2009
Jonathan's blog.
Keywords: concept spaceship art environment designs from jonathan bach attended art center college of design worked for lucasfilm spark unlimited hotwheels los angeles california
The Minimum Wage Machine (work in progress), by Blake Fall-Conroy
The minimum wage machine allows anybody to work for minimum wage. Turning the crank will yield one penny every 5.04 seconds, for $7.15 an hour (NY state minimum wage). If the participant stops turning the crank, they stop receiving money. The machine's mechanism and electronics are powered by the hand crank, and pennies are stored in a plexiglas box.
Contrary to some other art experiments on work (I'm thinking of some of Santiago Sierra's early projects, but had I any memory, I'm sure a dozen other works would come to my mind), this, here, is not about objectifying labor. It takes the paradox of work-as-product in a somewhat different direction. If there is a minimum wage, any job should be paid the minimum wage. So turning the handle should actually always give you this result.
You can read a technical description of how it was constructed (didn't understand half of it) here.
Today I want to share a link to the only video that turned up over at artbabble.org when I searched for mosaic. Click Here to follow the video journey of a centuries-old mosaic that made its way from Turkey to Indy by way of the Louvre. The video is a bit long, but interesting. Even more interesting is the discovery of artbabble.org. This website is all video, and all art all the time. Check it out and be inspired.
If you want more info on the history of mosaics stumble on over to Amazon.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
I have begun experimenting with a method of creating papercraft that involves using digital photos. For my first attempt, I grabbed a Campbell's soup can from the pantry and took a few photos from which I created a 1:1 scale papercraft model. I intentionally chose a Campbell's soup can because I think it brings up some interesting questions. Is papercraft art? Most people would say that urban paper toys created by professional graphic designers are art, but what about papercraft created from 3D models ripped from video games? What about my soup can which is a life size paper replica of a real world object? I would like to believe that if Andy Warhol were still around he would say all these things are indeed art. In 2008, Warhol's 1:1 scale reproductions of a Brillo box, a Campbell's tomato juice box, a Del Monte peach halves box, and a Heinz tomato ketchup box together as a group sold for $4,750,000 at a Sotheby's auction. If only my papercraft tomato soup can would do as well. :) A download of the template is here.
