Art Wortd Coop

As if I don't have enough works in progress already with Star Trek and comic book character mask projects, I have started working on some papercraft based on 3D models ripped from Tron 2.0. Tron 2.0 is a 2003 video game which should not to be confused with Tron 2 the movie sequel scheduled to be released in 2011. For those unfamiliar, the story lines of both the original 1982 movie and the video game involve humans who are transported to an electronic realm inside a computer where programs appear as living beings. This papercraft is of goggles worn by "Resource Hogs", typical enemy programs in the video game. Template info is as follows:

Scale: 1:1 (estimated)
Finished Size: roughly 8"(20.3 cm) long
Number of sheets: 1
Number of parts: 5
Difficulty: 1/5
Download: Here

As with the Star Trek Elite Force papercraft I am doing, I will be starting simple with the Tron 2.0 models and working towards greater complexity. I think the more complex Tron models will be beautiful to behold with their brilliant colors and elaborate patterns. You can get a taste of what I am talking about from the image of the Hog above.

I never cry at movies. With that said, I must admit this afternoon's movie really got under my skin, and I needed a few tissues after watching Wendy and Lucy. It is a small quite movie that will make you think about how easy it is to become homeless. It is also a movie about love and sacrifice. If you are a fan of independent movies with a slower and often quieter pace then this is a movie for you. There is very little dialogue and nothing blows up, but still a great movie.

Just to give cat loving papercrafters equal opportunity with robot dog and dragon loving papercrafters, here is a cat illusion papercraft. ^_^ Just like the Super Robot Dog I posted yesterday, if constructed correctly this kitty's eyes and head will appear to follow you around the room as you move. I like to give credit where credit is due, but I was unable to find out who created this one. Perhaps the text at the bottom of the template would provide a clue if I could find someone to translate it for me. A copy of the template can be found at /po/ Archives Papercraft & Origami Database.

These felines were tough. It is always a challenge to fit multiple pets in one portrait. In this situation we had 3 cats shot from 3 different angles. I love the tabby in the box.

This robot dog is a new take on the optical illusion dragon papercraft that you may have seen. Illusion papercraft such as this are constructed in such a way that as you move about the room the head and eyes appear to follow you. Entitled "Super Robot: Dog Version", this papercraft was designed by graphic designer Tanarat Ruamwang, Thailand, 2008. Both the template for the robot dog and a blank template to create your own illusion papercraft are available at Ruamwang's blog here.

I am dragged along by a strange new force. Desire and reason are pulling in different directions. I see the right way and approve it, but follow the wrong.

--Ovid, The Metamorphosis (qtd. Jonathan Haidt)


About two months ago, my girlfriend and I broke up and I picked up smoking after five years.

I must have forgotten how long life actually is. Because I believed I would never pick up another cigarette again. During my five year stint of no drugs, no alcohol, and no cigarettes, I also practiced meditation daily and didn't eat meat. And I exercised six days a week.

There was a beautiful discipline to my life. My body was trim, my mind was clear, my goals were within reach.

I look back at the era of my rigid self-control and wonder. I wonder if I was happier living in a healthy body. I wonder if I truly appreciated my health.

I remember the lifestyle demanded an inordinate amount of work and conscious effort to maintain. But there was also an energy that helped me along, a natural stimulant my body must have been producing to keep me so focused.

And now?

Now I'm chain-smoking, staying up late, and eating poorly. I'm also less concerned about having the occasional drink or the occasional joint. What happened? Where did I stumble and fall?

It seems I covered the territory of the sober, the nicotine-free, and salubrious, and now I'm flirting with the other side. Maybe life is better--or easier--caffeine-addled, ignorant, and undisciplined.

Things must have not been so wonderful before; otherwise I never would have forsaken my wholesome lifestyle. There must have been some boredom or irritation with that life to dissuade me . . .

In my current wasteland of petty vices, I find no shortage of problems. But that also seems to be the advantage. My physical concerns take up so much of my attention that I have little time to ruminate on emotional setbacks.

This question of the divided self has been revolving in my mind. Only because the division is so painfully obvious when you want to quit smoking.

Last night, I laid in bed, after having my last cigarette of the day.

"That's it. You're done. You-are-done. No more smoking!"

And it made perfect sense at the time because my lungs practically felt like I was experiencing the onset of some mild form of emphysema; short, shallow breaths, the body convulses with cold-like symptoms.

I got out of bed and put the Nicorette gum I'd bought two weeks ago on the dresser drawer. This pantomime of quitting, these small, ineffectual acts--I'm familiar with. I've thrown away a dozen ashtrays and several full packs of cigarettes before pathetically searching the garbage to recover them.

Morning came, and of course I remembered last night's ordeal, wanting desperately to quit. The gravitas! The suffering! I recalled it but I walked past it as one walks past a store window on their way to work.

How could it be happening again? I'm lighting a cigarette, I'm inhaling, I'm even enjoying the damn thing in a sick sort of way.

But my mind--changed. It must have. It changed over night. Because in the morning, I didn't feel the same emotion, the same devotion to quitting, the same visceral disgust.

Instead, in that languid mood of not caring, I drifted to the garage, the place where I go every morning to smoke a cigarette.

It makes me curious that we have these unconscious desires which are essentially controlling us. In The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt compares the self to a rider on the back of an elephant. He writes:

The image that I came up with for myself, as I marveled at my weakness, was that I was a rider on the back of an elephant. I’m holding the reins in my hands, and by pulling one way or the other I can tell the elephant to turn, to stop, or to go. I can direct things, but only when the elephant doesn’t have desires of his own. When the elephant really wants to do something, I’m no match for him.

But the power to change your life is real. I know it's real because I've changed my life before. I used to be a drug addict.

But life is long and nothing stays forever. We may think we will never waver, that we will stay married until death, that we'll never go back to smoking or overeating or compulsive shopping.

But we do. To waver is only human. And these decisions to quit, to change, to reform, to improve, I want to embrace them--and more than that--I want to seriously carry them out and change my life.

But it is perhaps wiser to have the knowledge that someday, no matter what changes I do happen to make, I'll have to start at the beginning again.

I gave my husband a word the other day. He crafted a poem around it. It is a cool word and a lovely poem. The word is Petrichor. From Wikipedia: Petrichor (from Greek petros, "stone" + ichor "blood of the gods") is the word for the scent of rain on dry earth. I wonder if there is a word for the scent of wet dog after a good rain?

My muse murmurs a word in the dark,

a bug in my ear, caught crawling

through pages, or snatched

from the airwaves, scribbled on scrap,

an atomic surprise just lying in wait.

She's saved it for a stormy night,

or a morning like this,

where the black blood of gods

runs roughshod through gutters,

out to the garden,

down the windows in rivers,

over-topping the birdbath,

to quench the parched maples.

Later, after sunrise, I'll be tempted, I know,

to walk barefoot and shirtless,

take a roll through the grass

while steaming from the cup

that I leave on the porch,

a redolent french roast,

plays counterpoint perfume

to a mushrooming

petrichor mélange.

© 2009 Dan Collins

Master, placid are
All the hours
We lose,
If, in losing them,
Like in a vase,
We put flowers.

(fragment of a poem by Ricardo Reis, aka Fernando Pessoa)

Tommi Toija, the author of the above sculptures, has an exhibition at the Institut Finlandais in Paris until the end of June.

Summer time often mean happy smiling pup portraits. This month I have had several shots sent in with wide happy grins. I always encourage folks to run around with their pups before getting the camera out. It will make your pooch relax a bit and if they get heated up you can not help but get a good open mouth smile.

Well, it's not made out of paper, but it's close. At Instructables.com I found instructions on how to build a dice tower and decided to make one for myself. This particular tower is constructed using black foamcore, toothpicks, self-adhesive felt, and some glue. I didn't follow the instructions exactly. For one, I thought it looked nice enough without spray painting the whole thing as the original designer did. Also for quieter use, I applied felt to all the baffles inside the tower and not only to the tray at the bottom. Easy to follow instructions and a short video of the tower in action may be found here.

One of the pleasures of writing art reviews is that the writer gets to enter the world of the artist’s creations. Obligingly, the reader follows as the writer gently leads her into another dimension, another continent of possibility. Perhaps no other living artist deserves a guide, a shaman, for his works than the Russian master, Michael Cheval.

I am no shaman; but I will lead.

I set out to write illustration art reviews for Escape into Life, but inevitably I stepped into a brier patch of fine art, notably Cheval’s. The instant I saw his work, I knew I had to write about it. The images had cast a spell on me . . .

There is magic in this artwork. Not only are the paintings populated with magical characters, court jesters, and magicians themselves, but a supernatural magic suffuses each painting like the flower juice Oberon orders Puck to drop into Titania’s eyes as she’s sleeping in Midsummer Night’s Dream. “Love-in-Idleness” is the name of the flower in the play. Likewise, Cheval’s artwork conjures visions of supernatural spheres, doorways into parallel realities, and glimpses into absurdist theaters.

Absurdity is Cheval’s main subject. But he creates his own definition of absurdity, which his paintings seek to reveal. To Cheval, absurdity is a “game of the imagination, where all ties are carefully chosen to construct a literary plot.” In addition, he says that absurdity is “an inverted side or reality, a reverse side of logic.”

Cheval’s works are grouped into themes; "Nature of Absurdity", "Eternity of Absurdity", "Illusions of Absurdity", "Reality of Absurdity", and "Sense of Absurdity".

The shape of a dress or a faucet will become another object, a surreal object, such as a table or a horn instrument; but it will retain the original shape of the dress or the faucet. Such are Cheval’s games of the imagination; we do not always know what we are looking at. The eye must adjust to the picture object-by-object as it simultaneously takes in a new chessboard of reality.

Despite the illogic pervading the works, there is a coherency of representation. The heightened realism reminiscent of 17th century Dutch art does just that—the precision knits our illusions together to such a degree that we see Cheval’s paintings as actualities playing out in another dimension.

There are so many delectable images on Cheval’s website, and a viewer can spend hours looking at them, lost in a labyrinth of dreams; but for the sake of review, I will talk about two of my favorites.


Let us begin with the little boy in the jester’s costume holding a lute, and with the slightest turn of his head, looking outside of the painting. The painting is called, “Air of Attraction.”

It seems he’s sitting on a green velvet pillow in the middle of a dirt road. But the dirt road, like the boy himself, is illuminated by sunshine, and green plants and grass grow right beside him. The boy’s costume is distinctive. He wears a floppy jester’s hat with four prongs and jingle bells on the end. He wears white stockings and purple knickers, and his dress seems more meant for the royal court than the middle of a road. But there he is, playing his lute and dreaming off into the distance.

Gravity or the lack thereof plays a large part in Cheval’s parallel realities. And here we see some apples on the ground (obeying gravity) and one apple floating above the boy’s head (not obeying gravity). The boy doesn’t look at the apple, but just under it; his gaze fixed by an innocent daydream as he plays his instrument. We almost hear the measure of delay between the plucked strings and are drawn along with him into a current of distraction.

And what does the title mean? Perhaps the “air of attraction” is how involuntary attention comes across us like a spell and makes us all children for its duration. The child represents this phenomenon best because it is during childhood that we are engrossed in our games and our imaginary worlds. Moreover, the painting has an intangible quality of air; the sunlight on the dirt, the bright colors of the boy’s costume, the boy’s eyes lost in distraction, the floating apple; all of these elements conjure a sense of the ethereal. It is as if a supernatural law is guiding our distractions and attractions.


We move to our next painting, “Lullaby for the Hero”, and in this case our hero is another little boy. A mime in gold and crimson-striped tights and regal Late Stuart costume holds the boy in his arms. The boy is dressed in armor and a royal blue cape; he holds a lance pointing down and stares directly at us. The mime is looking off to the side. It appears as if there was some horseplay, the mime has just picked the boy up off the ground, and now the scene is fixed in stillness. The knocked-over chair suggests this earlier bit of chaos.

The boy’s sister (presumably) holds a magic wand and looks dazed by her own magic. She is in the picture but not in it. Her gaze betrays her. She wears a baroque pink dress with a collar. Contrast her eyes, mesmerized--to her brother’s eyes, which are alert and aware of us. The toys on the floor of the children’s playroom, a wooden rocking horse with a bicycle chain, a globe, alphabet blocks, and a train, are like riddles. Why is there a toy train if trains haven’t even been invented yet? And what century is this exactly? The costumes seem to place it in the 17th century, but did they even know the world was round at that time?

And then, the most powerful image looms in the background. The wall of the children’s playroom is a gray-scale mural of a war battle with men on horses. A violent, bloody scene, it reminds me of the Shield of Achilles in Ulysses. The shadow-play over the gray-scale mural adds to the gloominess of it. The mural is actually Leonardo Da Vinci's "Battle of Anghiari".

The connection between the boy’s play-armor and the “real” battle on the wall has many different connotations. Does the mural forebode a war that the boy, when he grows up, will fight in and perhaps die? Or is the mural there only to reveal the other side of child-hero's play world? Could the children be acting out an adult world in their playroom? And if so what does the little girl in pink represent? She doesn’t seem to belong in the “real world”. But the boy, who stares at us, knows he belongs.

The mime is a particularly evocative figure to me. My mother was an oil painter and she used to dress up in a mime’s costume and paint herself, looking into a mirror. I remember her with the white face makeup and the blank, bemused expression just like the mime in “Lullaby for the Hero.”

Who is singing the lullaby?

The mime is the artist and his song breaks the boy’s fierce play-acting; the song puts his wild fantasies to rest. He is only a boy-hero for now, not a real hero yet.

In his essay, “Abusurd Intacta,” Mark Gauchax writes:

Instead of relying on cultural sources, he (Cheval) explores deep motives of unconsciousness that are easily understood because they are universal, regardless of one’s geography, experience or knowledge. His paintings lead their independent life. Outside of time and space, this artist spends too much time communicating with specters.

The few cultural and historical references we have in Cheval’s paintings, 17th century dress, courtly figures, jesters, are all jumbled. The narrative is not linear; as Gauchax writes, the paintings cut through historical time and the probabilities of space. What we connect with, then, what we make sense of, is our own subconscious.

As the mime in “Lullaby for the Hero” becomes my own mother who has passed away, I slowly begin to see myself in every little boy that Cheval has ever painted. And the magic, Oberon’s magic, Cheval’s magic, Shakespeare’s magic, is the belief that I am represented here, and here, and here . . .

Michael Cheval's Website

jmhardy cg portfolio.





Keywords: concept spaceship vehicle illustration art by justin togail currently employed as a teacher at full sail university winter park florida serpentsailor jmhardy concept art sample portfolio

Very simple but nice map of the Glasgow Subway.
Author unknown.
1 AI : 200 KB

Download

Very lovely made by Craig from Boston. Thanks for this nich vector icebear.
Visit http://hellocraigsilva.blogspot.com/
1 AI : 1 MB

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Collection of some mixed up vector sillhouettes.
Author unknown. Only for personal use.
1 AI : 1,3 MB

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Four vector Puzzle elements. Very rough made.
Author unknown.
1 AI : 1,2 MB

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Real cool rough vector metal texture.
Author unknown. Only for personal use.
1 AI : 400 KB

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As I mentioned in a earlier post, I have started working on some papercraft based on 3D models from the video game Star Trek Voyager Elite Force. Elite Force is based on the characters and settings of the Star Trek: Voyager television show. I am starting out simple and working my way toward more and more complex models. This Borg Cube papercraft is the first to be finished. The special stand with an indentation to hold the cube is my own design. The Cube is the typical starship of the Borg, a race of cybernetic beings whose goal is to "assimilate" all other races they encounter. Template information for the model is as follows:

Scale: approximately 1:53000
Finished Size: 3"(7.6 cm) high including base
Number of sheets: 2
Number of parts: 3
Difficulty: 1/5
Download: Here

Other Cube Papercraft:
Allspark Cube
Horadric Cube
Lament Configuration
Business Card Cubes

Whatever it is the Internet has created--this force moves with light-speed--and I argue it will ultimately surpass the traditional "failed" economy, leaving mega-institutions and mega-corporations to operate, if they operate at all, in a second, inferior space.

What does this new economy look like? How does it function differently from capitalism? And what are the changes in social behavior?

This month's issue of Wired magazine hints at some of the distinguishing features of a "new new economy" (Chris Anderson's phrase). Anderson writes:

What we have discovered over the past nine months are growing diseconomies of scale. Bigger firms are harder to run on cash flow alone, so they need more debt (oops!). Bigger companies have to place bigger bets but have less and less control over distribution and competition in an increasingly diverse marketplace. Those bets get riskier and the payoffs lower.

And then Anderson quotes venture capitalist Paul Graham who says, "It turns out the rule 'large and disciplined organizations win' needs to have a qualification appended: 'at games that change slowly'. No one knew till change reached a sufficient speed."

I'm not going to pretend that I'm an economist; because I'm not. But what I will do is tell you my experience.

I am witnessing an extraordinary level of collaboration and connection between strangers over the Internet. Many of you know that I run an Arts and Culture webzine called Escape into Life. Part of my job is to find writers and artists to feature in the webzine. I speak to scores of individuals each month asking for their participation in some form, whether it is posting their artwork or asking them to write articles.

Ten years ago, communicating with a stranger over the Internet and asking them to do an assignment for you was unheard of. I'm not paying these writers and my site barely gets 200 hits a day. My influence is virtually nil. And yet, I am greeted with interest and excitement when I tell people I would like them to contribute.

What has changed? Are we acting differently toward each other as a result of social technology?

I think everyone would agree that social media and Internet collectivity is changing the order of society. We don't know the extent social media will overturn aspects of the traditional marketplace, but we are seeing some interesting results.

As a professional blogger and social media freelancer, my work puts me at the center of a perfect storm that is leveling the playing field between institutions and individuals. These days it seems like the bigger you are, the worse off you are; and the tighter your network, the smaller your scope, the better you'll fare.

The New York Times talks about the influence Amazon.com is starting to have on the publishing industry because digital books for the Kindle are expected to be cheaper. The publishing conglomerates don't want to lower their prices, but the people demand that they do; and Amazon.com is actually putting their ass on the line, taking cuts from sales, because they have more faith in their new economic model then the economic model of corporate capitalism.

It's ridiculous to pay $15 for a digital copy of a book anyways. The article suggests that eventually the publishing houses will bow to Amazon's pricing just as the music industry did to the i-Tunes store.

Mega-corporations cannot compete with the innovative technologies of startups. And as Paul Graham keenly points out--they cannot keep up with the speed. It's like waking up from a long sleep and finding yourself in a new location. The landscape has drifted from a physical location to a digital one. And in the digital world, the same rules of purchase simply do not apply.

With behavior changing between individuals toward a greater collectivist spirit, and prices changing to accommodate an economy based on the decentralized power of millions of small companies, it is not hard to foresee a time when nations become artifacts.

We are working together with people from all over the world to create, produce, sell, share, trade, hire, and invent. A global collectivist society is not a science fiction utopia but an emerging reality and I can't wait to see myself as a citizen of the world.

ARTWORK BY ANDY MUELLER

I've bumped up Danny to the top here as the weekly header.
Age 19?...dannydraws.com


























Danny Gardner conceptships weekly header #46 May 22nd - June 5th, 2009

Keywords: concept vehicle car spaceship design by 19 year old entertainment design student at art center los angeles california united states danny gardner www.dannydraws.com

Comic Book Character Mask Series - Part 4
Here is another Marvel Comics entry in my ongoing comic book mask series. I modeled the Silver Surfer texture for this one after Jack Kirby's artwork on the cover of Fantastic Four #50. Template information for the mask is as follows:

Scales: 1:1 & 1:2 (approximately)
Finished Sizes:
Full Size - 6"(15.2 cm) x 9.75"(24.8 cm) x 1.5"(3.8 cm)
Half Size - 3"(7.6 cm) x 4.9"(12.4 cm) x 0.75"(1.9 cm)
Number of sheets: 3 or 2 depending on size
Number of parts: 14
Difficulty: 3/5
Download: Here

One thing I did different with this mask compared to previous masks is that I put the texture of the mask on the optional back cover of the mask rather than leaving the back cover blank. That way the back cover of the full size mask is almost large enough to be used as a flat mask by itself.

Previous comic book character masks:
Spider-Man
Carnage
Deadpool

Maciej's website and post on conceptships.org.












Keywords: concept spaceship art from maciej rebisz poland polish design illustration flying meteor asteroid debris diving homeworld like style ship cartoon sunset sunrise on alien planet moons

No fall is ever great.
The distance from the tip of the nose
to the dirt is always measured in the smallest units.
It is always ridiculous, always too human, the
concrete body against the concrete soil,
the sight losing focus, and the hands,
the hands.


Richard Beacham's drawing, at the Boxbird gallery in London.

This sweet Golden Doodle is Kia. Her original image was a tad low in resolution and yet I think the artwork turned out fun. The smile on this blond baby makes the portrait shine. I really like the asymmetrical crop however I also proofed with a more traditional centered version. Later in the week I have a music cd to review and more art to post.

Amazing website portfolio from our friend Tyler West. Tyler on conceptrobots.






















Keywords: concept ship designs by tyler west studio bug insect style heavy armored helicopter chopper whale plane vehicles john berkey inspired spaceship art hover craft ship abstract spaceship shapes desert sand sailing barge ship rockets launching pad from alien planet