Ten Questions from the World, Ten Answers from Felicia Day

Filed under Found on the Web

Reddit solicited questions for Felicia Day to answer, and that’s what she does, right here in this video. The questions range from the thought provoking to the baffling (see #8) and the Incomparable Miss Day fields ’em all.

If you’ve somehow missed her web series The Guild or don’t realize that she was the all-singing, all-laundering female lead in Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog , well, shame on you, and you really ought to thank me now for fixing that.

She’s the Web’s poster person for doing what you really want to do even when nobody knows they want you to do it. If I could have an awesome niece she’d be just like Felicia Day.

Good stuff here for anyone who’s interested in creating and promoting their work on the Web… and great material for designing Imaginary Awesome Nieces.

Vocal Torture, or Demented Brilliance? You Decide

Filed under Found on the Web

Yikes! An in-home recording of the "Diva Dance" from one of my favorite movies, "The Fifth Element".

This seems so punishing. It reminds me that I once saw an analysis of Cab Calloway’s vocal range. The conclusion was that it wasn’t possible. Go Cab! And go Laura, whoever you are.

Kaluta’s Carson of Venus at “Diversions of the Groovy Kind”

Filed under Found on the Web

Well, now that Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual is out in the wild and fending for itself, and I’ve made some progress on some of my post-launch tasks there, I’m being pretty lazy today… and actually looking at Really Neat Things. I just haven’t been doing much of that lately.

And this Neat Thing really is neat… Diversions of the Groovy Kind has posted scans of two installments of Michael William Kaluta’s Carson of Venus – the Venus stories were my favorites of the Burroughs novels, and they still are now that I’ve dipped back into of them as an old codger.

These were back-up stories in a couple of other Burroughs titles at DC comics in the 1970s, and I missed them the first time around. So I was glad to fall over them today. I just wish the whole lot was back in print.

You can see Kaluta invoking a bit of Williamson and Krenkel in these pages. Great stuff!

360 Degree Panorama of a Vintage Power Station Control Room

Filed under Found on the Web

Here’s a fantastic 360 degree panoramic view of a vintage power station control room from the Czech Republic. You can zoom way the heck in as you rotate the view. Really nice!

Lots of gauges, displays, switches and whatnot. They just don’t make ’em like that any more :). And here’s the link to the large, large original version.

Thanks to Boing Boing for the link. Now I must model furiously. No, wait, I’m doing something else. Egad!

“Making Of” Article for Alexis Van der Hague’s “Papageno the Bird Catcher”

Filed under Computer Graphics, Found on the Web

One of my very first posts here at the Web-O-Blog was about Alexis Van der Hague’s animation Stilt Walkers: an animated short that was rendered with 3D tools in such a way that it recalled the style of traditional paintings. That, and the lyrical style of the piece, impressed the heck out of me. Just lovely.

3D Total is hosting a "Making Of" article for a new image by Van der Hague. Here we see a portrait, within an 18th century landscape, of Papageno from Mozart’s The Magic Flute.

This time around we get not just the final product, which is sensational, but a breakdown of how Van der Hague has used 3D tools (ZBrush, Maya, and Mudbox) to build something that’s beautifully not photorealistic. That’s pretty close to a description of what I try to do. It’s just that the "not photorealistic" styles we’re each aiming for are pretty different.

This article’s a great example of how that can be done. Excellent work!

Wally Wood’s Science Fiction Illustrations – 1957-1969

Filed under Found on the Web

Golden Age Comic Book Stories has posted a collection of Wally Wood’s science fiction magazine illustrations from 1957 through 1969.

Wood’s one of my favorites among the EC comics artists although I got to know his work later, through his work for the Warren magazines and for Marvel comics. It’s great to see these illustrations for Galaxy. They’re a real departure from his distinctive inking style: "Make everything black that should be black; then make some more stuff black that shouldn’t be black." (That’s my paraphrase, but I think it’s pretty close.)

While you’re there, don’t miss the recent Frank R. Paul and Big Little Books posts. Mister Doortree never disappoints.

Inkling – an iPhone app for Sketching with Variable Line Weights

Filed under Found on the Web

"Fun for everyone, but especially artists and non-artists."

Way to narrow it down!

Inkling is another iPhone app by my old friend Eric Daniels (his first was the Quantum Universe Splitter). This time Eric’s left the fabric of spacetime alone so we can concentrate on doodling with iPhones.

Inkling uses the touch sensitive screens of the iPhone/iPod Touch to give you natural brushstrokes whose width is controlled by the speed of your finger. Neat!

Random Pulp Sci Fi Cover: The Magnetic Brain

Filed under Found on the Web

Because nothing says "Thursday" like a well-coiffed woman being terrified by a magnetic brain.

Delayed Linkage: Greg Brotherton’s Dystopias, and Atomic Rockets

Filed under Found on the Web, Hodgepodge

I spend most of my days inside my own head. I admit it. I’m not ashamed. But usually I make the time to pop my metaphorical head above the waters, notice interesting things, and jot them down in here.

Lately I’ve been keeping that head down a bit more than usual because what I’ve been immersed in is not a metaphor: it’s just a great big project that I hope to finish soon. Ish. So today, here are a couple of things I’ve meant to share… but haven’t. After which – head down, full speed ahead, silent running.

Greg Brotherton’s New Museum Show

I’ve written before about Greg Brotherton’s sculptures, which are remarkable pieces that combine found objects with new metals, wood, and other materials.

His newest work is now on display in a show called Discoveries in Dystopia at the Oceanside Museum of Art, near San Diego in California. The new work concentrates on dystopian views of workers in fascinating but forbidding settings: cubicles, desks and machines that enfold their laborers in Sysiphean toil.

Like Brotherton’s other works the textures and their contrasts are lovely to the eye and there are occasional grace notes (like the "Back Space" typewriter key shown here) that reward the careful observer. Wonderful stuff!

The museum’s show runs through March 19, and there’s a "Meet the Artist" event on February 6.

ATOMIC ROCKETS Web Site

If you’ve seen my own work, you may have guessed that of all the things I may be about, scientific accuracy is, well, absent. If I can fool you into thinking that a thing might work, well, job done, right? Because things like open cockpit roadster "rockets" aren’t the most practical or likely sort of vehicles in the first place.

On the other hand, I appreciate scientific accuracy in science fiction (which is not exactly what I do, anyway). Authors can get away with fooling me, too, but they have to work at it a bit if what they’re doing is cast in a realistic mode.

So I was delighted on a couple of levels when I discovered the Atomic Rockets web site. It doesn’t hurt for me to get a little better at fooling you, after all, and the material’s pretty interesting in its own right.

Because Atomic Rockets is a large and growing compilation of information about how spaceships and related technologies actually need to work, and why. The examples are a mix of real aerospace experience and research with science fiction examples – good, bad, and ugly – from decades worth of fiction and movies.

And there are plenty of equations to help you to calculate whether your own space ship is going to be able to make that trip to Neptune. If not, you can research some of the other types of propulsion!

So I’ve made plenty of discoveries there already and look forward to more. The site is the ongoing project of Winchell D. Chung Jr. – have a look!