shiny things in messy little piles

Tag: pop-up books

Morning Linkage (Jan 5)

Transportation

If you’ve got 25 min­utes to kill and the desire for a new career in the excit­ing field of mil­i­tary avi­a­tion you might want to sit down with this video. Or maybe if you need at a look of the unfor­tu­nate his­to­ry of humor and pret­ty girls in train­ing films. 1943 Army Air Forces P‑47 Thun­der­bolt train­ing video. That real­ly is worth a watch for plane fiends. (Video 24:41)

For my Super­Mo­to lov­ing friends. The Black Pearl. But could you go out and get this one all dirty?

Pure, unadul­ter­at­ed yum. BSA Gold Star Day­tona Spe­cial. Because some­time restora­tion is way more effec­tive than customizing.

Science

Must be some­thing about the hol­i­day hang­over but I can’t wrap my mind around any sort of seri­ous sci­ence news. Instead you get shit like this… io9 writ­ers and com­menters rule the world (again.) Why we need to do real, exper­i­men­tal sci­ence. Involves giraffes and water and no computers.

More help­ful­ly, and more seri­ous­ly. An insight­ful decon­struc­tion of the sub­tle aids that Google maps use to make their maps the most read­able maps on the web. (Arguably.)

Art, Images, and Design

Jim Flo­ra did this Baba Yaga late in his life. Won­der­ful depic­tion of the wise old witch.

Tan­gen­tial­ly, I was watch­ing a doc­u­men­tary recent­ly and saw a pic­ture of the cov­er of Char­lie Park­er’s Char­lie Park­er with Strings. Not my fav Bird album but the art work is way cool. So I went look­ing… David Stone Mar­tin did tons of the cov­ers that I remem­ber from my child­hood. Includ­ing the one at the top of the post. (NSFW — artis­tic nudes)

Animation

Pop-up fairy tales in French. Not at all what you’re expecting.

Morning Linkage (Dec 6)

Transportation

I love it when a com­pa­ny uses com­pe­tent styl­ish women to sell cars. I also love the unapolo­getic piz­zaz of these Tail fins from ’58.

Soft tail frame plus R1100RS engine… um… Here’s the fin­ish, click back to page 1 to read the entire sto­ry. Some of the cus­tom fab­ri­ca­tion and more impres­sive­ly mod­i­fi­ca­tions of stock parts from ran­dom mod­els are worth a look.

Pointless Editorial Commentary

One of the rare fun­nies I have to share with you all. Cook­ie Mon­ster in a fix.

Art, Images, and Design

The French artist Dran has a show in Lon­don this month, I Have Chalks. With a new twist on the usu­al prints on a the wall. 100 screen prints of one of his well known char­ac­ters, the lit­tle boy draw­ing on the wall, were made up with­out the back­ground. In oth­er words there’s no draw­ing on the wall. Darn then drew on each print. That’s a ter­ri­ble expla­na­tion. Just go look at the pictures.

I give you, with­out com­ment, The Archi­tec­t’s Broth­er.

The link to the exhi­bi­tion info at George East­man House is bro­ken. How­ev­er, Simone Preuss gives some back­ground on the artist and the process over on Envi­ron­men­tal Graffiti.

Animation

The video qual­i­ty isn’t the best but the tech­nique and the sto­ry­line are top-notch. Ani­ma­tion that mim­ics a pop-up book, the sto­ry of a duck that unwise­ly stalks a lit­tle boy. The Hap­py Duck­ling.

Long week = short links. But I’ll try to have some­thing for you every day.

Morning Linkage (Sep 8)

Transportation

Stun­ning indeed. I love the red cra­dle frame and the squat mush­roomy tank. Tri­umph.

You will, no doubt, have an opin­ion. I think the mechan­i­cals are inter­est­ing and the paint abominable.

Some­times a sim­ple clean up and sort a few details job turns into a real remake/remodel. Espe­cial­ly when the “run­ning” part of the advert was, well, opti­mistic. Some­times that remake turns out to be way more spe­cial than a sim­ple spruc­ing up could ever have been. A 1957 BSA B31 becomes a Club­man Gold­star Replica.

Unset­tling views of a beam that need­ed repair on the Taco­ma Nar­rows Bridge. I hat­ed dri­ving over it before. I may nev­er cross is again. (WS-DOT con­tin­ues to pub­lish inter­est­ing stuff on its blog and on flickr .)

Science

Sunspots are the celes­tial weath­er machines that dri­ve our atmos­phere (hyper­bole alert.) The Big Bear Solar Obser­va­to­ry cap­tured the best-so-far real light image of a sunspot recent­ly. It’s like a black hole in the sun. Very cool. There’s more inter­est­ing stuff at the obser­va­to­ry’s web­site includ­ing lots of raw data. I haven’t a clue what to do with the data but I want to applaud that it’s there, freely avail­able to any­one who cares to use it.

Art, Images, and Design

Anoth­er delight­ful lit­tle build­ing. This one per­fect for a bib­lio­phile with a tiny bit of a back yard. The Read­ing Nest would have been a per­fect hide away for the 13-year-old me. The Read­ing Nest is pre­fab and you can see pho­tos of one being trucked in and placed on site on the web­site of the architects.

Good­ly Crea­ture by Leah Palmer Preiss. A vin­tage feel and form but a mod­ern imag­i­nary ani­mal. Details of the Good­ly Crea­ture’s cre­ation on her blog, Curi­ous Art Lab.

Pop-ups, fairy tales, and an ani­mat­ed trail­er for a book. What could be bet­ter? Il Etait Une Fois, to be pub­lished in Novem­ber, illus­trates a hand­ful of fairy tales with com­plex pop-ups of cru­cial scenes. I par­tic­u­lar­ly like the play­ing card army from Alice in Won­der­land. Leave the sound on while watch­ing the video if you can. (Video)

it’s mid-week dar­lings, hang in there,