It’s hard to express the impact that the early Star Wars films had on my life. They inspired my imagination and contributed to countless hours spent in the backyard fighting the evil of Darth Vader and the Empire.
Sadly we lost one of the it’s creative visionaries this weekend with the passing of Ralph McQuarrie . He was responsible for much of the look and feel of the worlds, costumes, and sets that became the films. It was in fact some of his paintings that convinced the studio to finance the orignal film. I question whether any other illustrator or matte painter has ever had such a measurable impact on a film and culture. He will be missed.
Snowboarding LED Suit, so beautiful and tranquil
Year 2011 Top Photographs by National Geographic
Amazing photos from inside the cooling tower of an abandoned power plant.
Breaking Bad: The Finest Hour on Television That Almost Wasn’t
Newsweek just ran an article on my favorite show Breaking Bad. In it Vince Gilligan recounts the effort to getting the landmark show made.
“I’m still to this day astounded and amazed that it came to exist,” says Gilligan, a lumbering native of Farmville, Va., who has something of the Southern raconteur about him, with a boyish face and bourbon drawl that mask a wicked sense of story and character. “It’s kind of like the old saw that bumblebees shouldn’t be able to fly, aerodynamically speaking. Clearly they do, but on paper it doesn’t look like they should. It’s the same with Breaking Bad.”
Sounds just like a startup.
Smart new branding for the Van Gogh Museum featuring the late great master’s brush strokes.
via Brand New
A full write up on the tools and processes used to develop the Tron Legacy visual effects that includes a large number of beautiful art from the movie. I find it interesting to the read the perspective of the artist and what drove him sweat each pixel.
I take representing digital culture in film very seriously in lieu of having grown up in a world of very badly researched user interface greeble. I cringed during the part in Hackers (1995) when a screen saver with extruded “equations” is used to signify that the hacker has reached some sort of neural flow or ambiguous destination. I cringed for Swordfish and Jurassic Park as well. I cheered when Trinity in The Matrix used nmap and ssh (and so did you).
via at jtnimoy
For $50, artist David Lanham will connect with you over FaceTime, hand-sketch an image in about ten minutes, then use his digital arsenal to create a fully-realized digital portrait that you can use for just about anything. He’ll even mail a print to your house. (via FaceTime + $50 = Awesome Personalized Avatar
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Source: Mashable
