another dog thing

This is so heart warming :3

images from my morning

I want to make a t-shirt out of this.

Borofsky's Man in Space #2

Also, today's Daily Puppy is unbearable cute.

http://www.dailypuppy.com/puppies/frank-the-dachshund_2009-11-12

My Green Crocodile

Ross is much better at google-fu than me and found the video I was looking for originally! yaaaaaaaaaaay

Video Dump Inc

Discovering a love for Russian illustration and animation. Some of the illustrations are in the post before. I started looking for an animation that the Drafthouse showed before 500 Days of Summer, but I can't find it anywhere. It was called either Blue Alligator or Blue Crocodile or something. Instead I first found this:


Then started watching these:








I didn't watch them all all the way through though


The claymation in this one is incredibly impressive (imo)

Image Dump Inc

http://pingmag.jp/2006/06/02/how-japanese-style-illustration-works/
http://www.lostateminor.com/tag/japanese-illustrators/
http://riowang.blogspot.com/2008/04/educational-film.html

I should draw more.

Happy 4th!

..a day late, but this was the featured youtube video on my igoogle and I thought it was pretty neat.



Just noticed my youtube still thinks I'm Czech, I wonder how to change it. Speaking of I should probably blog about my trip while it's still fresh on my mind...we'll see

under par

so i'm still kinda upset I have to redo my design portfolio. I get to be a junior and everything but it's really knocked me down a peg. I agree with the professor's criticisms. It was clunky and inaccessible and the craftsmanship was embarrassing. I'm sure that in the end I'll appreciate the chance at a redo as a great learning experience. It is kind of intimidating though. I have to make an appointment with Gloria for another review at the end of the summer so I feel the second one has to be absolutely perfect.

Apparently there's some sort of design class in the communications school that made us Prague travel books. I think i was one of the first people to get a pick so I really like mine. It's small and pretty well designed. Most of the books were bound way better than I've done and it showed me the importance of perfect craftmanship :O

I plan to step up all my design work next year :}

fuzzy badly-lit pictures of my failed portfolio:

todo

Ok I need to remember to do this, so I'm putting it in a blogpost instead of writing it somewhere i won't see again

-explore the transitions, aesthetic values, and merits of the shifts between modernism, post-modernism, and our current shift back to simplicity and clarity, the battle between ornament and simplicity.
-remember websites that were big in the early 2000s that were used for fun and exploring, rather than simply spitting out information (kind of like robbie's final website for design history)
http://designhistorylab.com/students/polk/
http://www.thedollpalace.com/ (memories)
[also good-bye geocities! ;( )
-combine that and clean, simple, informative design (website)
-make it 3-d

Texas Conservative Outcry in 3...2...1...

Seems like a step in the right direction to me!

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/04/22/plan.b.age/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

"Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Cecile Richards said in a statement that the FDA's announcement is 'a strong statement to American women that their health comes before politics. And that's the way it should be. This decision is common-sense policy that will help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and protect the health and safety of all women.' "

Cellphone Caprice

This was my spotlight youtube video today on my iGoogle (and probably on youtube's front page too, but whatever) and I thought it was fabulous

soooooo

check it out :}

Let's Do the Time warp Again

Blah dear lord I need t update more often. I always think of something to write about but then I don't because I do other things instead. So, I'm going to crank this even though i should go to bed because Daylight Savings has totally fucked with my sleep schedule. I'm going to try to remember everything I've wanted to post about, even if its not relevant anymore and go backwards since its prolly easier that way.

First things first, tonight I saw Demetri Martin live. It was really funny, I was laughing nearly nonstop for an hour and a half and my face started to hurt.



I got to go up front and take photographs through a press pass wish Ross generously gave me. I had waited in line starting at 4 in the morning to get a ticket to get a place in line for a seat (ticket didn't guarantee a seat) and this way at least I got to go up front and take photos (though only for the first 5 minutes after which we were ushered out by the event staff) and I didn't have to wait in line for a seat. However, there was some bullshit with the planning and they originally told me there were no seats for photographers and that'd I'd have to leave after my 5 minutes were up. I told them that was kind of messed up because I had a ticket for the event and woulProxy-Connection: keep-alive Cache-Control: max-age=0 e waited for a seat had they told me 30 minutes earlier when I talked to them originally, so they let me sit in the back with the event staff which was cool, the performance was just as funny anywhere in the room.



Okay, now onto the past.

Sunday before last (the 1st) Ross and I went to the 81st Annual Austin Kite Festival. Getting there was a bitch but being there was really fun. Watching tons of kites fly is really relaxing.



Sadly, we couldn't get the 5$ kite I'd bought at Wal-Mart the night before to fly. During one attempt we got our string all tangled with some little boy's kite who's kite was flying just fine (we brought it down) and I felt super bad. After that we gave up and took to watching, which was the wiser choice anyway.


This pirate ship kite was tiiight.


This dog made the craziest noises. Instead of barking it was like he was doing some exotic bird call. At first people would be like omg vicious dog but then burst out laughing at how ridiculous it sounded. I found it hilarious :}




This poor girl had the same $5 kite we did and she couldn't get it up in the air either :{

Sunday was Austin's 81st annual kite festival, so we got to thinking how funny it'd be to see dapper young lads and lasses in the 20s flying kites. Well, Ross found a picture from the first kite festival:


Apparently the festival used to take place in "Lamar Park" which has been lost to the ages; no one knows where it was located.

I believe I also wanted to talk about the stupid NYC protest in which NYC students (and non students) occupied a school cafeteria to demand a number of things, first and foremost no discipline for their actions. Watching the video of their negotiations with the campus police just shows that they're lameasses who wanna be hippies in the 60s. I like when he goes through their bags to guess what might be confiscated and lists several macbooks, then makes jokes about the administration drinking "corporate water" and "not wanting clothes because they only wear suits" then he laughs at his own jokes.



It's important to note the cameraman/narrator of the video is not even an nYU student which explains why he doesn't want to show his NYU ID.

Also these protesters have a video of them piling tables against a door while "Time Warp" from Rocky Horror plays in the background which is just so tremendously lame I can't think f any other word for these people other than "douchebags".

I think the other thing I wanted to go over was Design talk.

This happened like a month ago, but anyway...We had these sketch-up projects in which we had to find a way to 'smooth space' between two boundaries. Mine was pretty simple, just a camcorder and a tv. The camera would record and the tv would play the footage from exactly 24 hours earlier. Riley asked the class if time was a boundary that could be smoothed. Some people argues yes and some said only with the past but not with the future. I'd have to agree with the both crowd though. When smoothing space with the past we can use images or video or text, but we cannot put the audience literally back in time to experience the event we're portraying. For smoothing space with the future we plan. We try to assemble our future by making appointments, to-do lists, and plans, so that we don't feel completely in the dark about what's to come. But still, we cannot transport to the future to experience the actual event, there's still uncertainty with planning. Soooo you can smooth space between both the past and the future but for both it's not a completely smooth transition. yay designphilosophy conversations! desosophy..philosign..

Also in the same class period Ayham showed this awesome movie-diagram which mapped the flights of the US over 24 hours.

Waaatch iiiit

It's cool. except for the part where it turns into moving blobs..that's pretty lame and doesn't communicate anything effectively imo, but then it goes back to be cool.

The flight pattern maps reminded me of the maps of Railroad tracks in the late 1800s we looked at in my history class. I like when my classes connect to each other..like during freshmen year when we talked about Tycho Brahe in my astronomy class, art history class, and czech culture class.



I guess not too much has changed in terms of population layout :p

Ok I might as well make this all one post...more recent design thangs :o

It seems like eeeveryone's rebranding these days. At first I wasn't really feeling the new Pepsi logo, but I must say, it's really growing on me. I thought their new commercial was fun and simple and they're new bottling for Pepsi Natural is gorgeous (weird adjective for a bottle right?)


So cleeean, I don't even like soda but this drink looks refreshing~

I also think I like the Jack in the Box rebrand, though I'm sure a lot of people won't. Oops! I spoiled the ending of the Jack is back commercial series of him in the hospital. The end is that the have a new logo.


The packaging makes it.


And I'll leave you with this. An artist in Britain made happy face clouds out of vegetable something or other and hydrogen and they floated around for 30 minutes before evaporating. The video is really cheery (I think) :)





http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/10/view/5553/happy-cloud-by-stuart-semple.html

all right I tink that's it. woo~ :}

30 foot tall dead things

The pro-lifers have set up a 30 foot tall display of bloody mangled aborted fetuses right in front of Gregory, it was in front of east mall yesterday, but today it features more pictures, and a location i can see right after i step outside of Jester. I haven't bothered talking to the people that creep around the 'free speech boards' asking you your opinions so they can counter them and push their own onto you. I haven't written anything on the board either because no new points no one's heard a million times have been brought up, and I firmly believe if you have taken a stance, no one's going to convince you over to other side with some out-of-the-bag commentary. No matter I said to them they're not about to switch to pro-choice. No matter what they say to me, I'm not going to think abortion should be made illegal. But I do kinda wanna say what I think anyway, so I'll mumble it into the vacuum of the internet, where it won't annoy anyone unless they choose to read it.
First of all, let me say I believe their boards are a form of terrorism, and the graphic images should not be presented 30 feet tall in a public place. Yesterday I saw two different groups of elementary schoolers touring the campus, I didn't even know how babies were made when I was their age, seeing a 10 foot tall bloody fetus would've been pretty damn scarring.
The free speech boards reveal some pretty black and white opinions on the matter from the pro life crowd "KILLING BABIES" and such. Really that is the only arguement, that 1st trimester abortion is the same as killing a full grown adult.
No. it isn't.
Children, adults, whatever that has lived, breathed, and walked on this earth has effected the earth in some way. People have memories, experiences, friends, and family who they have left a mark on, which is why it is so painful when a human life is lost. I don't believe a fetus is a human life for this reason. A nine week old fetus, which is what many of their pictures depict, are effecting no one's life but the mother that is carrying it, unless the mother has told other people, but that fetus cannot possibly be leaving an effect on anyone but the mother. Once a child is born, they can be taken care of by other people, adoption ect. During pregnancy, no one can be responsible for the baby except the woman carrying it. It is inside her body. Pregnancy wreaks havoc on a woman's body, it prevents school and job performance, there are social stigmas attached to illegitimate pregnancies. Being forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term is cruel, and a woman who does not want to carry a baby will probably not be a responsible carrier of a fetus. The responsibility during that time cannot be handed off to another person. Imagine tomorrow you are given a human life to be 100% responsible for for the next 9 months. You cannot have help from anyone and they are with you 100% of the time. Would you be willing to take that responsibility? Maybe. Maybe you are such a giving person you'd be willing to completely sacrifice 9 months of your life for this person you have no connection at all with, and maybe through those 9 months you would establish a connection with the person. But, many many people would not be ready and willing to take this responsibility. They'd be resentful and most likely neglectful, if they thought this person was ruining their life, whether it be through suffering school work or job performance, social aspects, physical ramifications, or financial burdens. That's what illegal abortions would force many to go through. Illegal abortions would not create healthy, loved, cared for babies. The world has more than plenty of neglected, abandoned, starving children. Why not help the people already on earth instead of focusing on adding more to the problem?
But many pregnant woman wouldn't even begrudgingly take that responsibility. Abortions were common before they were legal, they were just much much more dangerous and often resulted in the loss of the mother's life as well. If abortions were to again become illegal, they would still keep happening, but many more woman would die through complications and botched abortions. Is this really better than what's happening now? More deaths would result, deaths of the fetus and of a woman who has time on earth to create memories, make connections with people, and leave a mark on the earth.
1 in 3 women will have an abortion in their lifetime. It is not an easy decision or experience to go through. It is not a 'form of birth control' where girls can recklessly have unprotected sex and not worry about any repercussions at all. It is a necessary procedure that saves hundreds of lives and prevents another life coming into this world unwanted and neglected.
Also, pro-choice does not mean pro-abortion. Pro-choice does not force women to have an abortion, pro-life forces women to remain pregnant. Each person should have the right to decide what's in their body and they way they want to live their life.

That's what i'd write on the wall ;p

back in session

Spring 09 has started, and in case you haven't heard, a new president has taken office.
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/01/the_inauguration_of_president.html
These pictures are absolutely amazing. It shows how not only America, but the entire world is united behind Obama, just who he is and what he stands for is inspiring millions of people.

I'm glad I'm back in classes, even though I've already got a ton of stuff to do and it's only post-day 2, I have things to do again! things to accomplish and complete. It feels good :)

A thing that's cool to look at:
http://www.blakegordon.com/stories/cloudprojections.html
Cloud projections from the lights of buildings in Austin, by Austin photographer Blake Gordan

I wanna keep track of the new places I've gone to in keeping with my feeble resolutions:
week 1 - Sandy's frozen yogurt
week 2 - rode in a cab(it counts)
week 3 - walked around East Austin a bit
week 4 - starts today ;}

watching the lost premiere now, it's sooo craaaazy

something i've learned

if you want to meet guys, here's how:

1. go somewhere guys are drinking

2...that's it

Hey ho, inspiration

I'm trying to keep up with my resolutions, the only ones I'm working on right now are drawing, cell phone, and being content. Doing terrible with the cellphone, doing well with the drawing beeecause i'm full of ideas and stuff. I spent a large chunk of yesterday drooling over art and design blogs.

Also yesterday I went to Barnes and Noble and traded in the photoshop tutorial book my mom got me for this:

And it's full of amazing, colorful, personality-filled pictures that I want to emulate.

Just a few images I liked from my blog searches:


Did you guys ever do "the penguin dance"(that's what my dad called it) with your parents when you were tiny? The name of this photo was 'dancing shoes' and it warmed my heart :}


neeat 3-d typography


remember my post about music and art? here's more ;D


maybe a bit outdated with ipod touch tic tac toe and shit out there, but still pretty :]


Saw this on conceptart and thought the coloring was gooorgeous.

There was a ton more, but i didnt want to overload my harddrive with pictures from blogs, but now i'm thinking i should just have a folder or something. Maaaybe I'll get up the non-laziness to scan my drawings later, we'll see.

New Year's

Resolutions

-Loooooose weight
-eat healthier
-go to the gym at least 3 times a week (while at school)
-Keep track of my cell phone better so I won't see texts/calls many hours later
-Live a more interesting life
-Go somewhere new at least once a week
-travel(go to Prague :O)
-Keep my camera with me at all times
-Draw everyday
-Be better about keeping in touch with my friends
-Get to know the people I do know better
-Meet more people
-Read more
-Procrastinate less
-Learn to appreciate what I have, instead of pining after what I wish I had.