Stuff! The Tumblr.

tedx:

The Sketchbook Project collects sketchbooks from people all over the world, and turns them into a global, traveling library — taking them on tour in a little trailer that’s a bit like a taco truck for books.

Created by friends Steven Peterman and Shane Zucker in 2006, The Sketchbook Project is a tribute to collaboration, proving that, sometimes, an artist doesn’t need a mystical muse to come and shower them with inspiration to make art happen, but just a neatly-planned project and a bunch of strangers to join with them.

To participate, you sign up for a sketchbook tour on the project’s website and once registered, receive a sketchbook, a send-in date, a choice of several different themes to center your sketchbook around (past themes include “Strange Neighbors,” “Borders and lines,” and “This is not about me”). Once submitted, your sketchbook is loaded onto The Sketchbook Project mobile library and goes on tour — becoming part of a worldwide community of artists, traveling across cities, and, in the end, living in The Sketchbook Project’s permanent library in Brooklyn, NY, where visitors can get a library card to check sketchbooks out.

In March, co-founder Steven Peterman traveled from the project’s headquarters in Brooklyn to Richmond, Virginia to speak at TEDxRVA, and brought the library with him.

At TEDxRVA, Steven spoke on the genesis of the project and the power of collaboration. From his talk:

I went to art school…I went to Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta and I wanted to create art, but I never — I didn’t think I was that good. I didn’t think I was ever going to be a professional artist, but I still wanted to create…

I really needed a purpose. I never liked to just make art for art’s sake. I wanted it to be for a show or I needed a deadline or something like that … so I was kind of struggling a little bit with this idea of just creating art for art’s sake and I knew that there were other people out there who also kinda felt this way — you know, they weren’t going to be professional artists; they weren’t going to be selling their work to museums or having these big shows, but they wanted to be inspired and create together…

So, I met this guy Shane …. and we came up with this idea for these projects.

Steven and Shane’s projects, the biggest being The Sketchbook Project, aim to get the crowd involved in art — to give even the most wayward artist purpose, deadlines, motivation. “Our mission,” they write on The Sketchbook Project website, “is to allow anyone to be able to participate in art, and to create a collection of work that represents the current state of artists worldwide.”

And since its start, The Sketchbook Project’s results have been incredible:

• Participants from over 135 different countries on 6 continents
• 26,735 sketchbooks in the collection (as of March 2013)
• 962,100 pages in the collection
• 45,583 Sketchbook Project library cards issued
• 94,866 library check outs

For more information on the project, watch Steven’s entire talk below:
(Photos via The Sketchbook Project and TEDxRVA)

 Just a quick preview of a pic I’m putting in a zine I’ll be selling at London MCM Expo this May. This initially started out as a robot version of Kimba’s father, but since there’ll be another Tezuka related pic I guess this’ll just be a generic robot lion. The whole zine will have this sort of stuff in it, including robots, monsters and my own version of Kamen Rider. 

 Lord knows how I’ve managed to screw isometric perspective up, but there we are. 

odditiesoflife:

Ice Caves Around the World

Ice caves come in two forms. A cave formed entirely of ice is actually called a glacier cave and as the name implies, forms in glaciers. Water runs through or under the glacier and forms a cave.

The other type of ice cave can be any cave type (limestone, lava tube, etc.) that has ice in it year round. These caves trap cold air. Water entering the cave freezes and stays frozen year round.

Glacier caves can be found in the Pacific Northwest and ice caves are found in many locations where temperatures drop below freezing. Once cold air enters the cave, it generally stays there.

1. Iceland
2. Russia
3. France
4. Antarctica
5. Iceland
6. Russia
7. Iceland
8. Iceland

thebirdandthebat:

katiewoodger:

DISNEY HAVE STOLEN MY ARTWORK

I don’t know what to do. I am so upset. Can anyone help me?

My painting was created back in 2010, (see it HERE) and since then so many people have expressed their love for it, not just on tumblr, but in many places. At least 9 people had it tattooed on their bodies. It’s one of my favourite images I created at University and I was proud of it in many ways.

Disney have used it on a cosmetics bag HERE (look at the back)
and they have produced a Tshirt HERE with a really similar design clearly modeled from my painting

I’m so mad because I have no chance at getting Disney to do anything about it. I had so much respect for the company and now I am just SO upset and disappointed.

Any help, advice or signal boosting would be amazing. And thank you so much to the kind person who messaged me about this.

Can anyone help this artist who seems to have had her work ripped off by Disney?

This is pretty disgusting.

Protagonist Visual Development - PART 3

 So here are some slightly more up to date doodles I found in the sketchbook. I’d settled on using the idea of change (Obake) and the refusal to do so as a sort of gateway into the project.

 With that in mind, I wanted the main character to be less gruff and more naive and friendly to contrast the world he was going to be a part of. Mostly made of rounder shapes to give off the idea of an underdog and vulnerability, I still hadn’t quite got his personality down other than ‘weak and friendly’ so these were still just me playing around getting used to where I wanted to take him.

 I kept picturing Tom Kitten, hence the trousers, and also Kintaro, who I later decided seemed to macho for this guy. 

 There’s also a style experiment with him fighting a Tanuki & his parachute/ Ball Sack of Doom (TM) and that cow …thing.

 From this point I realised the simplified characters and realistic backgrounds/ bad guys was going to be a mainstay. 

Protagonist Visual Development - PART 2

 Here are some further stages to his design that I made. As you can see, some of the designs were similar to his original look, minus the eyepatch and facial hair/ whiskers. I think at this point I was just trying out all sorts of things, including what kind of style I wanted for the monsters (melting cat faces). The next part will be getting a lot closer to how he has ended up. :)

 PS - Again, awful photos. I’ll probably republish these designs in the project, but obviously they’ll be scanned and more presentable.