The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay: Animation Concepts

in Art, Books, Film, Literature | February 18th, 2011

Michael Chabon pub­lished The Amaz­ing Adven­tures of Kava­lier & Clay in 2000, and the next year it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fic­tion. The film ver­sion of the nov­el has been locked in “devel­op­ment hell” for a good decade now. (The pro­duc­er Scott Rudin has a rep­u­ta­tion for option­ing high-pro­file nov­els and sit­ting on them for a long time; he also holds the film rights to Jonathan Franzen’s The Cor­rec­tions.) Any­way, some­where in the devel­op­ment process, the direc­tor Jamie Caliri was asked to explore ani­ma­tion con­cepts, and here’s what he came up with: a fun inter­twin­ing of live action and ani­ma­tion.

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The Ice Book, a Beautiful Pop-Up Book

in Art, Video - Arts & Culture | February 17th, 2011

The Ice Book, seen above, is a paper the­atre brought to life with light. Watch as sheets of paper are illu­mi­nat­ed in a daz­zling ani­ma­tion dis­play. Accord­ing to the artists, Davy and Kristin McGuire, The Ice Book tells the sto­ry of a mys­te­ri­ous princess who lures a boy into her mag­i­cal world to warm her heart of ice. It was shot with the Canon 5D Mark II, with the actors super­im­posed onto the mon­tages using a makeshift green screen, and pro­jec­tions cre­at­ed in Adobe After Effects. A sim­ple yet remark­able achieve­ment. You can learn more about the project here. Don’t miss the page describ­ing the behind the scenes work, or this oth­er pri­mo video that savors books in stop motion film.

Eugene Buchko is a blog­ger and pho­tog­ra­ph­er liv­ing in Atlanta, GA. He main­tains a pho­to­blog, Eru­dite Expres­sions, and writes about what he reads on his read­ing blog.

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“From Dictatorship to Democracy.” Open Text Changes Face of Egypt.

in Current Affairs, Politics | February 17th, 2011

There’s some­thing won­der­ful about this .… unless you’re a dic­ta­tor. Today, The New York Times shines a good light on Gene Sharp, a shy Amer­i­can intel­lec­tu­al who has spent decades writ­ing on the art of non-vio­lent rev­o­lu­tion. Back in 2002, Sharp pub­lished “From Dic­ta­tor­ship to Democ­ra­cy: A Con­cep­tu­al Frame­work for Lib­er­a­tion,” a 93-page guide to upend­ing auto­crats. Then, he had the text trans­lat­ed into 24 lan­guages and made freely avail­able online, with all copy­right restric­tions removed.  The man­u­al has since inspired dis­si­dents in Bur­ma, Bosnia and Esto­nia, while giv­ing strate­gic direc­tion to the protests in Egypt and Tunisia. Ideas have pow­er. But good ideas have more pow­er when they’re open. You can down­load Sharp’s man­u­al here (PDF), and learn more about his mis­sion through his non­prof­it, The Albert Ein­stein Insti­tu­tion.

Speak­ing of good ideas that are open, feel free to down­load 35o free online cours­es and teach your­self any­thing and every­thing.

via @philosophybites

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NASA Zooms into Spiral Galaxy

in Astronomy, Science, Video - Science | February 17th, 2011

Cour­tesy of NASA’s Hub­ble Space Tele­scope, we’re zoom­ing into a “majes­tic disk of stars and dust lanes” and get­ting a stun­ning view of the spi­ral galaxy NGC 2841, which lies 46 mil­lion light-years away in the con­stel­la­tion of Ursa Major (The Great Bear). But wait, it gets even bet­ter. This high res­o­lu­tion still pho­to shows the spi­ral galaxy in all its beau­ty and splen­dor…

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Christopher Hitchens Answers Reddit User Questions

in Current Affairs | February 17th, 2011

A lit­tle ways back, Christo­pher Hitchens field­ed ques­tions for 30 min­utes from Reddit.com users, answer­ing any and every ques­tion they threw his way. What his­tor­i­cal fig­ures, events or books have been under­em­pha­sized in Amer­i­can pub­lic edu­ca­tion? Has the Iraq War (some­thing Hitchens sup­port­ed) had a pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive impact on Islam­ic extrem­ism? What do social­ism and lib­er­tar­i­an­ism have in com­mon intel­lec­tu­al­ly, if any­thing? Oth­er fig­ures inter­viewed by Red­dit users include Richard Dawkins, Noam Chom­sky, and Ron Paul.

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Evolution Made Us All

in Music, Science, Video - Science | February 17th, 2011

File under Every­thing is a Remix. Ben Hill­man offers a cre­ative lit­tle riff on “All Things Bright and Beau­ti­ful” (lis­ten here), an Angli­can hymn inspired by William Paley’s 1802 trea­tise, Nat­ur­al The­ol­o­gy, which posi­tions God as the design­er of the nat­ur­al world … in an Enlight­en­ment kind of way. You can catch more Hill­man videos on Vimeo here.

via RichardDawkins.net

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A Rare Look Inside Pixar Studios

in Art, Film | February 16th, 2011

Since 1995, Pixar has released a steady stream of award-win­ning ani­mat­ed films. First came Toy Sto­ry, then Find­ing Nemo, Mon­sters, Inc., The Incred­i­bles, and most recent­ly Toy Sto­ry 3. (You can revis­it Pixar’s clas­sics in this won­der­ful lit­tle trib­ute video.) Get­ting inside Pixar Stu­dios has nev­er been easy. But last week The New York Times pulled it off, pro­duc­ing a six minute video that takes you through the stu­dios designed by Steve Jobs him­self, and inside Pixar’s patent­ed ani­ma­tion process – a process that com­bines more tra­di­tion­al and cut­ting-edge ele­ments.

Note: This video tour also appears on Vimeo and YouTube.

H/T @matthiasrascher

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The First Talk Radio Show on the Net (1993)

in Radio, Technology | February 16th, 2011

Back in the ear­ly 1990s, while most of us were still try­ing to wrap our heads around this new thing called the inter­net (don’t miss this amus­ing bit), NPR’s Sci­ence Fri­day start­ed push­ing the enve­lope and host­ing the first inter­net-based radio talk show. This marked the first time that lis­ten­ers could “phone into” a pro­gram via the web and talk togeth­er – in this case about the cre­ative uses of this emerg­ing tech­nol­o­gy. The broad­cast, which sin­gle­hand­ed­ly brought the inter­net to a crawl, has now resur­faced online. You can lis­ten below (or here).

via @Alyssa_Milano and Extreme­Tech

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