Daily Pattern - Spa

So I started a whole bunch of patterns which I wasn't pleased with, until I went with something totally wacky and cute.

Spa cats!

Chris Garbutt

Hot dogs are a guilty pleasure for us at Paper Bicycle. Local hot dog hotspot Chris & Rob's sees us stop by more often than I should admit...



But a love of wienies isn't the only reason I love Pinky Malinky, an animation Chris Garbutt created for Cartoon Network Development Studio Europe.



Oh man, I would totally watch Pinky Malinky if it became a real TV show! The celebratory dance near the end is classic!

There's also a bunch of information, story boards and other cool behind-the-scenes stuff on his blog!

Pigeon Champs

These images of the Champion Pigeons on the National Pigeon Association's site are surprisingly artful! And in many cases, totally bizarre!

Wow! Go birds!













I could see this being a great inspiration for some bird-themed paintings!

Carter Goodrich

I feel like it's been a while since we've posted some good old-fashioned illustration on the blog. Since it's Friday I think we can all use some comfort art (it's been a long week here at PB Studios).

You're probably aware of Carter Goodrich's work, he's done lots of editorial illustrations, including a ton of New Yorker covers, as well contributing characters and designs to a load of Pixar and Dreamworks animations.

He's got a load of art to check out on his new site; gorgeous, lush illustrations and piles of excellent sketches and concepts.









Definitely worth spending some time drooling over these...

Fight For Your Right - Revisted

Who doesn't love the Beastie Boys? I would say that everyone probably loves them, at least a little.

Well, it's good that we're all on the same page because the Beastie Boys have a new album called Hot Sauce Committee Part Two coming out next month and to celebrate/promote that fact, they're working on a thirty minute short film that will come out around the same time as the album.



Oddly enough, the Beastie Boys will be played by two sets of actors; the young Beastie Boys played be Elijah Wood, Seth Rogen and Danny Mcbride. And there's the old Beastie Boys played by Jack Black, Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly. And as you can see from the trailer, there's a million other awesome people involved as well.

Just thought you should know...

Surfing Lake Superior

I've tried surfing before and I was surprised at how fun and easy it was (at least, relative to how difficult I expected it to be). Maybe I'd start surfing regularly if I didn't live in Minneapolis.



UNLESS...

Professional surfer Jamie Sterling heard there's some decent sized waves Lake Superior. So he traveled to Beaver Bay in Duluth, Minnesota to find out.



And he is crazy.

Ruairi Robinson

I've been saving this post for a lazy Sunday, as a 12 minute video is a bit long for the workday, perhaps. But Ruairi Robinson's Blinky is pretty excellent.

Watch out, wimps! It starts out fun, but things quickly become... a bit creepy.



Also, I was surprised to see that I remembered Ruairi Robinson's previous work from a few years ago; The Silent City.

L.A. : Day 1, Half a day of L.A

Airport food: That is one BigAZ Chicken Sandwich

My great friend, Adam, and I signed up for a spur of the moment weekend of relaxation, eating and great weather. We were headed out on a cheap, Sun Country, evening flight to L.A with little-to-no agenda besides getting away. I was interested in doing a little trend shopping and some documenting for the blog.


Adam and Lindsay

Francesca and I had been there last year around January and we had the time of our lives. I was really looking forward to the couple days that Adam and I had. This was Adam's first trip and he was stoked to take a couple days off as well.


5 bucks for a 6 inch "PIZZA"

Our flight was no big deal, normal besides some nasty plane food (cheese pizza that was like a huge cheese cracker) and we touched down as it was getting dark.


View of the Rocky Mountains


Our classy hotel

We picked up our rental car and headed to West Hollywood and to The Grafton on Sunset, a hotel on Sunset Boulevard and La Cienega.


Scandal!

Adam was impressed as stepped into the main lobby. There was a risqué cropped photo of some scandalous activities hanging on a huge wall and the place was spotless.


Huge photos hung above our sleazy (but awesome) beds covered in zebra print

Our room was fantastic. Hanging behind both of our beds were some larger than life photos and zebra-pattern bedding. Living in style!


Adam got the upper half

As you can see we had a great time taking photos of what was to be our space for the next couple days and freshened up for a second before going out.


I got the lower half

We grabbed the car from the valet and went out to joyride and look for a place to eat.


Delicious!

We were really close to some great shops and restaurants. Including this great Argentinian place. My friend Ryan later told me that L.A. has a great rating system where great restaurants are graded by the health inspectors.


Quiet Monday night in L.A

I wish I would have known that the whole way though - but it was a great place and now that I look back on the photos, I see that this place was an "A"!


Shrimp and Endives

I had some kind of Endive Shrimp thing, and Adam had some vegetables and meat thing (great descriptions, I know). Still, we were happy, full and sleepy.
We headed back to the hotel where we crashed to some Cooking Network shows.


Makeshift Toothbrush courtesy of the hotel - the 4 bristle special.

Skittles Touch!

The other day our friend Ryan sent me a link to these awesome ads for everyone's favorite candy; Skittles! These ads are seriously amazing, but you have to participate when it asks you to!

So do it!



The cat one is clearly the best, but I also got a kick out of the serious creeper nature of this one.



I don't know much else about the campaign, but you can find out who made it here.

Gift Complaint Form

Wire & Twine is a small studio that works out of shop on a small farm. They found that they were always just making things, so they decided to start a business around that. Seems like they have a cool thing going.

This past holiday season, they shared a free Gift Complaint Form that you can include in the box when you give a gift.



This would have come in handy since it seems like I know someone with a birthday for every day in March (including Lindsay and Francesca!).



Download a free PDF version for your next gift-giving session!

via Swiss-Miss

Game Deaths

Death has always been a part of video games. Older arcade games were designed to steal your quarters, and it was pretty much impossible not to die.

Here's a cute video of a whole bunch of death from old video games, set to a Midi rendition of Tears for Fears Mad World.



Let's all take a moment to reflect about days gone by.

The Giants

The Giants is a series of animated shorts about 'the adventures of Giants and their conflicts with the humans.' And I love them so so much.

I can't seem to find out much about the pair that created these excellent movies, bseides that fact that they're named CéLine and Yann (probably). They do great work, however.

Not only is every frame a beautiful masterpiece worthy of framing, but the sound design by David Kamp is spot-on (and who also has a lot of nice work on his site).

Wayne White

Wayne White's word paintings are impressive and funny. There are hundreds of them to click through on his site, so obviously there's too many great ones to post.











But what makes Wayne White even more awesome is that he was a designer for Pee-Wee's Playhouse and won three Emmys for his work! Awesome!

Graham Annable

Graham Annable's art and animation is unmistakable; the sketchy line work, bizarre humor and lingering, tension-filled static shots...

I recently introduced Lindsay to his work via the stellar Puzzle Agent, a puzzle-based, Fargo-inspired videogame. She's been a fan ever since (despite never being able to remember his name).

I saw via his Twitter that he just put up a new animation, The Smartest Dog in the World.



You can see all his animations on his youtube page.

On a side note, I was stoked to hear Telltale Games is continuing the Puzzle Agent series:



Perfect!

Campbell Whyte

Campbell Whyte is taking on a pretty huge challenge: making a piece of art for every Nintendo game released (English-language releases only) in the order they were released.

The series is off to a strong start, with Campbell making one small painting a day. But with about 800 Nintendo games to work through, he'll be doing it for a while. Good luck!


Duck Hunt


Mach Rider


Kung Fu

You can buy the originals on his etsy store.

Psyop + Bambinomonkey + Kool Aid

Advertising is so incredibly slick these days. Take a look at this KoolAid ad Psyop did, for example.



There are three super cool ads in total, each for a different color/flavor. They all feature character designs by Bambinomonkey (aka Ignacio Fernandez Maroto).







You can see all three ads (along with more character studies) at Bambinomonkey's Behance page.

Compare that to what I remember about KoolAid, as a child of the eighties:





Hmmm. Maybe not that much has changed. They do share a similar sense of frenetic chaos.

MBMBAM - Peepum's Nastí-gum

Today was an insane day full of ups and downs - and most of the ups were a direct reaction to this clip from a My Brother, My Brother and Me's Episode.
Peepum's Nastí-gum became my rock as I battled a ruthless case of food poisoning from about 1pm - 3:30pm.

All I could do to stay coherent was to replay this Peepum's clip over and over and hope not to pass out or throw up (from the food poisoning, not the podcast).

We've been listening to MBMBAM in the office for months now, and each one gets better and better. It seems that their back and forth bantering and made-up-scenarios match our kind of humor. (None of it makes sense and most of it makes you want to cry with laughter.) I was cry-laughing for various reasons today. Most of it was from MBMBAM.

If you haven't had a chance to listen to them until now, you can get their shows for free on www.maximumfun.org, along with a bunch of other free, hilarious podcasts.

For now, I am healed from my horrible Caesar's salad situation - mostly from the ray of hilarious-light that is MBMBAM.

Irina Werning

Although it's hard to feel too self-conscience about an artifact from our youth, we all have photos from our past that we might consider embarrassing, to say the least.

Irina Werning convinces her friends and family to recreate photos from their past with stunning accuracy. The results are pretty special.







Check out the whole series, which is an ongoing series titled 'Back to the Future'.

Photoshop Rap : This is how it's done.

Of course I remember the good-old days. . . back when I was oblivious to all of the Adobe programs, and back when my arms didn't hurt up to the shoulder from working on the computer all day.

Thanks, Francesca, for sending me a link to this.

CVA and MCAD started up two weeks ago and Francesca and I were planning our respective concept art and digital illustration classes. Of course, with any new class, there was a fair share of freaking-out-ing, and some late nights planning course materials.

Thanks to this wonderful tutorial video, our classes were saved, and we found all sorts of useful information for how to teach our digital classes! WOO WOO!

I thought this definitely deserved a good mention - (Chris, you LOVE layer masks!).

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year from everyone here at Paper Bicycle!