3.2 million dots. That’s what it took for Miguel Endara to create the portrait of his father, with his face pressed against the glass plate of a photocopier, entitled “Hero”. Well, 3.2 million dots and about 210 hours. Only one pen though. Those Microns are impressive.

Via The Daily What

Oft mentioned artist and animator Graham Annable has Kermit, Miss Piggy, and Gonzo come face to face with their beginnings in his three pieces for “The Lovers, The Dreamers, and Me” show, opening December 10th, at Gallery Nucleus. If the Gonzo illustration isn’t a perfect image of existential crisis, then I don’t know what is.

Via

There is a strange charm to these portraits by Tom Mead. They do not dazzle you with an abundance of complexity, nor do they belie any movement or sense of place. In fact, they seem to tell the story of some non-place, a nowhere void populated by well dressed but decidedly sinister individuals, something accentuated by the stark, black backgrounds which, in this case, work for the pieces instead of coming off as lazy. This void is mirrored in their eyes, inky pools that appear to be empty sockets, devoid of any visual equipment whatsoever — though they still manage to stare. “Edward Gorey doing The Fantastic Mr. Fox” was the first description that entered my head when I saw these, but that’s not quite right. Maybe if The Fantastic Mr. Fox had been the book written by HP Lovecraft instead of The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.

I honestly have no idea what exactly is going on in this video for the Fleet Fox’s “The Shrine/An Argument. It seems to tell of the life and death of an ultra-violent deer who seems to have a tiny fish person living inside it. Or something. No doubt, there is dense symbolism and metaphor involved here but honestly, I’m not sure if decoding it is really a priority, especially when it’s so beautiful. Director Sean Pecknold, who also animated it along with Britta Johnson, films the characters, designed by Stacey Rozich (whose style reminds me a bit of Andy Kehoe), heavily vignetted which, combined with the paper doll quality to the animation, gives it strange, dreamlike quality. It also gives the impression of being far older than it actually is, like you’re watching something by Lotte Reiniger. The whole thing is simply mesmerizing.

Details abound in the works of Joe Fenton. Amidst the twisting, mouth-tipped flora are dozens of tiny figures. Their heads are simply eyeballs or animal skulls or something almost like a brain crossed with a Piranha Plant. All nude, some are lithe and sensuous, others cherubic. Look closer still and you begin to see a second set of figures, tiny imps with horns or wings sprouting from their spherical forms. There’s an aura of mysticism throughout his work, as if the pieces illustrate some esoteric religion. Visually dense, his work manages to just avoid overwhelming the viewer and turning each piece into a tangle of lines. It’s worth visiting his site, so as too look at these at a much higher resolution than our pages allow. There’s a video, below, of Fenton working on his painting The Lullaby, giving a brief glimpse into the amount of work that goes into one of these.

Via who killed bambi?

ROSA is, perhaps, not the most original short film ever and, in fact, it does feature a healthy dose of post-Matrix kung-fuery, but that makes it no less impressive. Made by one man, Spanish comic artist Jesús Orellana, for $100 and a year of his life, ROSA tells the story of a cyborg who, as part of a project to restart Earth’s ecosystem, awakens in a post-apocalyptic with no natural life, only other cyborgs who seem intent on destroying Rosa. Again, there’s a lot of slow motion jumping and martial arts pat-a-cake, and the characters themselves are a bit stiff at times, but the fact that one person was able to produce something of this scale is impressive. Orellana has, apparently, already been approached by some studio types so it’s quite possible that we may be seeing much more of Rosa in the future.

Via Super Punch

I’ve no idea what led this young man to the idea of stacking 3118 coins upon a single dime. Perhaps, as alluded to in the title of this post, he was simply bored. Perhaps he had though long and hard about, what he perceived to be, a lack of coin-stacking research, a gap in the understanding of coin storage. Perhaps he simply got his hands on some grade A marijuana. We will never know. What we do know is that, regardless of the reasons, he ends up with 3118 coins, impressively stacked on a single dime after seven, time-lapsed hours. Isn’t that enough?

A short film for your Veteran’s Day, Pythagasaurus comes to us from Aardman Animations, best known for their series, as well as doing the video for Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer”, as well as the upcoming Arthur Christmas. Pythagasaurus tells the story of Ig and Uk (voiced by Bill Bailey and Martin Trenaman, respectively) who, upon discovering a volcano has popped up outside their hut, decide to call upon the the titular Pythagasaurus (Simon Greenall), a dinosaur renowned for his mathematical acumen and knowledge of all eight numbers. It’s three minutes of sublime absurdity with a surprise, twist ending. Enjoy!

A sequel, see of sorts, recipe to a video previously posted in these pages. Here we abandon the shining of shoes for the act of ironing shirts, and while this may not have quite the same, fantastic soundtrack found in the first video, the precision is still here. This is a man who has ironed a shirt or thousand in his time. I can only presume that, at some point, there was a series of clips meant to instruct men on the proper upkeep of their clothing, but I might be entirely wrong. Regardless of the original intent, they remain utterly captivating.

Thanks, Ian!

Somewhere, in a parallel dimension, this is basically a true story and it is not the most mind-meltingly horrible thing you’ve ever seen because somewhere, in a parallel dimension, human anatomy is exactly like this.

(NSFW)

Thanks, Oddy and maicro!