Yiying Lu is the artist behind the fast-becoming world wide known Twitter Fail Whale, the friendly aqua blue, white and orange image that appears on the social networking or microblog site, twitter.com when their servers are down.
above: original fail Whale artist, the adorable Yiying Lu
As you can imagine, any icon that symbolizes 'failure' quickly gets mocked or altered as a result of creative frustration- and too many artists with cyber downtime on their hands. There have been contests like the Fail Whale Pail Ale label contest, there are flickr groups and you can buy "official" Fail Whale tee shirts and products on Zazzle.
What I wanted to share with you are some of the creative works inspired by the Fail Whale from fine art and cupcakes to lego versions and real tattoos. As well as some of the beer bottle label entries for The Fail Whale Pale Ale label contest. While there are hundreds, probably thousands, of funny 'modified' Fail Whales out there, here are just a few of the clever, talented and amusing homages and take-offs I enjoyed.
Painted Fail Whale by Dache :
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on flickr
Mixed Media Fail Whale by Gio loves you:
on flickr
A nicely rendered 3D rendered image by Mugginz:
And by Stephen Allred:
and a lovely painted and airbrushed one by Diamondie:
Ringorang Fail Whale (vector Art) by Robbie da Kid.
The above four images are from Deviant Art.
A 3D model rendering:
found on the Southern GFX blog here
A great little 3D kinetic sculpture by Hilary Talbot:
found on MAKE
Lego Fail Whale by Bjarne P Tveskov of Denmark:
on flickr
A Twitter image mosaic of 100 photos by software architect Chris Craft:
on flickr
Nick Bilton's murdered Fail Whale:
on flickr
Drunk Fail Whale:
on flickr
Helicopter Fail whale:
on flickr
Paul RJ Muller "CaffiNation"'s beached Fail Whale:
on flickr
Martin Gee's (Hellvetica) illustrated Fail Whale reverses the roles:
on flickr
Tim Caynes' Graphics hardware Fail Whale:
on flickr
Burning Whale found on Hack A Day:
on flickr
and a more morose Hack A Day Fail Whale:
on flickr
A great little cartoon doodle by Nozzman of the Netherlands:
on flickr
Desktop art Fail Whale illustration by Gerardo Obieta:
on flickr
Lunch time embroidery doodlings of the Fail Whale by emdot:
on flickr
Fail Whale cupcakes by Sweet Libertine Cakes:
on flickr
and a birthday cake for Chris Darbro (RocknRollGeek):
on flickr
Adam's Fail Whale pumpkin carving:
on flickr
Sean O'Steen of The Fail Whale Fan Club 's Twitter Fail Whale on his Peggy (which is like lite-brite):
and he made a cute little felt and string Fail Whale mobile:
on flickr
Sand fail whale by Justine:
on Tasty Blog Snack
The 'Real Life Fail Whale' composite by Ed Hunsinger:
Geeked.info
Jason of Gorilla Sushi created this Fail Whale Pale ale label entirely in photoshop for entry in the contest held last year by TweetHunt:
Another label entry by Dirtdirt of Austin:
on flickr
And another label entry by Georgene Nunn:
Unfortunately I have no idea who won and the original site no longer seems to function.
Some people love the Fail Whale so much, they're willing to go to their grave with it. Tom Rowe and Ryan Goff get tattooed by Hunter Spanks with Fail Whales in Baltimore:
See the video here.
Critter, also known as Korneliuz on Flickr, got himself a permanent fail whale:
Here's video of David Hoang drawing his "I Luv Fail Whale":
Believe it or not, Yiying was not paid directly for the image of the sweet looking whale being lifted from the ocean, tethered by birds - she originally posted the image to iStockPhoto.com where the Twitter people fond it, purchased it and turned into a cultural icon. The illustration blog, Drawn, interviewed the artist, which you can read here.
Yiying Lu is a full-time artist who runs her own illustration and graphic design studio. She is also a design lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia. her personal site her flickr photostream
Relevant links:
What Is The Fail Whale?
Original Fail Whale artist's site
The Fail Whale fan club.
Official Fail Whale Online Store