Tasty 3D Type Design by Chris LaBrooy.

If you ever need some dimensionalized type for a project, 3D artist Chris LaBrooy is your man. With a portfolio full of inspiring personal projects and commissioned work, the freelance UK designer (whose architectural typography I have shared with you in the past) is hard to beat. Take a look at some of his terrific work.

Celebrity Cavemen. 20 Famous Folks As Neanderthals.

above: Caveman Willem Dafoe

While most sports fans will be busy watching large men grunt as they play the NFL Championship game tomorrow, I thought I'd introduce you to a different sort of Troglodyte today: the celebrity caveman.

The following images are entries by various computer artists from six different Worth1000 Effects contests in which they were asked to combine Celebrities with Neanderthals using Photoshop and/or other effects software.

Gene Hackman:

George Clooney:

Morgan Freeman:

Tommy Lee Jones:

Hugh Laurie:

Snoop Lion:

Kate Winslet:

Nick Nolte:

Al Pacino:

Sean Connery:

Robert deNiro:

Daniel Craig:

Harrison Ford:

Shakira:

Will Smith:

Jake Gyllenhall:

Tobey Maguire:

Sean Penn:

Danny Trejo:


I chose the above twenty images from six different Celebrity Neanderthal Contests from the past three years on Worth1000, the most recent of which ended about 3 weeks ago. My selection was based on the executions or humor quotient. Several entries were poorly executed, some looked like trolls and still others like zombies. I chose what I personally felt were the 20 most entertaining. Please note: these images have been cropped for better visibility and therefore are missing the Worth1000 watermark.

To see all of the original entries in the contests, visit the following links (there does not seem to be a 4th contest despite the numbered names):
Celebrity Neaderthals 1
Celebrity Neaderthals 2
Celebrity Neaderthals 3
Celebrity Neanderthals 5
Celebrity Neaderthals 6
Celebrity Neaderthals 7

About Worth1000
Worth1000 is the top creative contest site in the world. Every day they run lots of creative competitions of all types, including Effects contests (otherwise known as photochop or photoshop contests), photography contests, illustration contests, writing contests and more forms of multimedia.

Classic Romantic Paintings Get Subtly Animated in BEAUTY Video by Rino Stefano Tagliafierro

In this 10 minute video, BEAUTY, director Rino Stefano Tagliafierro takes 116 classic romantic paintings (all of which are listed at the end of this post) and slowly and subtly animates them, bringing the beauty in them to life. A slight tilt of the head, a dress raising ever so gently, petals falling from flowers - tiny, almost imperceptible movements, are expertly executed without changing the general composition or color of the original painting.



William Adolphe Bouguereau's original painting of The Nut Gatherers compared to a screen grab of the subtle animation. Note the arms, hands and grapes on the figure on the right:


The Manifesto: The Enigma of Beauty

«Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws,
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws,
And burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood;»
(W. Shakespeare, Sonnet no. 19)

Over Beauty, there has always hung the cloud of destiny and all-devouring time.
Beauty has been invoked, re-figured and described since antiquity as a fleeting moment of happiness and the inexhaustible fullness of life, doomed from the start to a redemptive yet tragic end.

In this interpretation by Rino Stefano Tagliafierro, this beauty is brought back to the expressive force of gestures that he springs from the immobility of canvas, animating a sentiment lost to the fixedness masterpieces.

Its as though these images which the history of art has consigned to us as frozen movement can today come back to life thanks to the fire of digital invention.

A series of well selected images from the tradition of pictorial beauty are appropriated, (from the renaissance to the symbolism of the late 1800s, through Mannerism, Pastoralism, Romanticism and Neo-classicism) with the intention of retracing the sentiment beneath the veil of appearance.

An inspiration that returns to us the sense of one fallen, and the existential brevity that the author interprets as tragic dignity, with an unenchanted eye able to capture the profoundest sense of the image.

Beauty in this interpretation is the silent companion of Life , inexorably leading from the smile of the baby, through erotic ecstasies to the grimaces of pain that close a cycle destined to repeat ad infinitum.

They are, from the inception of a romantic sunrise in which big black birds fly to the final sunset beyond gothic ruins that complete the piece, a work of fleeting time. - Giuliano Corti (english translation: Thomas McEvoy)

The short film:


The paintings, in order of appearance:

Asher Brown Durand - The Catskill Valley‬

Thomas Hill - Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe

Albert Bierstadt - Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains

Ivan Shishkin - Forest edge

James Sant - Frau und Tochter‬

William Adolphe Bouguereau - L'Innocence

William Adolphe Bouguereau - Song of the Angels

Ivan Shishkin - Bach im Birkenwald

William Adolphe Bouguereau - Le Baiser

William Adolphe Bouguereau - Nature's Fan- Girl with a Child

William Adolphe Bouguereau - The Motherland

Ivan Shishkin - Morning in a Pine Forest

William Adolphe Bouguereau - The Nut Gatherers

William Adolphe Bouguereau - Two Sisters

William Adolphe Bouguereau - Not too Much to Carry

Thomas Cole - The Course of Empire: Desolation

Martinus Rørbye - Entrance to an Inn in the Praestegarden at Hillested

William Adolphe Bouguereau - Sewing

William Adolphe Bouguereau - The Difficult Lesson

William Adolphe Bouguereau - The Curtsey

William Adolphe Bouguereau - Little Girl with a Bouquet

Claude Lorrain - Pastoral Landscape

William Adolphe Bouguereau - Cupidon

William Adolphe Bouguereau - Admiration

William Adolphe Bouguereau - A Young Girl Defending Herself Against Eros

William Adolphe Bouguereau - Dawn

William Adolphe Bouguereau - L'Amour et Psych

William Adolphe Bouguereau - Spring Breeze

William Adolphe Bouguereau - The Invation

William Adolphe Bouguereau - Nymphs and Satyr

William Adolphe Bouguereau - The Youth of Bacchus

William Adolphe Bouguereau - The Birth of Venus

William Adolphe Bouguereau - The Nymphaeum

Gioacchino Pagliei - Le Naiadi

Luis Ricardo Falero - Faust's Dream

Luis Ricardo Falero - Reclining Nude

Jules Joseph Lefebvre - La Cigale

John William Godward - Tarot of Delphi

Jan van Huysum - Bouquet of Flowers in an Urn

Adrien Henri Tanoux - Salammbo

Guillaume Seignac - Reclining Nude

Tiziano - Venere di Urbino

Louis Jean François Lagrenée - Amor and Psyche

Correggio - Giove e Io

François Gérard - Psyché et l'Amour

John William Godward - Contemplatio

John William Godward - Far Away Thought

John William Godward - An Auburn Beauty

William Adolphe Bouguereau - Flora And Zephy

Louis Jean François Lagrenée - Amor and Psyche

Fritz Zuber-Bühle - A Reclining Beauty

Paul Peel - The Rest

Guillaume Seignac - L'Abandon

Victor Karlovich Shtemberg - Nu à la peau de bete

Pierre Auguste Cot - Portrait Of Young Woman

Ivan Shishkin - Mast Tree Grove

Ivan Shishkin - Rain in an oak forest

William Adolphe Bouguereau - Biblis

William Adolphe Bouguereau - Elegy

Marcus Stone - Loves Daydream End

William Adolphe Bouguereau - Head Of A Young Girl

Hugues Merle - Mary Magdalene in the Cave

Andrea Vaccaro - Sant'Agata

Jacques-Luois David - Accademia (o Patroclo)

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio - San Giovanni Battista

Roberto Ferri - In Nomine Deus

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio - Cristo alla colonna

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio - Incoronazione di spine

Paul Delaroche - L'Exécution de lady Jane Grey en la tour de Londres, l'an 1554

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio - Decollazione di San Giovanni Battista

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio - Sacrificio di Isacco

Guido Reni - Davide e Golia

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio - Giuditta e Oloferne

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio - Davide e Golia

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio - Salomè con la testa del Battista

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio - Davide con la testa di Golia

Jakub Schikaneder - All Soul's Day

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio - San Gerolamo scrivente

Guido Reni - San Gerolamo

Pieter Claesz - Vanitas

Gabriel von Max - The Ecstatic Virgin Anna Katharina Emmerich

William Adolphe Bouguereau - Portrait of Miss Elizabeth Gardner

Jan Lievens - A young girl

Johannes Vermeer - Portrait of a Young Girl

Luis Ricardo Falero - Moonlit Beauties

Joseph Rebell - Burrasca al chiaro di luna nel golfo di Napoli

Luis Ricardo Falero - Witches going to their Sabbath

William Adolphe Bouguereau - Dante And Virgil In Hell

Théodore Géricault - Cheval arabe gris-blanc

Peter Paul Rubens - Satiro

Felice Boselli - Skinned Head of a Young Bull

Gabriel Cornelius von Max - Monkeys as Judges of Art

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio - Medusa

Luca Giordano - San Michele

Théodore Géricault - Study of Feet and Hands

Peter Paul Rubens - Saturn Devouring His Son

Ilya Repin - Ivan il Terribile e suo figlio Ivan

Franz von Stuck - Lucifero Moderno

Gustave Doré - Enigma

Arnold Böcklin - Die Toteninsel (III)

Sophie Gengembre Anderson - Elaine

John Everett Millais - Ophelia

Paul Delaroche - Jeune Martyre

Herbert Draper - The Lament for Icarus

Martin Johnson Heade - Twilight on the St. Johns River

Gabriel Cornelius von Max - Der Anatom

Enrique Simonet - Anatomía del corazón

Thomas Eakins - Portrait of Dr. Samuel D. Gross (The Gross Clinic)

Rembrandt - Lezione di anatomia del dottor Tulp

Peter Paul Rubens - Die Beweinung Christi

Paul Hippolyte Delaroche - Die Frau des Künstlers Louise Vernet auf ihrem Totenbett

Elizabeth Jane Gardner Bouguereau - Too Imprudent

William-Adolphe Bouguereau - The Prayer

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio - Amorino dormiente

Augustin Théodule Ribot - St. Vincent (of Saragossa)

Caspar David Friedrich - Abtei im eichwald



CREDITS

DIRECTOR: RINO STEFANO TAGLIAFIERRO

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR: LAILA SONSINO

2ND ASSISTANT DIRECTOR: CARLOTTA BALESTRIERI

EDITING - COMPOSITING - ANIMATION: RINO STEFANO TAGLIAFIERRO

MUSIC & SOUND DESIGN: ENRICO ASCOLI

ART DIRECTION: RINO STEFANO TAGLIAFIERRO

HISTORIOGRAPHER: GIULIANO CORTI

Use The Force In An Entirely Different Way. Star Wars Sex Toys.

The designs were created in a galaxy far, far away by Hungarian artist Balázs Sármai, who gained intergalactic attention this past August with a similar creation (shown below), in which sex toys were re-imagined as characters from the Hollywood blockbuster “The Avengers.”

The Paintings and Works On Paper of Mark Bradley-Shoup.

above: Mark Bradley-Shoup, Summer Gray Gas Station in Patine Blue

There's something about Mark Bradley-Shoup's work that I find really appealing and it's no wonder. His representational works on paper, abstract paintings and mixed media works each have elements that remind me of four of my favorites artists; Richard Diebenkorn's landscapes and abstracts, Ed Ruscha's Standard Oil gas station studies and prints, Wayne Thiebaud's composition and painterly style and Robert Rauschenberg's collages. Bradley-Shoup's simple and subdued color palettes, clean lines and structured compositions - all executed with a certain restraint - result in compelling and aesthetically attractive works.

Below are several of my favorite pieces of his.

Representational:












Mixed Media:




Abstract works:






Mark Bradley-Shoup earned his BFA from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in Painting and Drawing and his MFA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Studio Art. Bradley-Shoup produces meticulously crafted paintings and works on paper based in part on his own manipulated photographs of both urban and rural environments.

He employs extensive use of masking tape, rulers and x-acto blades to generate precise areas of paint that emphasize the surface texture of his compositions in a way that undermines any elements of photorealist illusion. Prevalent themes in his work include “consumption and growth,” “expansion and recession,” and “the elegance of brutality.”

He has worked with various non-profit agencies and educational institutions including the Hunter Museum of American Art, the Association for Visual Arts, Allied Arts of Greater Chattanooga, the Creative Discovery Museum, Chattanooga Parks, Recreation, Arts and Culture, and the Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences. Currently, Bradley-Shoup is based in Chattanooga and is a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga.


Mark Bradley-Shoup

If you would like to get in touch with Mark, feel free to email mbradleyshoup@hotmail.com

The Making Of A Computer Generated Evil Octopus In A Cage.

CGI Artist Rafael Vallaperde had an urge to create an octopus in a cage, so he did just that. Only this time we get to see all the work that goes into making such a computer generated image.




For those who have no idea on how it's done and/or for those who know and would like to see how he works, he put together this time lapse video of the creation of his beautiful evil octopus.



The track accompanying the video is Complication with Optimistic Outcome by Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross from the Social Network movie soundtrack.

The final artwork:


Rafael Vallaperde