Particle Navigator

blog.alexnsoto.com

2010-01-24T12:36:00.000-05:00

I moved.
A FAIRLY HONEST TAKE ~ my new time lapse, process, and recent work blog

Kepler

2009-12-15T12:25:00.000-05:00

Kepler: "The Kepler mission is looking at this field of stars in Cygnus and Lyra. One of these stars will have an Earth-sized planet orbiting a star in the habitable zone.

Get this. This is the field. This is the image. Click on this 1000x1000 pixel image. Enjoy. Here is the medium resolution version. Enjoy a little more.

Now,
click on the full resolution. 11000x11000. 28 Megabytes. Now you see all the stars. Kepler is watching each one. All 4.5 million or so.

Kepler first light. Click on the image to make it bigger (and to start seeing the stars).

P.S. I originally wrote up the draft of this post two months ago and sat on it like I sit on everything. There is now a press conference coming up later in the week about early Kepler results.

via: http://dwarmstr.blogspot.com/

Ahead of our time!Pantone selects Turquoiseas the color of 2010!

2009-12-15T12:15:00.000-05:00

Ahead of our time!Pantone selects Turquoiseas the color of 2010!: "

Seeing as Turqoise/Teal is the spot color used in both the newest issue of Faesthetic, as well as used throughout our recent show with Scion, I am very pleased to see that Pantone has selected Turqoise as their Color of the Year for 2010!

“Pantone LLC, an X-Rite company (NASDAQ: XRIT), and the global authority on color and provider of professional color standards for the design industries, today announced PANTONE® 15-5519 Turquoise, an inviting, luminous hue, as the color of the year for 2010. Combining the serene qualities of blue and the invigorating aspects of green, Turquoise evokes thoughts of soothing, tropical waters and a languorous, effective escape from the everyday troubles of the world, while at the same time restoring our sense of wellbeing.” (Tks DB!)

Alest Rukov “Custom Made Wooden Mouse”

2009-12-02T10:50:00.000-05:00

Alest Rukov “Custom Made Wooden Mouse”: "

See how it’s made on his Behance:)

Via: Alest Rukov’s Behance

Tikky 1 2 3

2009-12-02T10:46:00.000-05:00

Tikky 1 2 3: "The Rotring Tikky mechanical pencil has been around for many years and undergone many changes since it was first released. I’m not a Tikky expert so I can’t detail the various changes it has undergone, but if my memory is correct I recall that the author of the now deleted Pencil Box blog stated he had something like 30 or 40 different variants of the Tikky.

The latest incarnation of the Tikky mechanical pencil is significantly different from its immediate predecessor, so I’ll point out a few of the main changes below.

I have two older Rotring Tikky’s dating from the early to mid 2000’s. The white 0.9mm is logoed as a Rotring Tikky II (1.0mm) and the brown 0.5mm as a Rotring T. Apart from the name, there’s no obvious difference between them upon visual inspection. They are pictured below with the current Tikky.

Comparing these two older Tikky’s to the current Tikky, it’s fairly obvious that the apart from the name “Tikky” and concept of the wave grip zone the current Tikky has virtually nothing in common with the old Tikky. Maybe some or all of the internal components are the same, but externally they have little in common.

Completely different pocket clips.

Different end caps. Also note the method of pocket clip attachment to the body.

Different tip sections, and grips, although conceptually similar.

Old Tikky has a round upper body whereas new Tikky transitions from a round lower body to a sort of rounded trapezium shape up at the end.

Note the old Tikky had “Made in Germany” moulded into it.

The new Tikky has no country of origin either on the pencil or the packaging. It states distributed by, but not manufactured by or in.

Link to Rotring Tikky mechanical pencil review.

Animation: The History of the Chipmunks

2009-11-15T22:28:00.000-05:00

Animation: The History of the Chipmunks: "
Two of my best friends, Michael Woodside and Danny Young, are hard at work at Rhythm & Hues putting the finishing touches on animation for the upcoming Alvin & the Chipmunks "squeakquel". I got my start in animation at Bagdasarian Productions producing the NBC Saturday morning series myself, so I've always been interested in the history of the Chipmunks. It's a real-life rags to riches story.

Ross Bagdasarian Sr. (who went by the stage name "David Seville") was an actor who appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window and on Broadway in William Saroyan's Time of Your Life. He wrote novelty dialect songs, including Rosemary Clooney's huge hit "Come On-A My House", and released a few records but his successes never seemed to result in very much money in his pocket. He bought a tape recorder with his last $200 and played around with shifting the speeds, coming up with a novelty song titled "Witch Doctor". He got the single released and two weeks later, he found himself appearing on the Ed Sullivan Show performing the song.

The success of "Witch Doctor" gave him the idea of creating characters with sped up voices, so he quickly knocked out a Christmas demo titled "The Chipmunk Song" and took it to record executives Simon "Sy" Waronker, Theodore "Ted" Keep and Alvin "Al" Bennett at Liberty Records. The label was close to bankruptcy, but Bagdasarian convinced them that they might as well press Chipmunk singles with the leftover vinyl pucks and labels in their warehouse rather than just turn the unused stock over to the bank when the business went under. Production commenced and in just a few months leading up to Christmas of 1958, the record shot to the top of the charts, becoming one of the best selling singles of all time. Bagdasarian won two Grammy Awards, Liberty Records was saved from bankruptcy, and the Chipmunks became a household name with children all over the world.

In 1962, the string of successful Chipmunk LP records led to a television series produced by Format Films. Story man Leo Salkin was the Associate Producer, working closely with Bagdasarian and a team of story artists to sketch up animated adaptations of the record routines and new stories featuring the characters. In his youth, Bagdasarian would take road trips across country with his cousin William Saroyan, singing songs and coming up with wild stories the whole way. One eccentric character they came up with on one of these trips was Clyde Crashcup, an inventor who only invented things that had already been invented. Salkin expanded on the premise and created a regular feature for it on the show.

Ross Bagdasarian Sr. sat alongside Music Director Johnny Mann on the piano bench humming out tunes for Mann to pick out on the piano and write down as musical notation. Jules Engel was the Art Director for the series, creating simple stylized backgrounds that set the tone for the whole series. Alan Zaslove, Gil Turner, Rudy Larriva and Osmond Evans directed the series, substituting clever rhythmic timing and spirited poses for inbetweens and smooth animation.

Even though it only ran for one season, The Alvin Show was one of the best television cartoons of the era. It was unique because it didn't rely on the crutch of dialogue to make up for the limited animation. Instead, the show was built around music, clever timing and design. Like UPA's Gerald McBoing Boing Show, many of the musical segments featured abstract animation and modern background paintings. But unlike the Gerald McBoing Boing Show, The Alvin Show always remained entertaining and fun- never didactic or self important. The voice cast included Bagdasarian as David Seville and the Chipmunks and Shepherd Menken as Clyde Crashcup. along with June Foray, Don Messick and Joe Besser as incidental characters.

Ross Bagdasarian Sr. retired the Chipmunks in 1969, but by then he was a very wealthy man with a booming grape growing business. At one point, Bagdasarian's fields were the largest supplier of grapes to Gallo Wines. He passed away from a heart attack in 1972. His son, Ross Jr. took over the franchise in 1980, creating more records- including the album "Chipmunk Punk", an NBC television series, prime time specials, and an animated feature- The Chipmunk Adventure. The character designs have varied widely over the years. The current CGI models look similar to the first incarnation of the characters, which appeared on record covers in 1958 and 1959. This Christmas, Fox will be releasing a new Chipmunks movie, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel.

"Are you all ready, Chipmunks?" "OOOOOoooooKAYYY!"

ALVIN SHOW PRESSBOOK

Simon may have read the dictionary,
but he still can't spell "incidentally" correctly!

ALVIN SHOW GREETING CARDS

I've posted on this show here in the past, so I am pulling together links to some of that older material into this post to give you a passel of great Chipmunk stuff to enjoy. Click through and check out all the amazing art...

JULES ENGEL'S COLOR KEYS

ALVIN SHOW PILOT STORYBOARD

THE WHISTLER STORYBOARD
Thanks!
Stephen Worth
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

The act of imagining something makes it real

2009-11-14T23:19:00.000-05:00

The act of imagining something makes it real: "
Drawings by Kim Sin Hye, a.k.a. SSIN

Folkert"

December 5th at Roots

2009-11-14T11:12:00.000-05:00

December 5th at Roots: "

This show is free. You should come.

Miss Lotion

2009-11-14T11:10:00.000-05:00

Everyones stuff looks the same lately
-A

Miss Lotion: "

Paintings/drawings by Miss Lotion.

(via meathaus)

2009-11-01T18:10:00.000-05:00

say goodbye, say hello

2009-09-24T18:55:00.000-04:00

(@Hangfire, Savannah Ga.)

This is what happens when you pass your sketch book around during Karaoke night... Amazing things manifest themselves. Nick, good luck in LA! Micco, welcome!

www.nicholasrocco.com/
www.flickr.com/photos/miccodraws/
www.ilovecolingray.com

Some of my favorite things from people in the past

2009-09-21T12:53:00.000-04:00

2009-09-06T16:34:00.000-04:00

2009-09-06T00:02:00.000-04:00

2009-09-02T11:17:00.000-04:00

still here

2009-08-22T13:02:00.000-04:00

Here are the drawings I have been doing over the last 4 or 5 days. I have been working on some animation, and large scale drawings so I have not been as good about posting... Not to mention what I actually have to do to scan the images. I don't have a scanner that works with windows vista 64 bit. So what seems like an easy task, ends up taking time. He is what I do almost everyday when I post these.

1) Bike to Gallery Espresso at 8:15AM
2)Draw for a couple hours.
3)Ride home.
4) Pull out my old laptop, which has a broken screen.
5) Pull out an extra monitor and hook up to it.
3) Get my old scanner out.
4) Scan everything at speed of a snail.
5) Save them on a thumb drive.
9) Put everything back in its place.
6) Bring the files to my new computer and transfer.
7) Image process them in Bridge to scale them down.
8) Post

I'll be getting a new scanner soon, however there is something about this process that I enjoy, which will most likely be lost when I make the change.

happy patterns and a collaboration start

2009-08-16T20:50:00.000-04:00

The last one is the first part of a collaboration I am doing with Yoswadi Krutklom. We will be sending 10x10" drawings back and forth through the mail. Her memorable, minimal characters and other work can be found here: http://www.yoswadikrutklom.com/
I can't wait to see what happens.

Heesch's Problem

2009-08-12T13:41:00.000-04:00

"Heesch's Problem asks the following question: How many times can a tile be surrounded by congruent copies of itself? That is, how many layers made of copies of the tile can you place around the tile. The layers are called coronas, and the maximum number of coronas that can surround a tile is called the Heesch number of the tile."
(http://math.uttyler.edu/cmann/math/heesch/heesch.htm)

On my trip to Orlando I happen to run into Klaus Heesch who runs Juicy Temples design studio. Klaus was the first person to commission art from me, when I was going to school at the University of Central Florida. We ran into each other briefly, then arranged to have some coffee and morning drawing time later in the week. After catching up and drawing a little bit, I showed Klaus some of the pattern work I was doing. He then asked me if I have heard of Heesch numbers. Only recognizing the word as his last name, I said no. It turns out, his relative, Heinrich Heesch, was a mathematician who came up with the notion. (see top of post) I thought this was very cool and coincidental, seeing as I have been experimenting with tile patterns in my drawings. Knowing these shapes exist and that there are many more to discover is exciting to me. I have started thinking about them as I draw, and have already attempted to find shapes that would work. It is very difficult to do this without knowing any theory or equations related to the idea, so I am not expecting to come up with anything new any time soon. Just trial and error. I am, however, memorizing some of the existing Heesh tiles, and starting to apply them to some of my work. I plan on developing this idea further. For now, here are some examples of Heesh shapes, as well as new posts from my pattern journal.

Klaus Heesch of Juicy Temples, with a sweet drawing he did of me.

The first shape discovered to have a heesch number of 1. Only once and the tiles be set around the same shape completely covering it without having any gaps This example has a Heesch number of 2. Twice the same shape can be wrapped around, but not a third.

And here, the Heesh number is 3. So far 5 is the top number. These shapes are aperiodic and finite. Shape like squares can exist on an infinite plane and therefor do now count.

Here are my studies:

And last, this mornings drawing.

Doing it.

2009-08-10T12:23:00.000-04:00

Typophile Film Fest 5 // Trailer from Typophile on Vimeo.

This is a quick trailer for the upcoming film fest I will be in for my animated alphabet. I look forward to seeing the rest of the submissions.

I have not been posting as much, because I recently got a rush project from Converse through Anomolynyc.com. It's a great project and I hope I get to see it when it shows on the Jumbotron in front of Toys R' Us in Timesquare!

Much more to post in the following days.

My Orlando trip

2009-08-05T14:32:00.000-04:00

dying for a way

2009-07-27T15:53:00.000-04:00

today

couple days ago

in progress

it's over for one and it's starting with another

2009-07-24T13:49:00.000-04:00

Starting a larger one

2009-07-22T15:39:00.000-04:00

(forgive the webcam)

We stand under it, but we don't understand it

2009-07-22T15:28:00.000-04:00

only words govinda

2009-07-20T16:33:00.000-04:00

today

yesterday

A Drawing Drawn

2009-07-18T20:22:00.000-04:00

Better quality video here.(linked to my web page)
You should pretty much just watch the one above. The lower is bad quality.
todays work

yeah you look like someone who up and left me

2009-07-17T14:03:00.000-04:00

I don't want to change your mind

2009-07-17T13:35:00.000-04:00

today

yesterday

Vote for my threadless tshirt!

2009-07-16T13:29:00.000-04:00

This one is a themed threadless competition with a VW as the prize. The theme was "Pre-loved". Please vote!

He said Steve, it's because people leave, and no highway will bring them back.

2009-07-15T16:15:00.000-04:00

this mornings work

Vote for my Threadless design, if your so kind.

2009-07-15T00:27:00.000-04:00

vote!

I saw her, she saw me, we just didn't say anything.

2009-07-14T15:26:00.000-04:00

Reprocessing

2009-07-13T20:40:00.000-04:00

played praised passed

2009-07-12T23:33:00.000-04:00

threadless submission

old friends

2009-07-10T14:44:00.000-04:00

tri-ing

2009-07-09T20:03:00.000-04:00

morning time drawings

2009-07-08T16:53:00.000-04:00

moments on the mole

2009-07-05T21:25:00.000-04:00

mole mole

2009-07-05T21:21:00.000-04:00

talkin bout gifs

2009-07-01T10:15:00.000-04:00

some gifs I made experimenting around

2009-06-30T13:39:00.000-04:00

Listen very carefully, closer now and you will see, it isn't a dream...

2009-06-28T12:23:00.001-04:00

2009-06-27T12:59:00.000-04:00

a moment capsule

2009-06-21T03:11:00.000-04:00

moment capsules- color pencil and ink on mylar

2009-06-21T03:04:00.000-04:00

doodle sessions with Queena

2009-06-19T16:28:00.000-04:00

2009-06-19T13:59:00.000-04:00

2009-06-15T15:26:00.000-04:00

2009-06-13T12:58:00.000-04:00

New Site Up

2009-06-12T21:56:00.000-04:00

www.save-life.net

2009-06-10T17:44:00.000-04:00

2009-06-09T11:56:00.000-04:00

2009-06-06T00:21:00.000-04:00

Banner Barney 2007

2004

2009-06-02T20:26:00.000-04:00

subatomic clarity -2004 at UCF

from 2005

2009-06-01T23:14:00.000-04:00

2009-05-31T02:37:00.001-04:00

2009-05-30T18:16:00.000-04:00

yogi

2009-05-29T19:40:00.000-04:00

2009-05-26T18:03:00.000-04:00

2009-05-23T22:47:00.000-04:00

2009-05-21T23:48:00.000-04:00

Still from "The Little Island" made in 1959 by Richard Williams

empty and on it

2009-05-21T14:56:00.000-04:00

I make cards

2009-05-20T19:13:00.000-04:00

2009-05-18T21:39:00.000-04:00

Dads screen

2009-05-15T22:18:00.000-04:00

visiting the family in tampa...

2009-05-13T18:08:00.000-04:00

2009-05-11T22:52:00.000-04:00

2009-05-09T17:39:00.000-04:00

2009-05-07T12:28:00.000-04:00

Poster for Sam

2009-05-06T00:08:00.000-04:00

I just finished this poster for my friend Sam Eidson. Sam's film is an amazing horror musical short, titled "Revenge of The Teenage Werewolves." It's awesome.

Comic for Kevin

2009-05-03T20:28:00.000-04:00

My friend Kevin Burkhalter makes daily comics. For the month of February he asked other comic artist to draw his script, a different artist for each day. Lucky for me one of them dropped out and I got to draw February 13th for him. His work can be found here: http://kevinsjournalcomic.com/
Thanks Kevin!

2009-05-02T19:14:00.000-04:00

Another one to vote for on threadless!

2009-04-30T14:45:00.000-04:00

Take a look!

2009-04-29T19:10:00.000-04:00

2009-04-27T21:56:00.000-04:00

2009-04-24T20:28:00.001-04:00

My threadless submission

2009-04-23T12:14:00.001-04:00

Click for shirt!

2009-04-21T18:50:00.000-04:00

2009-04-20T15:23:00.000-04:00

2009-04-19T21:04:00.000-04:00

2009-04-19T15:06:00.001-04:00

2009-04-17T20:47:00.000-04:00

2009-04-16T23:25:00.000-04:00

creatordestroyer t-shirt design

2009-04-14T21:45:00.001-04:00

Just submitted to threadless.com, wish me luck

2009-04-13T17:46:00.000-04:00

not what I wanted, but will work with it

2009-04-12T12:49:00.000-04:00

2009-04-11T15:10:00.000-04:00

2009-04-10T15:04:00.000-04:00

2009-04-09T14:42:00.000-04:00

2009-04-09T11:41:00.000-04:00

2009-04-01T13:35:00.001-04:00

too tech

2009-03-28T03:09:00.001-04:00

2009-03-26T14:47:00.000-04:00

2009-03-24T14:52:00.001-04:00

2009-03-22T03:15:00.000-04:00

2009-03-22T02:54:00.000-04:00

maker

2009-03-18T23:03:00.000-04:00

2009-03-18T22:56:00.000-04:00

2009-03-18T21:40:00.000-04:00

A journalentrydailycomicscreenshot

2009-03-17T16:31:00.000-04:00

Starting Now

..and a gif