Recently Philipp Lenssen of Google Blogoscoped, Nikolai Kordulla and Dominik Schmid have released Sketchory.com. Sketchory features over 250,000 drawings which you can share using a Creative Commons license. This license includes commercial sharing, so you could even, say, create a book out of sketches (with a maximum of 1000 images), or remix the drawings to create new stuff, and so on.

Who created all these sketches and where do they come from? The answer is simple, they all come from SketchSwap.com which is an amusing and addictive online drawing tool. It is a flash based site. There are no complex tools to draw or sketch. All you get is a simple, marginally thick brown color sketch pen like thingy. Just like  as if you we drawing something normally with a pencil or a paintbrush. No coloring or anything else can be done.

When you complete the drawing, you click on “Submit Drawing”. Now your drawing is swapped for another drawing by somebody else. Not only that, you get to see exactly how the other user came up with the drawing; the way all the lines were drawn, how it started and how it arrived to the end product. It is something like a video capture of the drawing in action by the person. The same applies to your drawing as well.

Philipp Lenssen said, “Today we open our new site which features over 250,000 drawings for sharing, remixing and more! You can also embed an animation of every image as it’s being drawn. The Creative Commons license also includes certain forms of commercial sharing, e.g. if you’d want to sell a book with cartoons from Sketchory (for up to 1000 sketches). Also, we hope that everyone can help tagging the pictures so that the exploration features and search will improve over time.”

Below are some of the sketches which I liked, thus selected to share with everyone. If you like to see more, then check out their website.

…continue reading the post Sketchory: Collection of 250,000 Drawings

I appreciate all kinds of arts in general because it takes a lot of dedication and hard work  from the artists to achieve the end result. Most of us like to be in our comfort zone by just clinging on to the safety of a regular job. Most of us when we see a fine piece of art, we often concluded that the artist must be really gifted and it should be easy for them. We come quickly to this conclusion because we are only seeing the end result, thus judging only the art work itself. What we don’t know is that the artists may have been learning and practicing for many years to get to that point. It also takes a lot of ups and downs to be an artist in this century. Then why don’t we see them give up? I guess they simply love what they do and it gives them a sense of personal accomplishment.

Another thing I like about the artists is that they love to share their work with others. Just ask and they will more than happy to talk about their work. This is exactly what I did with Ricardo Fernandes, a sculptor from Sao Paulo, Brazil. His Predator sculpture has attracted much of my attention. Before going into the details about the Predator, I would like to give a quick intro about Ricardo. He is known by his students and clients as Rick Fernandes. Rick is a freelance sculptor focusing on the creation of characters like the Predator below from the movie Predator featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger. At one point in his career he was assisting one of the great art teachers in Brazil, Alex Oliver. Rick has been working with sculptures and traditional drawings for seven years and recently as a professional for the last three years. He is currently teaching character creation at Meslies,  school of 3D cinema and animation. His  students must be  very proud to have such  a talented teacher! He consider himself as an autodidact (a self-taught person) being educated in a non-traditionally ways most of  the time. Being humble he doesn’t consider himself as a prowess. Rick enjoy studying  the work of many inspirational artists  like  Rick Baker, Stan Winston, Ray Harryhausen, Dick Smith, Alex Oliver, Miles Teves, Carlos Huante, Alan Lee, John Howe and many other artists.

…continue reading the post Predator Sculpture By Ricardo Fernandes

Can you imagine going to a cool, green and safe school? Well some of the students in Japan are sure lucky being able to attend Mode-Gakuen, a private educational institution which has several vocational schools in Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya and Paris as well. The schools were established to cultivate creators in various fields such as Fashion Design, Fashion Technique, Fashion Business, Interior Design, Graphic Art, Make-Up Technique and Hair Dressing. The institution attracts approximately 5,500 students including 200 foreign students from Asia every year.

…continue reading the post Architectures: Mode-Gakuen Spiral Towers

The game was televised live in the United States on NBC and was available in 1080i high definition. Once again the game was a success with an average U.S. audience of 98.7 million viewers, this was the most-watched Super Bowl in history, and the second-most-watched U.S. television program of any kind (trailing only the final episode of M*A*S*H in 1983).

Aside from the U.S, the game was broadcast all around the world. An international feed featured Bob Papa and Sterling Sharpe was seen in 230 countries (including Antarctica) over 61 networks and 34 languages. ESPN Latin America also broadcasted across Latin America. Well hope you all have enjoyed watching the collection of Super Bowl XLIII commercials.

…continue reading the post Super Bowl XLIII Commercials 2009: Final

For the second consecutive year Bridgestone was the proud sponsor of the The Super Bowl XLIII halftime show which featured Bruce Springsteen with the E Street Band, The Miami Horns, The Max Weinberge 7 and a gospel choir. The halftime performance consisted of the following songs in order: (1)Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,(2) Born to Run, (3)Working on a Dream and last but not least (5) Glory Days. With these many songs, each of the numbers had at least one verse removed such that the overall performance fit the 12-minute time limit. Unsure of its legitimacy, Springsteen turned down numerous invitations to play at the Super Bowl in the past, but finally accepted to perform at Super Bowl XLIII after realizing the prestige value. Now, let’s enjoy Part 4 of the The Super Bowl XLIII commercials.

…continue reading the post Super Bowl XLIII Commercials 2009: Part IV