Marriage (брак)

Here's the latest animated film by Garry Bardin that I've remastered and reformatted for hi-def viewing on the YouTube channel that I'm managing for him:

Garry Bardin's Films

The way he uses common objects, in this one rope, to capture raw human emotion continually amazes me. In some of his other films he uses matches (clay matches that are so convincingly created in the image of real matches you have to look hard to pick it out) and steel wire.

There's one where the characters are invisible, but that's a surprise for later.

So, here it is. Marriage (брак). Enjoy:

Sailing Stones

If you click on the picture it'll take you to a hi-def version that'll take your breath away. Incase you've never heard of them, pictured in the lower right quadrant is a sailing stone at the Racetrack Playa in Death Valley:

"The sailing stones (sliding rocks, moving rocks) are a geological phenomenon where rocks move in long tracks along a smooth valley floor without human or animal intervention. They have been recorded and studied in a number of places around Racetrack Playa, Death Valley, where the number and length of travel grooves are notable. The force behind their movement is not understood and is subject to research."

-Wikipedia, sailing stones

Inspiration

I watched this video for the first time three years ago. It blew my mind. I watched it again, and again, and again. I still sit through the whole thing at least once a month.

After having my skull rocked by Lasseg Gjertsen's masterpiece I was struck with the realization that making videos had become accessible to guys like me, that you didn't need million dollar equipment to do good work, that you didn't even need a hi-def camera. Just a good idea, an editing program or two, and practice.

This is what inspired me to begin making my own videos:

End of the Road, literally

Here's the latest literal video on my YouTube channel, Digital Tonic. Vocals, lyrics and audio mixing by the perpetually hilarious and talented Alex Heitlinger. Video editing by yours truly:

Dolphins Are Geniuses

I've always figured Dolphins to be the sea's equivalent of humans, but not quite as intelligent. After all, these opposable thumbs of ours. They're a big ego boost.

I pictured them as sort of high-order Lassies of the sea, like Flipper. Which I always loved to watch when I had a chance to zone out on cable television at my grandparents.

Anyway, they might be smarter than us:

"One day, when a gull flew into her pool, she grabbed it, waited for the trainers and then gave it to them. It was a large bird and so the trainers gave her lots of fish. This seemed to give Kelly a new idea. The next time she was fed, instead of eating the last fish, she took it to the bottom of the pool and hid it under the rock where she had been hiding the paper. When no trainers were present, she brought the fish to the surface and used it to lure the gulls, which she would catch to get even more fish. After mastering this lucrative strategy, she taught her calf, who taught other calves, and so gull-baiting has become a hot game among the dolphins."

-Why dolphins are deep thinkers (The Guardian)

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

Happy Halloween:

Fitter, Happier

This animation is a nice reminder that a focused, minimalist approach can be more effective than the most complex, shiny surfaced, IK rigged and 3D character meshed production:

It's Just a Ride

Here's a video I made with one of my best friends, Isaac Cody Smith. The couple in the video are his parents, Tamye and Steve. They handled the painstaking process with aplomb. It took about 650 frames shot individually using a Nikon D70:

Artillery Playground

I found this incredible picture while reading an article on the EnglishRussia website about child soldiers during WWII:

War Is A Racket

The following statement was made by the most highly decorated man to serve in the Marine Corps at the time of his death. He was a two-time Medal Of Honor winner (one of which he tried to return because he felt it wasn't deserved - they told him tough shit, you not only have to keep it you have to wear it), a Major General and a badass with three nicknames. After grinding it out for Uncle Sam, he reached the following conclusion:

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."

-Maj. Gen. Smedley "Old Gimlet Eye" Butler

He wrote the book, WAR IS A RACKET, and though I haven't read the whole thing yet the first few chapters are riveting.

Freddie Mercury, Literally

Just got done working on this. Did it over the weekend as I needed a break from a big animation project I'm working on (secret for now). Working on a video when you're working on another video as a method of relaxation might not make sense, but it works for me. Most of the time I don't need breaks from work so much as diversions from my all-consuming main projects so as not to go insane:

Marvel Motion Comics

Just finished working on this motion comic for the Marvel Motion Comic contest over at Aniboom.

The starfield in the background got pretty chunky due to the level of compression I had to apply for upload, but overall the animation came out looking pretty damn good.

I had a great time working on this and broke a sweat more then once. I'd love to develop the whole comic:



Watch more cool animations at Aniboom

Mastery

Witness perfection:

A Glorious Dawn

The surface of the Earth is the shore of a cosmic ocean. Recently we've waded up, and the water seems inviting:

5 Reasons I Will Never Switch to Bing

1. Hotmail is the MySpace of e-mail.
Bing is built on a suite of cloud applications of similar uselessness.

2. Google's search algorithm understands the meaning of life with greater intuitiveness, which is crucial to the success of any quest for knowledge.


3. I don't trust a company that lost its focus ten years ago.
Microsoft can throw all the advertising dollars it wants at Bing, but that doesn't change hard realities. The company is unsuccessfully trying to dominate three major fields at once: console gaming, desktop operating systems, and search. I give my business to companies that focus on their strengths. Microsoft long ago abandoned quality standards with its operating system. It never had any with the Xbox. It's only a matter of time with Bing.


4. Microsoft's cheesy, treacly promos make my skin crawl.
Sure, there are a few chuckles here, but only the covering-your-mouth-in-shame-and-horror kind.





5. None of the cool kids are doing it.

Video Dating from the 1980s

If you do nothing else today, watch this and die laughing. No dopers, smokers, alcoholics or hamsters:

Good Tunes

Moldavia - Summer - 1983 by A. Gomonuk

I can't shake this industrial Eurothump. It's simple and glossy, but I enjoy it. It's good music to work to while tracing and building 3D models:

For a completely inexplicable reason Steed Lord's Take My Hand inspires me to listen to Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit:

Also, there's a new Auto-Tune the News. They keep getting better. This is inspired stuff:

New Tune Isn't It?

Here's my latest, a trailer for this New York Film Festival competition. I want to upload it to my YouTube channel as well, but am waiting until the contest is over so I can make sure it's copacetic. Enjoy:

One Day

This is a pretty cool song:

One Day

FAQ for all the butthurt Maddox fans

I've been getting a bunch of emails from Maddox fans wondering if this is an elaborate hoax, and if not, why I hate him so much.

—This is my Maddox post FAQ—

Is Maddox paying you for this? Is it part of a viral marketing campaign for his upcoming book tour?

No.

Why do you hate Maddox so much?

I don't. It's called satire. I'm clowning on his style but that doesn't mean I hate the guy. Let's use some elementary powers of deduction: Can you clown on something you've never consumed? Yes. Will it in any way resemble the original or be good satire? No.

The only reason I'm clowning on Maddox is because I read him when I was in my late teens and early twenties. I wanted to illustrate that writing the way he does — simplistic and formulaic — he could be doing way more for his fans. But he's grown lazy.

Fratire rules and the word bromance isn't that bad. Also that was shitty parody and you should keep your day job.

First, this isn't a question, but I'm not going to publicly denigrate you the way Maddox would. That's not because I don't want to, it's because it's not my shtick and I'm not really keen on building a career as a foul mouthed, cynical curmudgeon. Second, this is my day job so thanks, I'll make sure I don't put it down.

You talk a lot about Tucker Max's cock and Maddox getting pegged. Are you a fag?

Would it matter?

I was spoofing someone's style. When it comes to Maddox, that means talking a lot about getting anally violated, puking blood and speeding in school zones.

Yeah this parody sucks. It's all like forced and awful and Maddox would never write something like that, did I say that already?

Yeah you did. And yeah, he did write something like that.

Are you the OP of the Reddit submission with the title, "This dude just crushed Maddox using Maddox's own voice?" If so, that's a lame move passing it through Tinyurl and then posting it to the Funny sub-Reddit so people don't immediately know you're self-promoting.

Guess how often I Reddit my own blog posts? Less than one a month and when I do I don't hide it. I realize self-promotion on Reddit isn't classy. It's bad Reddiquette and isn't 'authentic,' and I probably deserve to have rats bore through my intestines and pop my glassy eyeballs like grapes for referring to myself in the third person.

However, if you look at the OP for the Reddit submission of Maddox's most recent post, you'll notice it's a virgin account. If you've also noticed that Maddox's most recent post was a departure in quality from his usual fare, you might entertain the following conclusions based on this purely circumstantial evidence:

1) Maddox has hired some sad sac to write and submit his material to social networking and aggregator sites as his Internet cachet has been in a long, slow decline and he's desperate for a resurgence of his page's social relevance.

2) He's turned his life over to agents, PR, and marketing people. Whichever talent agency represents him will now begin ramping his site up over the next year with increasingly regular posts, ghostwriting his material and aggressively submitting it to sites like Reddit and Digg in preparation for his next book, which is all he's actually writing at the moment.

In the spirit of lampooning and deconstructing Maddox, I submitted my parody post the same way he submitted his real post - that is, with misdirection and subterfuge.

You're just a frustrated writer and blogger who's jealous of Maddox's Internet success.

Again this isn't a question, but I'll address it.

I have my own sandbox, which is on YouTube, where I do the majority of my entertaining. My blog is a way to provide extended info on the articles and videos I write and publish, and it's also where I post up cool things I find around the Internet.

The kind of writing I do on a regular basis is so far removed from what Maddox does there is no point in comparing us.

The Maddox post is highly unusual for my blog and this isn't where I care to see most of my traffic. I wrote the post specifically for my online community of choice, Reddit, after going through this comment thread and generally agreeing with it. I was in the mood to amuse likeminded people.

Don't expect much of the of piss and vinegar shock humor in the former post. I focus mainly on good videos, books that serve as the ax for the frozen sea inside, video editing, and well done journalism.

Your blog is lame and your videos are terrible.

Thanks for watching.