Young@Heart, Fix You

My favorite song from one of my favorite films of 2008. It is impossible for me to sit through this performance with a dry eye.

Rock Star!

Here's An Idea

"Kissing, candy, decorations, yeah."

Best. Christmas. Song. Ever.

This Is Where We Live

This Is Where We Live from 4th Estate on Vimeo.

Halloween With Obama

I'll admit that this isn't the best splicing job, but you can get an idea of the crowd waiting to see and hear Barack Obama at Wicker Park in Highland, Indiana Halloween night. The crowd was estimated to be 40,000. If they're like me, every one of them will be holding their breath until Wednesday morning!

Yes We Can

Bad Dog, Good Materials

The inspiration for this piece was a big ziplock bag of torn up crayola wrappers and personal experience as a dog owner and friend. The dog is handmade paper using leftover scraps of colored construction paper mixed with some raw pulp and a bit of dye where needed.

Cool Masks, Nice Song

Mates of State, "Get Better"

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights Animated by Tim Yu

Courtesy of Cool Hunting

To celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, CH friend and colleague Seth Brau recently completed the rather daunting task of bringing the words to life with motion graphics. The result is on one hand elegant — using a two-tone palette, linear — and on the other an experimental take on scale, the use of typography and symbolism.

Given complete creative freedom and a little over a month's time, Seth used a mix of After Effects and Illustrator to seamlessly connect the 30 articles of the document into a captivating piece. In this case, no plan was the best plan. Seth comments, "There were times when I had no idea what I was going to do for the next section of the document. I would churn out something that I would hate but in that process I would come up with the idea, layout or imagery for something I ended up developing and liking."

To recreate the feeling of an older document Seth chose a simple color palette of black against a textured tan and kept it modern with Helvetica. "Originally, I hoped using to a two-color scheme would simplify the process but it actually ended up making things harder because creating single color imagery, especially when it's the the same color of the text, was very challenging." He proved up to the challenge, creating a dynamic flow between the text and the morphing illustrations that impels the viewer to follow along. Using the text itself as a graphic element that shifts and plays across the screen, both pays homage to the original document and cleverly blurs the line between words and images. The melodic music, "Minds Awake," by Rumspringa off Cantora Records is also nice touch.

Originally written by Eleanor Roosevelt 60 years ago, it's astonishing that less than five percent of the world even knows that the document exists. The message rings particularly true now and we're proud to be associated with Seth, whose work enhances the Declaration of Human Rights with his motions graphics to spread the word to both the younger and older generations.

Funny Because It's True

Finger Knitting, How Cool Is That?

My son Marc recently moved to Portland, OR. We were having a conversation on the phone tonight as he was walking to the local public library, when he saw a piece of public art and started telling me about it. The Pacific Northwest College of Art is connected to the project, here's the description from their blog.

"Over the last couple years in Portland, there has been a city wide spontaneous art happening where people have chained tiny horses to gigantic rings which line the sidewalks of the older business and residential neighborhoods. The original idea came from artist Scott Wayne Indiana and is called the The Horse Project . The rings were originally set in concrete for people to tie their horses to when that was the main mode of transportation. At our table kids and adults will be crafting the horses legwarmers, blankets, yarn garlands and hats, using finger knitting and easy spool techniques."

Finger knitting? I never heard of that before, but was very happy to find the following informative video further down the page.



The end result looks nice, now I just need to find a video to show me what to do with that.

This Just In

Sneak preview, see it here first! My poster for next summer's Illinois Library Association won't be "officially" unveiled until this September. You get to see it before anyone else, but only if you promise not to tell.

Is this funny...

. . . or a glimpse into Hell?

Marc Got A Driver

Eight Boxes/Ten Frames

The boys were left on their own for a little while...

Maddog


Monkey Crossing


Wobbly Max


Surprise Head


Handus Interruptus


Happy Punch


Finger Poo


Wiggle Wiggle Scream

Why I Love My ADD

While working on an assignment this afternoon - a 10 foot long alphabet jigsaw puzzle - the old poem "There Was A Crooked Man" popped into my head. I thought about how much fun that would be to illustrate, and two seconds later I was browsing Google Images looking at crooked houses for inspiration. That led to a long string of other shiny objects which caught my eye and imagination. Half an hour later I was looking at Indonesian Shadow Puppets (naturally), which led me to this delightful animated short. I dare you to shake the song that accompanies it out of your head!

FYI