Moebius, also known as Jean Giraud, was a world-renowned French artist, cartoonist, and writer. Back in 2011, he created this series of fantastical illustrations for the clothing botique, Hermès. The series, titled Voyage D’Hermes, never actually appeared in any advertisement for the company’s perfume line (possibly because they contain absolutely no reference to the Hermès brand). But who cares, these otherworldly scenes are simply incredible! The work features soft pastels, floating orbs, and alien creatures to create a sort of “Space Western” environment.
Moebius, who passed away back in 2012, had a wonderfully productive life. He contributed storyboards and concept designs to numerous science fiction and fantasy films, including Alien, Willow, Tron (1982), The Abyss (1989) and The Fifth Element.
If you are unfamiliar with his work, I suggest checking out a few of his books. Both Arzach and The Incal are highly recommended, but his most famous work is probably the Blueberry series, created with writer Jean-Michel Charlier, which features one of the first anti-heroes in Western comics.
Hope you enjoyed these. I’m sure they will inspire many creative types for years to come.
Also, I recently purchase this book, and it is one of the best books I’ve ever bought:
The hidden beauty of the natural world is brought forth in laboratories around the country on a daily basis. Unfortunately, the general public usually doesn’t get the chance to see these incredible scientific images. However, Northwestern University has recently been holding a photo competition to share images “across a wide range of disciplines, including medicine, chemistry, engineering and nanotechnology.” They are truly a sight to behold. buy sildenafil tadalafil vardenafil online https://www.mydentalplace.com/wp-content/languages/en/sildenafil-tadalafil-vardenafil.html no prescription
Seen above is an image called “Nanoscale Lego Puzzle” by Radha Boya. Here’s a description of the piece:
The puzzle-like shapes are made when the gold cracks and curls up. The darker shading indicates where the gold has curled in on itself. The metal tips fabricated by this method can be used in many applications, such as printing DNA chips.”
“Meltdown” – Keith Brown
“This image shows the aftermath of a case when a large voltage was applied between a thin film of gold (light blue) and silicon (dark blue), and electrons found a way through the thin insulating layer that separated them. As the current increased, the material was heated resulting in a catastrophic thermal expansion that resulted in a crater of solidified material (red).”
“Graphene Oxide” – Andrew Koltonow
“Koltonow and his colleagues study a material called graphene oxide (GO), which is only a couple of atoms thick. They can assemble thin sheets of GO into a foam that conducts electricity. The foam can be used to create electrodes for batteries, making such energy storage devices smaller and lighter.
In this image, graphene oxide sheets (purple-orange) cast shadows from light that is scattered off of GO foam (green-yellow), creating an eerie effect.”
“Colorful Directions” – Mark McClendon
“Imagine simply injecting healthy human cells into the body to repair damaged muscle tissue. This might one day be possible if scientists, like McClendon, can find a way to keep these cells organized at the point of injury until healing is complete. One solution might be placing the cells in a nanofiber gel, which can then be injected directly into the human body. The cells growing in the gel will eventually respond to their surroundings by stretching and migrating in the same direction as the nanofibers.
Shown in this image is a blob of nanofiber gel with encapsulated cells from a human heart. The color is a result of the alignment of nanofibers making up the gel, with each color corresponding to a cluster of nanofibers aligned one direction.”
“Black Ghost Knifefish” – Oscar Curet
“The black ghost knifefish, found in the Amazon Basin, can move rapidly and in many directions due to an elongated fin on its belly that runs nearly the entire length of the fish. Curet and his colleagues used a robotic replica of the knifefish to study this motion, which could prove useful when applied to the design of underwater vehicles like submarines.
This image maps the motion of the robotic fish as it moves in a vertical direction. The lines represent the path of the fluid motion and the color represents the velocity, where blue is slow and yellow is fast. buy augmentin online https://www.mydentalplace.com/wp-content/languages/en/augmentin.html no prescription
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The mysteries of science can be illuminated with a well-captured photo or illustration. I’m glad Northwestern is sharing some of this wonder with the general public.
You can check out the full list of winning scientific images at the Northwestern website.
It seems that everyone I’ve met employs one of these strategies to cope with their own mortality…
Who here remembers when they first realized they were going to die? Well, I personally don’t, but developmental biologists seem to believe we acquired this trait around the age of 4 or 5 (according to research conducted by Jacqui Wooley at The University of Texas).
Since this early age, I’ve probably gone through each of these 4 stories to try to understand death… What comes next? What happens to our consciousness when we die? What does “nothingness” feel like? In time, I’ve realized that these questions don’t make much sense. As Dr. Cave points out, “being swallowed by the voidis not something that any of uswill ever live to experience.” In other words, when we die, that is all. Our sense of self and everything we’ve come to know will vanish. But, it’s nothing to fear! Fear itself will also vanish into this void.
So what does that leave us with? What is the purpose of life? I’m afraid I can’t answer that for you. I’m still looking for the answer. My advice would be to enjoy life to the fullest. Create memories of which you’re proud. Leave the world a better place. And if you want to employ one of the 4 stories from above to help you cope with your mortality, I say that is perfectly fine. It’s been happening since the dawn of humanity and I see no reason why it should stop anytime soon.
If this topic is of interest, you might want to check out Stephen Cave’s book about immortality found here.
-RSB
p.s. I think Dr. Cave may have been incorrect when he assumed this was an entirely human trait. Some animals probably do have a sense of their own mortality. Elephants, primates, dolphins have been shown to have self-awareness and a level of consciousness, so it’s not a stretch to think they would understand the idea of death. Anyway, I’m getting off point. I suppose a takeaway from this TED talk is that most humans don’t even seem to truly understand their own mortality.
“Horde” is a new short film by the Brutus Collective, a group of 4 talented artists: Thibaud Clergue, Aurelien Duhayon, Sebastien Iglesias and Camille Perrin. The story is succinct and engaging, and the animation is top-notch. I particularly liked the implementation of reduced frames to animate the faces, while the clothing maintained a higher, more fluid frame rate. It is certainly pro-level work.
The motorcycle fight was heavily inspired by one of the best moments in the history of animation, Akira’s biker gang scene. If you have any interest in animation, I suggest checking it out. They held their own with this new rendition.
Check out this beautiful panoramic photograph by Kelly Richardson, which features fiery missiles or vessels leaving planet Earth. The landscape for the piece was shot in West Texas during Kelly’s artist residency at Artpace in San Antonio. From the artist’s site:
“Drawing from the aesthetics of sci-fi films and dystopian stories, Orion Tide presents a Roswell-esque desert with spurts of light and smoke repeatedly taking off into the dark night sky. As a part of CONTACT festival 2013, Orion Tide rests somewhere in the territory between science fiction and biblical wraths. By uniting the cataclysmic commonalities that both worlds share, Richardson created an apocalyptically sublime space in which all ideals dissolve and a universal transition is made for whatever may come next.”
I think the only thing I that could improve the work would be to animate the rockets into an endless loop. It’s an intriguing piece nonetheless.
Edit (8/10/2014): The artist informed me that the the videos are animated as seamless loops. Very cool!
Here’s a video of Kelly describing her work, if you’d like to learn more.
From a recent interview with the developers, programmer Chase Pettit and artist Charles Blanchard:
“These days, you typically either get something like Forza Horizon that has one foot in the sim racing world and a learning curve to match or you get something that swings hard in the other direction like Mario Kart 8 that maybe eschews a bit too much depth for the sake of being accessible. There are definitely some amazing games in both of those camps, but I want to give the middle ground some more attention with Drift Stage.”
The super-saturated color palette is pretty perfect for this type of game, and it’s sure to win some nostalgia-driven fans as a result.
Look for a first release on the PC and Mac platforms, but the game is still very early in development, so who knows when it will be released. You can follow the developers’ tumblr page to stay updated.
. Both Arzach and The Incal are highly recommended, but his most famous work is probably the Blueberry series, created with writer Jean-Michel Charlier, which features one of the first anti-heroes in Western comics.
. They held their own with this new rendition.
