Categories
Animals

Giraffes

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Categories
Mythology and Folklore

Vampowers

Whoever put together Wikipedia’s ‘Table of Vampire Traits‘ definitely had themselves a little fun – highlights include:

Attractiveness

  • Count Duckula – Alluring [citation required]
  • Underworld – Kate Beckinsale

Weaknesses

  • Count Chocula – Becomes soggy in milk
  • Count Von Count – Obsessive urge to count anything on hand*

*Whilst he was blatantly created because of the Count/count thing I’ve only just realised that his obsession to count is an actual** vampiric trait – traditionally seeds were a suitable defence which also brings to mind the (quite excellent) X-Files episodeĀ  ‘Bad Blood

**Yeah, not real, whatever…

(via Boing Boing)

Categories
Music

I’d like to meet his tailor

I think I might treat myself to a bit of The Wolfman this weekend but to keep me going till then these will have to do:

Categories
Design

World’s most awesomely awesome flag

As suggested by Senor Wignall:

awesomeflag

Thinking about it a far more sensible way to do it would be to just take the cool parts of the cool flags and construct an uber-flag .

My 5 minute lunchtime effort is: Eagle eating Snake + Two Headed Eagle + Dragon + Maasai Spears & Shield + Two Snowlions + Man behing beheaded:

flag

I think if the rules could be bent to allow non-national flags there could be some awesome mashups as provincial flags and royal standards get all the cool stuff. That said if we were to allow them there’s only one flag we’d need:

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It’s a bear holding a freakin waraxe. Thank you Yaroslavl Oblast.

Categories
Food

Kraken Black Spiced Rum

I don’t think I’ve ever wanted a drink more than I want this – I don’t even want to drink it, I just want to have it.

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Ok, so maybe I want to drink it a little bit…

Categories
My Doodles

With a private boat (cont.)

Just in case anyone’s interested the original sketch went a little something like this (complete with hot chocolate stain):

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I can’t actually remember which way round the inspiration worked but the idea was to essentially combine these two images:

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(By Maurice Sendak and Katsushika Hokusai respectively)

More specifically the idea was to render the first in the style of the second, or insert the characters of the first into the second. My original intention was also to recreate the scene in an ink & wash style but in the end I decided I wouldn’t be able to get the fine detail and the homage itself would be lost so I went for manipulating the Hokusai image rather than recreating it.

The main difference between my original sketch and the final (lined paper and stain aside) is the positioning of Max and the Wild Thing. Originally I’d pictured Max in the nearest boat (which I’d incorrectly remembered as breaking through the near wave) with the Wild Thing emerging from between the rear wave but in the end I opted to switch them. Firstly to echo Sendak’s original spread (Wild Thing left; Max right) and I also didn’t want the sail on Max’s boat obscuring any of the waves themselves (though i didn’t mind it obscuring Mt Fuji as I like that it stops this image being a view of Mt Fuji).

So with the two nearer boats shopped out and Max’s mast, sail and self added in I was just left with the Wild Thing. The first attempt was pretty awful, I was trying to construct it from various flat elements and then stealing bits of texture from the original (as I had with the sail and Max) but it looked too out of place. Then the obvious hit me: drop in a sea creature/dragon from an existing japanese woodblock. A bit of scouting around found this little gem:

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So with a little help from Utagawa Kuniyoshi and some recolouring so the dragon isn’t lost in the wave we have our final picture:

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About which I am quite chuffed.