I’ve uploaded a set of still frames to my Flickr account from the 1973 French animated film Fantastic Planet. The film is directed by René Laloux, who also later directed 1982’s Time Masters, which I posted about previously.

The film is a roughly animated and richly illustrated surreal journey that I found to be a real treat. Not to mention it has a great, eerily melancholy soundtrack that is best described by this reviewer on Amazon:

“Made in the 1973, it is heavily orchestrated, extended abstract funk. Electric harpsichords and wha wha guitars rule the landscape. There are tempo changes and dynamic shifts galore: the music can be creepy one minute, funky the next, then lilting. This album is a study in how to make an album packed with sounds, but with a consistent thread, created by the texture of the instruments.”

Check out the trailer on YouTube for a brief glimpse at the film and a sampling of the music.

Curt Purcell of the excellent Groovy Age of Horror blog has put together a Flickr account to share scans from his epic collection of sleazy, vintage Italian comics and horror books. I am eternally grateful to Curt for introducing me to the existence of these delightfully kitschy and inappropriate comics and paperbacks!

I am only posting 4 select images above because I really want to you to visit his Flickr account to see the rest. Here’s to hoping he has even more to post in the future!

I had the opportunity of contributing to Diesel’s “Only the Brave” Artist Performances by the people at Hellohikimori. “Only the Brave” is an online art exhibit featuring the work of select artists and designers to promote their new men’s fragrance.

Each artist is given a 3D room to design with the theme “Only the Brave” and you can see mine here. I was free to interpret it pretty loosely, so I put together something relating to the inner turmoil associated with appealing to one’s better nature.

There’s a ton of cool work from other artists on the site, so definitely check out the other performances!

View the 2D image on Flickr or view the 3D room at Diesel.

I really should have mentioned this earlier but I just wanted to plug what is going to be a totally cool art opening tomorrow night! Cognosco will be a collection of personal work by artists from a certain major video game developer. We aren’t really allowed to share the name but I’ll bet you can figure it out for yourself. See you there!

Gnomon Gallery
Saturday, August 8th 2009
7:00 pm - 11:00 pm

Sketch Theatre is a fancy website where you can watch a variety of talented artists draw super cool pictures!

I had the pleasure of helping do a complete redesign of the site, which just went live today. In a mad rush to get it finished for Comic-Con (visit Sketch Theatre at Booth #5363!) we managed to finish the whole thing in about 2 and a half weeks. Building on top of the existing On Demand WordPress theme (from Press75) sped things up significantly. It’s still a little rough around the edges in some regards, but we’ll continue to tighten it up over time.

Make sure you check out a few of my favorite sketches by Kali Fontecchio, Axel 13, and David Levy.

I just ran across the Flickr account, blog and Twitter feed of A Journey Round my Skull. He describes his epic collection of vintage book scans with these words:

Unhealthy book fetishism from a reader, collector, and amateur historian of forgotten literature.

So basically he posts tons of uniquely amazing images that you would surely be a fool to not keep up with! The four images above are all from a series of posts on Biology Today, a 1972 biology textbook.

Arbito continues to blow minds across the universe with hs recent resin sculpted figures. Totally rad! Check out more at his blog and Flickr account.

Update: Fred Blanchard in the comments has informed me that these are most likely inspired by the work of Roman Cieslewicz. The artist for the first image is Jean-Luc Moreau.

These two images are lucky finds while browsing through the March 1982 issue of Omni Magazine. I’m in love with them.

The article unfortunately provided no credits to the artist, only mentioning that they were student work created at a French institution, part of an assignment for graphic design students to reimagine robots in a unique way. Let me know if have info about the artist!

As usual, super-big versions are available on my Flickr account. I’d like to note that my Flickr account just recently hit 2 million views. Totally rad! I love Flickr.

The folks at Monarkh Magazine were kind enough to have me as their featured artist this month! There’s a little interview with me on the site. Definitely check out the rest of their site while you’re there and peek at some of the other artists they’ve been showing off. Cool stuff!

Check out the great illustrations of Shohei Otomo. I included the last image specifically because I love seeing illustrations that are so technically well done without the safety net of a computer.

Found via Buamai.