MMMMMMMM!!!!

FOOD of awesome-ness, glory, and general-purpose WIN is the subject of today's Thingamujig. The Mighty Blog Keeper wishes you a good next meal, hopefully as epic as those that Thy Blog Keeper shall link to in that final, most fateful of sentences.

Enjoy this, your Cool Thingamujig Of The Day!

Oui, Oui, Oui! More zombie!

Here, The Mighty Blog Keeper presents to you a fantastic page full of one of the coolest monsters not in existence.... ZAWMBIES!

The Mighty Blog Keeper would like to take this opportunity to present to you, on this fine day, The Cool Thingamujig Of The Day!

Comic-Tastic!

Behold! A documentation of information for the nation! The aforementioned information being a tutorial on comic book lettering, quite deserving of the not-so-notable honor of being the one and only, The Cool Thingamujig Of The Day!

Le Zombie!

Behold, a love-stricken, less-than-living member of society in pursuit of a piece of ass!

Otherwise known as, The Cool Thingamujig Of The Day!

Amazing!

This day, The Blog Keeper would liek to direct you to the site of The Amazing Craig Mullins.

Behold, Your Cool Thingamujig Of The Day!

Barbequed Tumors

If anything deserves to be a Thingamujig, it's the technology to burn tumors inside of a human skull.

Behold, future cancer patients, The Cool Thingamujig Of The Day!

One Kay Characters

1000 characters to write something possibly worth reading.

Enjoy, The Cool Thingamujig of The Day!

A Wish

So, apparently there exists some entity of lore known as "Japanese Legend". In said "Japanese Legened"(from Japan, no less), it is reputed that any person that decides to take the time to fold 1,000 paper cranes(and then does so) will have one wish granted(presumably upon completion of the final paper crane).

Here is an interesting case of preparing for the time when one may truly need such a wish.

Behold, our Cool Thingamujig Of The Day.

Beauty For Babies

An interesting rumor about color, which hath befallen upon The Much Mentioned "Mighty Blog Keeper"'s ears is that babies see only black, red, and white(along with the shades between)....

Thus is structured the color of much of the work by David Kinsey, a teacher at Ringling College of Art and Design, the very school which will be lucky enough to host the Magnificent Presence(previously mentioned as The Much Mentioned Mighty Blog Keeper).

So, returning once more to His Brilliance's topic of babies and their color recognition impediment, BEHOLD, The Cool Thingamujig Of The Day!

Super Mario Bros.

The Marios Bros. are awesome. Today we may celebrate their vast abundance of awesome with a gift of an online gallery beholden with 45 stylized illustrations of the Dynamic Duo!

Behold, dear reader, The Cool Thingamujig of The Day!

Ayers

For a lesson on awesome creature and animal style, see today's Thingamujig. Chris Ayers is an illustrator/visual development artist with some sweet, stylin' skillz.

Beholden unto thee, is our Cool Thingamujig Of The Day!

Tip Jars of Awesomeness

How doth one encourage the giving of tips? By making entertaining containers of tips for said tips! Today, dear most likely singular reader, you are presented with a present of knowledge and insight. Aformentioned knowledge and insight being liable to obtain thee more money!

Behold, our Wonderously Cool Thingamujig Of The Day!

Brushes

In browsing the Ringling school forums, The Great and Mighty Blog Keeper has found that they are quite active and have all sorts of links to various goodies.

Today's Cool Thingamujig Of The Day is one of them.

Behold the power of brushes!

Adorable Samurai

Samurai are freakin' awesome! So declares The Mighty Blog Keeper, who also knows that cats are adorable.

Due to these two usually conflicting properties, one would presume Samurai and cat would also conflict. But no, The Cool Thingamujig Of The Day proves otherwise.

Enjoy your present :)

Stumble

Here are two little videos with Glen Keane talking about Tarzan. First is a short interview, second is a presentation at CalArts.

Sclup-toorz

In dissapointement, this day once again lacks a Cool Thingamuijig(much as the preceding dozen have). However, we instead are presented with a "Freaking" Cool Thingamujig.
Sclupturez, as The Blog Keeper's Father fondly refers to them, are pretty freaking cool.

Another pretty freaking cool thing is that there is a sclup-tooring class in The Spanish Village(Balboa Park of San Diego). This class is taught by a member of the local sculptors' guild, and seems to be pretty freaking cool, as well.

Today's Freaking Cool Thingamujig Of The Day, is The San Diego Sculptors' Guild's page of members. Many of The Members Beholden Upon The Aforementioned Page Of The Internet are quite good.

Enjoy, dear reader, the rare gift of a Freaking Cool Thingamujig Of The Day.

The Godly Cat

Alright, so the godly cat only appears in his greatness for a short moment, but it is, in fact, pretty epic. This funny video montage of cats includes a shot of a cat possibly being thrown(?) into a pond, and proceeding to run across the surface of the water to the other side. Aside from this, there are various interesting behvaiors that even The Mighty Blog Keeper has not heard of.

So enjoy, Presumably Human Reader, The Cool Thingamujig Of The Day.

The Possibilities....

The Understandably Not-So-Lovable Fuhrer, I was taught in my art history class, originally intended to be an artist. He applied to The Academy Of Fine Art in Vienna(presuming The Blog Keeper's Mighty Memory doth not fail His Greatness), and was rejected multiple times.

Now some watercolors reputed to be his work were sold at an auction for 97,000 pounds (~$140,000). Which goes to show that the biggest sellers do not sell for their skill as much as for the intrigue surrounding their work.

Curious, to think what may have happened had he been accepted and lived out a career as an artist.

So enjoy, Dear Reader, our fascinating and Cool Thingamujig Of The Day.

Peter The Sieve?

Behold, dear reader, The Cool Thingamujig Of The Day!

Bird Fucked

What hath one to say about today's Cool Thingamujig Of The Day, aside from "seriously?". That said, the blog keeper cannot wait to acquire his new computer and proceed to beat the shit out of his opponents with an ostrich. His only lament is that said Blog Keeper cannot execute such an act in real life....

With that, you, dear reader, are now presented with The Cool Thingamujig Of The Day.

I'm On A Boat, MoFo!

The brilliance and hilarity contained withing the video that is Today's Cool Thingamujig Of The Day is preposterous. There exists little more to be said of the previously-previously-referred-to-Thingamujg. With those symbols implemented to represent words, with the direct intention of communicating the concept of what today's Cool Thingamujig is, said the Cool Thingamujig will not be presented.

Instead, The Keeper Of The Blog The Reader Is Now Reading A Post From will present to you The Cool Thingamujig Of The Day!

Agreed

The Blog Keeper would like to state that he, in his infinite wisdom, whole-heartedly agrees with today's Cool Thingamujig Of The Day.

So much so, that the aforementioned "Blog Keeper of The-ness" will refrain from the previously established concention of long winded commentary and sentences tremendous in all their size, learning curve, and utter disdain for linguistic conventions designed to make words legible to the plebeian masses.

The Cool Thingamujig Of The Day.

I Know I Know What This Means

Though The Blog Keeper can't admit to actually understanding much of anything written on the man's blog, it does contain quite the entertaining work. The object that is will henceforth be known as The Cool Thingamujig of this day is an animation by Sebastien Wojda-Marioni.

The animation centers on a little zombie boy, and his enthusiasm for balloons.

Please enjoy, The Cool Thingamujig Of The Day.

This Dude Is 27 and Can Paint Like A Motherfucker!

The Title is brought to us, courtesy of The Blog Keeper's paraphrase of Francis Vellejo's (not-so-para)phrase on Michael Ciervo's painting skill.

Indeed, he is quite the motherfucker. Aside from his vast capacity to fornicate with our dear mothers, he does indeed paint like quite the motherfucker would be expected to: with a lofty level of impressive-osity.

As condolence to those less-ridiculously-talented-than-he-who-has-been-labeled-as-the-definition-thereof, there's a good chance that, given simple statistics, he has not yet fornicated with all of our mothers. Therefore making him your daddy with only a staggering probability, rather than a blatant and soul-crushingly undeniable certainty.

This depressing news aside, The Blog Keeper would like to present to you, newly depressed reader, The Cool Thingamujig Of The Day.

Superman's Secret Identity

Unbeknown to even The Blog Keeper, Superman has a secret identity that is largely secret to even those who know about his "real" identities of Clark Kent and Kal-El. This identity comes to us courtesy of Joe Shuster, co-creator of Superman.

Ok, so it's not actually Superman. But they do look quite a lot like the early Superman, and he's in compromising positions, in a book with all sorts of characters in similarly vulnerable positions. This all equals funny. Very much funny with fits of silly, childish giggles.

For more in-depth and not so decidedly vague information.... we have The Cool Thingamujig Of The Day!

Bronze Beauty

Today we are presented with the not-so-frivolous, but no-less-fabulous work of Matteo Pugliese. On his site the reader may find images of his impressive sculptures and art exhibits. With experience working for the likes of Warner Bros, Disney, and various large advertising firms, he is definitely quite the reputable artist. As his work speaks so much, the rest of the talking will be done by none other than that thing which hath been today designated The Cool Thingamujig Of The Day.

Not Daft, Not Punk, But DAFT PUNK

Here we have an interesting little flash "tool" that allows the user to mess with sounds from various well known songs by the duo.

Behold, The Cool Thingamujig Of The Day!

Awesomely Creepish Awesome With Extra Creepy

Today's Thingamujig centers on a series of brilliant mechanical masterpieces housed in the Cabaret Mech Theatre. This "theatre", where "theatre" is the English counterpart to the American "theater"(the difference being that the former tends to be "more snooty-er", whereas the latter is oft immature and generally "American"), is not actually a theatre of the English or American variety, nor is it a cabaret.

In fact, the aformentioned Cabaret Theatre(which hath already been established as neither) is more of a museum, containing various artistic automata. Most of these seem to center around a joke of one or another variety(the varieties ranging from good to hilarious to "ummm, what?") and are built mostly of wood.

Automata, for those readers of the singular reader base who are not in the know(the logical fallacy of which makes this entire paragraph quite useless, though the fact that the likely singular reader pointed this Thingamujig out obviously counters that fallacy with another, therefore making this paragraph quite, if not the most, vital), an automaton is a self operating machine.

Enjoy, dear reader, The Cool Thingamujig Of The Day!

HULK With A 'C' Instead Of A 'K' Isn't Nearly As Cool

Though the English letter 'k' is generally thought of as being much "cooler" than 'c'(which is ironic, seeing as how the word used to compare the aforementioned letters in question begins with the letter that is less equated to that word), the HULC is still a damn cool piece of engineering.

What is this less cool Hulk? Well, despite its inferior spelling methodology, the HULC is far cooler than the comic book character whom likely was the inspiration for the name. The HULC is an exoskeleton that allows a person to carry large amounts of weight with relative ease. Using very advanced software, it interprets the wearer's movements and intended actions, then augments those actions.

Word form other sources is that its battery technology still isn't up to par to be viable in combat. However, even in its current state, it could allow soldiers to become human forklifts where real forklifts are simply cumbersome and not utilitarian enough to be brought in.

Had The Blog Keeper truly expected machines like this to become viable shortly within his lifetime, it's plausible to say that he would have continued his originally intended childhood dream of engineering, as opposed to becoming an artist.

I(yes, I, His Mighty Keeper Of The Blog) present to you now, dear, solitary reader, The Cool Thingamujig Of The Day.

Take Flight, Sweet Creation

Today's Cool Thingamujig is software. However, at this point we have reached one of the visions of Micro Sun Systems as it was when the vision hath been first envisioned. This vision is for functional software that can be utilized entirely through one's browser.

This fruition is, in one form, known as "Aviary". Aviary is an online suite of art tools that currently includes a vector editor(let analogous thoughts of Adobe Illustrator run through thy mind), an image editor(now permit thoughts of Adobe Photoshop to give chase on the prior thoughts), a color swatch program, and a "visual laboratory".

Things to come include:

Myna

Audio editor

Eagle

Pixel pattern recognition

Owl

Desktop publishing

Penguin

Word processor

Pigeon

Painting simulator

Woodpecker

Smart image resizer

Hummingbird

3D modeler

Ibis

Font creator

Roc

Music generator

Starling

Video editor

Tern

Terrain generator

So, without further unnecessary delay, I present to you, The Cool Thingamujig Of The Day.

Funny Folks' Faces

So....due to his attendance in a head drawing class, The Blog Keeper finds that he is oft in need to various interesting faces to draw in The Sketchbook(said sketchbook's progress of 10 heads per week being monitored regularly by The Teacher of Said Head Drawing Class). In his mighty pursuit of heads with attached faces to draw, and with his busy schedule keeping him indoors a lot, The Blog Keeper tends to resort to using quite a bit of photographic reference.

In his pursuits, The One Somewhat More Commonly Known As "The Blog Keeper" has found one internet-based location of said "photographic reference" with a particularly nice variety of the much sought-after images.

With that, The One Known Most Commonly On This Particular Blog As The Blog Keeper(by his own, singular, self, at least in reference) present to you, fine reader, The Cool Thingamujig Of The Day.

Brilliant Blur Of Boobies....uh, I mean BEAUTY!

Here we behold not only boobies and beauty in a brilliant blur, but also some damn fine animation! A studio much admired by The Blog Keeper, Blur Studios does various contracted animation work. However, aside from this aforementioned "work"(of which The Keeper Of The Blog The Hypothetical Read Is Hypothesized To Be Currently Reading is quite jealous), Blur studios also does its fair share of shorts.

With magnificent mechs of steam-punkery, this video is a gigantic steel fist of brilliance, sent hurtling towards your face with an implausible spring mechanism(no doubt engaged by an unnecessarily large lever, like most else) upon the instant the so called "play button" is "pushed'.

Lo and behold with thy unprepared little eyeballs, Today's Cool Thingamujig Of The Day(complete with boobies!).

Who Wants To Play With My (Pin)Ballz?

So, whilst searching around for interesting internships(anything art, really), The Blog Keeper stumbled upon a quirky music video created by the peons at Insomniac Games. Hoping to be one of these peons(at least for however long the internship may last), The Blog Keeper will be applying for an internship there shortly.

In searching for information on other potential internships, as well, is where Said Blog Keeper stumbled upon The Aforementioned video of musicality.

There exists little to be said about this video by Said Blog Keeper, which means that I now present to you, dear reader, The Cool Thingamujig Of The Day.

Themz's Some Prolific Peeps!

The subject of today's Thingamujig? The daring Dave McKean!

Why so daring? Honestly, The Blog Keeper(as he would like to think somebody knows him, but is fully aware this isn't the case, since the perhaps two persons that occasionally read his web log do happen to be quite well acquainted with him in person) has no idea. But, The Blog Keeper does have quite a good idea as to why Mr. McKean is today's Thingamujig, or rather, his work.

Mr. Mckean is quite the prolific artist, having illustrated many a book cover, comic book and CD cover. Aside from this, he has written and illustrated various children's books, short comics, directed a feature film(MirrorMask), along with being an skilled jazz pianist(who co-ofunded Feral Records with Ian Ballamy).

So enjoy, dear singular reader, today's Cool Thingamujig Of The Day.

Machinations Of The Imagination

Today, The Blog Keeper would like to present to the singular fan, otherwise known as "reader", with the work of a concept artist.

Mike Doscher is a concept artist that concentrates in various mechanical designs. His website features a concept portfolio primarily composed of various mechanical and robotic constructs. Along with this is present a link to his DeviantArt account, whence he hosts various other images, including some 3d modelling work.

So, here it is, The Cool Thingamujig Of The Day.

Vehicles Of Flight!

Today's Cool Thingamujig Of The Day is a blog of various ship concept designs. There isn't much that can be said, aside from something along the lines of "Oooooh! Pretty pictures!".

So, enjoy this, our Cool Thingamujig Of The Day

Rush

The Cool Thingamujig Of The Day

A Man Of Chess, Perhaps?

Severe time constraints hath, unfortunately, severely impacted the frequency of the blog posts that are otherwise regularly subject to postage. For this, The Blog Keeper would like to extend an apology.

But, in reality, The Blog Keeper has no regrets to this issue, as this is how The Aforementioned Keeper Of Said Blog deemed his precious time would be best spent. The prior extension of apology was simply acted upon as an attempt to appear courteous and abide by the wholly arbitrary and self-imposed rule of updating Said Blog as consistently as possible within the dimensions of having daily updates.

With that said, I present to you a Cool Thingamujig that is, in fact, quite cool. The subject being a man's paintings. The Aforementioned "Man", goes by the name of Gregory Manchess.

The Cool Thingamujig Of The Day(which, for those who hadn't noticed, has just been presented) is the online gallery of The Aforementioned Man.

The Blog Keeper, in all of his infinite wisdom(endowed by The God Of Bloggers Himself, fyi), would also like to encourage all(one of you) readers to look up more of his work, along with checking out his video from Massive Black. Though, in fair warning, the Massive Black tutorials tend to be more demonstrations thant "tutorials", per se.

The Notepad And Memo Device Of Movement

Nintendo is a much beloved game developer/publisher. Most people, gamers and non-gamers, have had at least minimal playtime with some Nintendo game. For those who haven't, they are at least vaguely acquainted with some of the characters and the name of the company.

Nintendo is also known as being The Most Forward-Thinking Console Developer. Naysaying persons often refer to that Forward Thinking Console Developer as basing its success off of gimmicks. The Blog Keeper would like to argue against that concept. The Same Blog Keeper would also like to counter the occasional flak fired at The Most Forward Thinking Console Developer for having concocted consoles and controls schemes that were terrifically terrible.

The defense being that one(in this case, The Forward Thinking Console Developer) cannot advance without many trials and subsequent errors. The Greatest Artists were not born being able to draw and paint well, they practiced and went through many more hideous scribbles than they ever did masterpieces.

That's what The Forward Thinking Console Developer's Virtua Boy and Power Glove(perhaps the two most famous flunks) were. Not to mention the Phillips Cdi and its attrocious acts being the direct result of a contract deal with Phillips.

However, were they not willing to take such risks, they would have never known the nature of how stereoscopic 3d should be presented. How would they know that the accelerometer technology in the Wii would be useful without having tried it? Everyone shided the DS with its unimaginative name and "gimmicky" touch screen that would supposedly never amount to serious gameplay. Yet the popularity of The Dual Screen Device From The Forward Thinking Developer shows that it was not a simple kitsch that would quickly fade away.

In fact, Apple, which nobody ever seems to want to criticize, has made a killing off of employing the same concept in their own device. The iTouch is not original. It is simply a more PSP-like version of The Forward Thinking Console Developer's The Dual Screen Device, which is what many people said they wanted to see. Many said that the next iteration of the DS should void the second screen, in favor of the real feature they wanted to experience, which was the more tactile interface.

There are cartridges that allowed The Afforementioned Dual Screened Device to Dual function(which, in this case, totals it up to a trifecta of function) as an MP3 playing device, which precedes the iPod Touch(henceforth refered to as the iTouch), and gives it all of the same functions. An Opera internet browser allowed The Dual Screened, Triple Functioned Device to conduct all of the same, frequently used operations of the iTouch. On top of it, there are games in existance for The Afforementioned Dual Screened Device that do not exist for the iTouch, due to its own lack of buttons being quite inhibiting in the long run for gameplay funcitonality.

Of course, the iTouch has the capacity for interpreting to points of contact simultaneously. However, the precision and sensitivity of The Apple Device With One Less Screen is inferior, not to mention the inability to respond to a plastic stylus(The Blog Keeper understands this as a limitation of the electrosensitive technology that give the device its tactile function).

Even with 3 years of time to follow up and improve, The Apple Device With One Less Screen still has inferior aspects to counter its superior functions. Colors, a popular app for the iPhone/iTouch, was first developed for The Afforementioned Dual Screened Device. Now, in following, we finally conclude this rant on the part of The Blog Keeper, and are given the opportunity to witness The Cool Thingamujig Of The Day.

Moving Memo

This Cool Thingamujig's main feature of attraction to The Blog Keeper is its capacity to create frame by frame animations on The Afforementioned Forward Thinking Console Developer's Dual Screened Device. This is cool, indeed.

So, The Blog Keeper presents to you, The Cool Thingamujig Of The Day

The Act Of Surpassing

The act of surpassing has little to do with this post, aside from the fact that it once again has put this blog in front of The Blog Keeper's Other Blog in number of posts.

Aside from that, The Blog Keeper would like to bring to your attention The Cool Thingamujig Of This Calendar Day. This Cool Thingamujig being a set of illustrations of various children's respective dreams.

Without further delay, The Blog Keeper shall present to you, the reader, The Cool Thingamujig Of The Day.

That is to say, The Cool Thingamujig Of The Day will be presented to The Reader(you), not that The Blog Keeper shall present you to yourself. If you believe you are in need of presentation to yourself, The Blog Keeper would like to recommend that you first seek medical help, as that can't be good for you.

One Hell Of A Story From North America

The Blog Keeper's continent of residence has an interesting moral tale to tell. Whilst far from being a marvel of technically impressive animation, there is an interesting story here with some powerful characters, their power being derived from their origins in human primal and philosophical thought. The story speaks for itself quite well, so The Blog Keeper will circumvent any more long-winded description and simply present to you, fine reader, The Cool Thingamujig Of The Day.

Story from North America
Uploaded by kirstenlepore

Experimental Animation Galore

The word "notebook" can mean multiple things, depending on context. Today's Cool Thingamujig Of The Day is a notebook of various kinds taken into a different context. In a fascinating display of witty animation, this digital notebook is made entirely out of paper. However, this paper is obviously some kind of magical electronic paper. How else to explain being able to run Windows XP on a screen that was drawn out with a pen? It's not as if one could use editing programs like After Effects to edit the footage and fake all of this obvious magic!

Without further ado, The Blog Keeper present to you, The Cool Thingamujig Of The Day.

Belated Celebration!

Of having matched the writer's original blog's 14 posts with the Cool Thingamujig Of The Day! Though, in counter, The Blog Keeper actually updated that blog which most would expect to be his "main blog". No, the writer will not be a self promoting dousche and get cheap on today's Cool Thingamujig Of The Day by linking his own blog as The Cool Thingamujig. The writer simply felt that the score count was interesting. However, it will likely be some amount of time before it's been beaten thoroughly enough so as to not want to come back for more beatings.

With that said, I present to you, without further ado, The Cool Thingamujig Of The Day.

Today's Cool Thingamujig was, in a sense, brought to the writer's attention by a friend. However, this attention bringing was not done in the traditional sense of being directly informed. Instead, One Of The Blog Keeper's Friends(yes, sole reader, you are not the only one) mentioned photo reference sites. In response to this, the writer recalled what then wasn't, but was later to be, The Cool Thingamujig Of The Day. This Cool Thingamujig Of That Day We Will For Now Refer To As Today, is an interesting website that centers around character design. Along with the artists that they occasionally feature, clicking on the "Photosets" link under "Archive" in the navigation bar that is situated on the left hand(stage right) side. Here can be found a nice collection of reference photos that can be practiced from. So, with the long-winded-ness out of the way-ness, The Blog Keeper hopes that The Reader enjoys The Cool Thingamujig Of The Day.

That Mysterious Writing On The Wall

Today's Thingamujig is a short video showcasing some very skilled writers that not only have some beautiful 3d Wildstyle, but also did some very impressive background work. Let's also acknowledge their tenacity in restricting themselves to spraypaint cans, like so many muralists seem to do(which brings to mind the question of whether anyone has ever used oil paint to do graffiti, I have heard of house paint, etching fluids, markers are popular for tags....but has anyone ever tried oils?).

Questions of mediums aside, I present to you, the Cool Thingamujig Of The Day!

The Art Of Imagination

The Art Of Imagination apparently has a society dedicated to it. Not only that, but they have a website! Or, perhaps it's only a website, with little or no society actually backing it....

Regardless! This web page of imaginative, artsy goodness has many interesting works. All of said "imaginative works" are packed into one website with a distinctly 90's look.

Again, regardless! The various surrealist and mystical works come in various mediums, from traditional to digital paintings to sculptures. The Society, as I will refer to it for the next sentence or two, is a cool place. So cool, in fact, that it is today's Cool Thingamujig Of The Day.

Paintings of Progress

Jeremy Geddes is an illustrator, who's work I saw in Spectrum. Definitely quite the impressive Thingamujig Of The Day.

The Following Followup That Follows

Is here! As promised, the second Thingamujig Of The Day for the hypothetical morning readers to wake up to! Though it still follows the date constraints of a single Thingamujig per day, as more than one could be too much cool. Too much cool, it is well known, is perfectly capable of freezing all of the fluids in a human body. Seeing as how any readers will likely be human, and human bodies tend to encase a large amount of fluid, allowing these fluids to be frozen in the reader's bodies would be not only very irresponsible, but also quite rude.

If only there could be found some witty segway to move from freezing all of my readers' bodily fluids to the Thingamujig Of The Day, which actually has little to do with freezing anything. However, it is quite cool. In fact, the plausible segeway could have been that The Thingamujig Of The Day is cooler than average, since it is almost two Thingamujigs!

Don't worry, however, it is just slightly less cool than the temperature required to freeze your body into a human popsicle.

What is this Thingamujig posessed of such coolness, you ask? It is not only a link to the webpage of The 11 Second Club, but more specifically to their resource page, wherein can be found many high quality rigs to be used for computer animation.

The 11 Second Club is the spiritual successor to the 10 Second Club, which was a monthly animation contest in which contestants created a ten second animation to a specific, monthly audio clip. However, due to various issues, the site was closed down. The domain has had a 'coming soon' banner for a good while now, and it doesn't seem it will resume at any point in the near future, if ever.

AnimationMentor.com (oh dear....this is getting cooler than I thought....so much information!) has taken the liberty of creating a successor site. Their audio clips are supplied monthly, at 11 seconds in length, with the prize being a professional critique from a seasoned animator.

Not only does The Thingamujig Of The Day contain this information, but it also links directly to their oft overlooked resource page, which contains links to a series of relatively good rigs. In the blog keeper's opinion, the androgenous "Andy" rig is the best. However, "Max" is also a very nice rig, though the Andy facial controls seem to be somewhat more capable in his limited initial tests.

Real Cartoon Creatures

Today's fine Thingamujig of the Day is presented to us in the not-quite-as-fine evening. Why? Because the author of said blog of the fine things of their respective days does not make enough personal gain of any kind from "said blog" to merit being adamant that each day the mythical "readers" (which, in all likelyhood, do not exist) of the blog be able to wake up and find a new fine thing in the morning. However, on the bright side, the following morning will present these hypothetical "morning readers"(again, let us not forget that readers of this blog of any kind, regardless of nocturnal or diurnal preference, do not exist) may wake up to find two new Cool Thingamujigs, upon which they hath previously not laid their sites.

Along with this, today's fine Thingamujig presents us with some interesting situations of what most would refer to as "reality", composited into cartoons. Those same people would also claim that "reality", being "more important", should merit enough respect so as to demand that it be stated the Cartoon was composited into a shot of reality. These persons(who's existance we shall not acknowledge in this blog) would, however, be quite wrong.

Regardless of the offending person's unfortunate misconceptions, the writer of this blog does indeed hope that the hypothetical readers would enjoy today's Cool Thingamujig Of The Day, were they to witness its glory.

The Right KIND of Bullshit

I myself, not another, would like to distinctly, with powerful words, proclaim my favor and respect towards this, the Cool Thingamujig Of The Day.

What could this, "this" be that merits such a vast level of respect and favor as "this"?

Well, "this" is perhaps the greatest essay I have read in any recent span of time. "This", give me hope that I will, in fact, distinctly enjoy my time spent in my English class, wherein we study what has historically been my worst subject, namely English.

"This" essay is an essay on academic bullshit, or "bull", as the author somewhat more kindly refers to it as. The basic premise being that "bullshitting" you way through a conceptual topic is superior to the churned out lists of facts that persons often present. The reason being that this(simply this, not "this" this) "bull" displays a greater amount of real understanding of the important concept at heart. Therefore, those C grade lists of facts are inferior to those large streams of structured, long winded, and overly "wordy"(it's a technical term) papers that are often failed(assuming the teacher is smart enough to catch the attempted bullshittery). However, neither of these sole components should merit a high grade. The reality is that the intertwined relationship of the two requires both of them in order to achieve a highly marked paper. The bullshit also merits a fail, however, it's a slightly more valuable failure. Since it at least demonstrates that some amount of value was gained.

Going Out Like A Man On A Date With Death

Today I present to you instructions on how to properly kill yourself. I second the article's opinion in that too many 14 year old girls are trying to slit their wrists, or overdose themselves with "painkillers" like aspirin.

What, you ask, could be the potential remedy to this malady of death's design?

Why, the answer, of course, is by killing yourself in the manliest way possible. In order to best facilitate re-skewing statistics in the favor of all those decent in this world, if one were to kill oneself, one must ensure that is is performed in the absolutely _manliest_ way POSSIBLE.

So, without further ado, please read the list and take the manliest way out that is feasible for whatever situation in which you may be.

This is, our Cool Thingamujig Of The Day.

Intricately Amazing Simplicity

Many believe there are formulas to success and good entertainment. Most successful enterprises have some sort of guideline for how they operate. In the film industry(with this current thought being more directly aimed at animation in a particularly specific sense) this generally means a common form as to how the characters are designed, the colors schemes are chosen, the plots are organized, any one or any many more of these can follow a form of formula from the vague to the decidedly un-vague and particularly precise. I am thoroughly amazed at the simplicity and amazing execution of our exceptionally fine Thingamujig Of The Day.

Their formula?

Two pieces of foam, three sticks, a handful of pencils, two kazoos, a guitar, a guitarist accompanying the guitar, and an excellent puppeteer accompanied by a strong character with tremendous determination make this brilliant video brim with utterly brilliant BRILLIANCE!

Nasal Brilliance

The narrator/host of Our Fine Thingamujig of the Day has one of the most infuriatingly nasal voices I've ever heard, which definitely does not assist in mitigating the distinct cheese factor that the aforementioned video possesses.

Nonetheless, this is quite the interesting little insight on storyboarding, while focusing on the Disney perspective of the subject.

Apologies for missing the prior day of the Cool Thingamujigs of Days will be bypassed, and instead replaced with a secondary post later in this calendar day.

Reasonably Apologetic Excuses

So, with this Ringling thing that the writer of the blog was trying to get into, the aforementioned blog was put on hold whilst that was sorted out. As the blog was set to resurface, other issues accrued in the schedule and pushed "the blog" out of its designated time-slot of attention getting.

Now that time for the blog has been re-acquired, the writing of said blog is recommencing. Along with acceptance of that fact that there will likely be breaks in the consistency of days, however, this has been preemptively combated with a list. Yes! A LIST! A list which shall have a log of interesting thingamujigs in the event that there is present more a lack of time to find one for the day, on said day, thus significantly displacing the presence of time available for finding a thingamujig on that day.

Now, to resume with the first thingamujig of this period that the writer shall henceforth think of as, "The Resumption Period", the writer that, on the current day of writing, feels a distinct need to refer to himself in the third person will present to you this, our fine Thingamujig Of The Day.

Pocoyo is an animated, Spanish show for pre-schoolers. The show is animated in an interesting fashion that reminds the writer referring to himself only in the third person for the time being of old sprite-based animation of the NES age. In the blog keeper's interpretation, it very much seemed like the animators were having their fun in playing with their methods. Also, the characters have a quality of being eye-gougingly, aneurism inducingly cute.

Dissapointing Oversight Of Greatness

There exists inside of me some component, this component's purpose seems to be largely to ensure that I am ecstatic over references to old things.

In this case, it propels me to absolutely love the Thingamujig Of The Day™, which contains various likenesses and direct plugs to what is likely the most famous scene from 2001, A Space Odyssey, this scene being the one of the primates and the mysterious black monolith, set to "Also Sprach Zarathustra"(So Spake Zarathustra).

Aside from the glee inducing references, Jason Figliozzi does a fine job in animating his very well designed character in his epic struggle against the mysterious black slab in order to acquire his meal.

One particular detail I feel is very noteworthy is the pulling back of various vertices in many of the motions. This results in a very pleasing snap to his animation.

My dissapointment arises in the fact that there were others in his same year who were merited much more highly than Jason, though I personally feel that his animation skills were proven in his thesis to be distinctly superior than most, if not all, of his peers. I suspect their projects were more appreciated due to their greater abundance of that infamous thing that all seek endlessly, better known by the simple word "stuff".

Regardless, I aspire to reach(and of course, hopefully surpass) his impressive level of skill, and wish him the best of luck in his work as a character animator(I understand that he is now employed at Sony Imageworks).

So, without further ado, I present to you, this fine evening, our Thingamujig Of The Day™

The Call Of Closeness

Without further delay that may send us spiraling into our following day and the time after the entirely arbitrary, self imposed, and consequentially insignificant deadline of today(aside from the delay in writing this unnecessarily long, complicated, intricate, and likely grammatically offensive sentence), I present to us, this, our Cool Thingamujig Of The Day.

Also, I feel it will be necessary to, at some point, begin posting things other than existing blog articles. However, I am going to begin to compile a list so that I may strictly present one thing on every deadline(the aforementioned, "today" of the first, admittedly unnecessary sentence).

This will hopefully help ensure some amount of that fabled thing oft referred to as....I believe the word is.... "quality"?

I presume this word to encompass writing my own articles.

The Inauguration!

No, not of the president. This is the inauguration of the blog of the cool thingamajigs of their respective days!

This was inspired by the various e-mails I sent out to my girlfriend over the past few months, which I at one point began titling "Cool Thingamajig of the Day", when they had reached near daily frequency.

These mostly consisted of interesting articles(my my, wasn't that witty) that I found on various blogs.

After having forwarded some of these to others, I considered beginning a mass e-mail newsletter. But decided instead to simply make my own blog.

So our first bit is a Cool Thingamujig is one my girlfriend sent me.

This is a short, illustrated story by one of her fellow students at CalArts.

So now I present this, our Cool Thingamujig Of The Day™*

The secondary Thingamujig Of The Day is this painting. I just thought it was an interesting piece of work, with the threading and all.


*Not really trademarked, I just liked the look of it :P