How Does He Shave?

The Man of Steel trailer shows a bearded Clark Kent and a clean-shaven Superman, which has caused quite a stir. Conan O'brien, Bill Nye the Science Guy, and the folks at Gillette are all abuzz with the question, "How does Superman shave his Kryptonian beard?" I think the answer is clear:

Talk about some serious gazer burn.

15 days...

Meteor Strikes Russia!

As I'm sure you've heard, a meteor struck Russia today. Most articles are titled "Hundreds Injured in Meteor Explosion in Russia!" I'm looking forward to the articles two weeks from now that read, "Hundreds Gain Superpowers from Meteor Explosion in Russia!"

Based on a character from Everett Downing's 365 Supers blog and half hill giant, half Russian boxer, Nikolai Valuev.

The actual footage is astounding and well worth a look! If this doesn't inspire you to draw and tell stories, I don't know what will!



11 days...

Sauroniops

Last week, the colossal Moroccan theropod Sauroniops ("The Eye of Sauron") joined the ranks of Mojoceratops and Dracorex Hogwarsti, recently discovered dinosaurs named after nerd icons.

Sauroniops is so-named because the species has only been identified by a single eye socket bone with a distinctive bump. Much like the Dark Lord, who was only identifiable by a badly-burnt helmet after his death.

Peter Jackson couldn't have asked for a cooler publicity stunt.

31 days...

"EVA?"

Looks like someone's curious about Curiosity.

Thanks to my dad, Michael Madison, for the idea!

3 days...

Transit of Venus

Venus must have gotten such a kick out of all the attention last Tuesday.

15 days...

CHADES CHALLENGE XLI:
ARSENIC MONSTERS

Santa learns about NASA's latest discovery the hard way when he mistakes a beaker of Arsenic-laden bacteria for a glass of milk.

10,000x magnification of arsenic-eating microbe, designated ArStNick.

Let me know if you have any contributions and I'll post them below. The next design (due December 31) is...

CHADES CHALLENGE XLII: CLAUSTROPHOBIC KELPIES

I promise not to illustrate another Santa pun, even though the topic is begging for it. If you're unsure what a Kelpie is, check the wikipedia article here.

8 days...

How to Build a Dinosaur
Step 1: First Blood

According to Popular Science, researchers have successfully extracted 43,000 year-old mammoth DNA and replicated mammoth blood. This is the first step in bringing back an extinct species. Next stop: baby dinosaurs.

Animated on the iPad.

In other news, the latest Toy Story 3 trailer is out. It's definitely a different direction for the studio.

WANTED

Asteroids...you're on notice! I could look the other way while you were smashing up TIE fighters and 8-bit space ships. I don't even mind what you've done to the moon, I'm sure he had it coming. But according to this article, paleontologists have finally proven that you and you alone are guilty for the demise of the majestic dinosaurs.

And I don't want to hear any of this "it was an accident" nonsense. You hurled into the Earth at what smart men with large calculators say was 20 times the velocity of a speeding bullet, causing a blast over a billion times worse than the Hiroshima bomb!! I just can't look the other way anymore. Asteroids, watch your cratered backs, cuz Earth is coming for justice!

Aloha! Sorry for the grievous lack of posting, I just got back from vacation in Hawaii. I went with family, including my Grandpa Bill, who used to surf with the legendary Duke Kahanamoku.

I was inspired by my grandpa's stories of hot-dogging and hangin' ten with the Duke, and couldn't help but fire-up my imagination while surrounded by the tropical hillsides and rainforests of Jurassic Park. I'm definitely ready to plunge back into work, reinvigorated with my cup filled to the brim with creative juices.

There's a lot to be said about hard work, and that's certainly the only way to get better at animating. But as I heard Brad Bird himself once say, "You've got to have a life to create the illusion of life."

I've got some serious post-creating to do, but while you wait for the next Chades Challenge (I'm, what? Two behind?), here's some creative nourishment for you to chew on!

Symphony of Science

Chito and Pocho

Fellow paleo-blogger Darren Naish posted a fascinating story about a Costa Rican fella named Chito and his best friend, Pocho, who happens to be a 17 ft croc.

Not only are Chito and Pocho on friendly terms, they also enjoy wrestling together and sometimes Pocho even lets Chito win!

Darren also posted the story on his Facebook and the following conversation ensued:

Me: "Awesome! This is proof that we should bring dinosaurs back, and that they'd be completely cuddly."

Darren: "Damn right. Start with tyrannosaurs."

Mike: "Austin, for the EPB to support that would require that birds be cuddly, instead of shrieking little jerky annoyances that chew up books. (Or have I just had bad experiences?)"

Darren: "Mike, the character states you describe are autapomorphies of some neornithine clades. Everyone knows that paleognaths and anseriformes are cuddly and friendly."

I hadn't heard any of these terms before, but the comments just cracked me up, so I had to share. If you're suspicious of the stills above, here's video to prove than man and reptile can peacefully coincide.

"That's the stuff!"

Some Tuesday gestures in honor of Mike Mitchell. Yes, I realize the drawing below features two very unfortunately placed drawings.

The pose below was great, there was a real sense that the model was dancing even though both feet were firmly planted.

Playing with perspective. Fun, if not always successful.

Sometimes the negative space can be just as informative as the forms themselves, as with the space between the model's arm, leg, and torso. I always look for pockets like that to help clarify silhouette.

Our instructor, Louis, was pushing us to redraw each pose as many times as possible. The key is to try a different approach each time, varying angles, conveying the weight and energy in new ways. I played a mental game with myself that any time the model gave us the 10- or 20-second warning, I had to quit my current drawing and start a fresh one. As Mark Kistler would say, I was suffering from an Art-Attack, "Draw! Draw! Draw!"

In completely unrelated news, ROUS's are real! This "little" guy, held here by mammal expert Martua Sinaga, was found in the rainforests of western New Guinea (quite a ways from the ROUS's natural habitat, the Fire Swamp). Weighing in at about five times the size of a typical city rat, this species is entirely new to science, and has no apparent fear of humans.

BRINGIN' REXY BACK

According to Science Daily, scientists have confirmed the remains of biochemical material (proteins) in dinosaur fossils. T. rex fossils, no less! This organic material has survived for sixty-eight million years; I think this is proof that God wants us to bring the dinosaurs back. I am so excited by this news, I was inspired to write a haiku.

Rain-slicked poncho blue
Primordial forest green
Stain on pants yellow

Speaking of inspirational new stuff, there's some awesome new music out there by Weird Al and Regina Spektor. Weird Al's new song, CNR, is a JibJab exclusive, though it's already on YouTube. I was shown the CNR video by my buddy Raph, who is an exact doppleganger of the ill-fated fellow at the video's 1:42 mark. Raph's adopted, so he may just have an identical twin out there!

JibJab's Alan Cook:


Pixar's Raphael Suter:

Uncanny, eh? Kudos to my friends and fellow CalArts alumni Amanda and Justin, and everyone else at JibJab for keeping up the inspiring work!

The other song I was inspired by is Regina Spektor's new single, Laughing With. I'm one of those people who would check both the box for God and evolution in my "What do you believe?" poll. So I'm greatly inspired by anything God-or dino-related.

Laughing With begs the question, why do people only laugh at God when they don't need to depend on Him? It's one of the more profound songs I've heard in a great while, so I thought I'd share it with you all (regardless of which boxes you select in my poll).

Frazetta was right

According to nature.com, scientists have just uncovered a prehistoric snake called the Titanoboa that dwarfs the largest living anaconda by over seven meters. Science News quotes vertebrate paleontologist Jonathan Bloch, who states:
"[The snake] would have had trouble fitting though the door into your office."
Below: a comparison of the vertebra of the modern-day anaconda to the Titanoboa. Bottom: that's no rock under that boa constrictor, it's the fossilized vertebra of the king of snakes.
As a follow-up to my last entry about the resurrected ibex, I think we can all agree that this is one animal that does not need to be brought back from extinction. If any of you are building a time machine, I'd suggest installing snake-away spray.

Life with find a way...or we will find one for it.

For the first time in history, an extinct animal has been resurrected by science. Granted, the animal had only been extinct for eight years, and skin samples were available, but this still marks a great stride forward. According to the Telegraph, DNA from the Pyrenean ibex, which had recently been hunted to extinction, was inserted into the eggs of domestic goats. The article states:

"Sadly, the newborn ibex kid died shortly after birth due to physical defects in its lungs. Other cloned animals, including sheep, have been born with similar lung defects.

But the breakthrough has raised hopes that it will be possible to save endangered and newly extinct species by resurrecting them from frozen tissue."

Last year, scientists mapped the woolly mammoth's genome, and I say we get Weta to design us some awesome saddles so we can get straight to riding these suckers. They can be the new hummer!

Saharasaurs?

According to Science Daily, two new species of prehistoric animals were found in the Sahara this week, a pterosaur and a sauropod (the long-necked dinosaurs). Scientists believe that the Sahara used to be an expansive grassland dotted with lakes and ponds like a prehistoric Shire. Perfect stomping grounds for a sauropod (and sauropods did an awful lot of stomping).
This marks the most exciting find to come out of Africa in nearly fifty years and some great news for us sauropod fans. Finding a new dinosaur on a dig is quite a feat, finding two entirely new species is astounding!


Nizar Ibrahim (pictured above), the palaeontologist leading the study, will spend the next six months examining all of the fossils and writing about them for his thesis. I thought we were lucky at CalArts to be able to make films for our thesis, but studying new dinosaur species to earn your PhD might be even cooler.
Thanks to by brother, Andy, and Michelle for sending me the article!
In other, even more exciting news, scientists at Penn State lead by Webb Miller and Stephan C. Schuster have made a genetic break-through mapping the first genome of a prehistoric animal--the woolly mammoth! Schuster says, "Our dataset is 100 times more extensive than any other published dataset for an extinct species, demonstrating that ancient DNA studies can be brought up to the same level as modern genome projects."


A lot of people may question whether or not we should be playing God, and we've certainly seen the effects of eating from the Tree of Knowledge, but who doesn't want to ride a woolly mammoth? Read more about the break-through in the article here. What do you guys think? Should we bring back prehistoric animals or leave 'em alone?

On the heels of a scientific breakthrough!

The good John Dusenberry shared this article with me. It basically explains how we are a few decades away from reverse-engineering birds into dinosaurs using dormant genetic coding that exists from the days back when birds were dinosaurs, thus paving the way for a real-life Jurassic Park and possible dino-pets; no big deal, really.

In other news: Atlantis Discovered?

The Walking Whale and the Collapse of Intelligent Design

Did you know whales once walked the earth? Back then, they were called Ambulocetus. Well, we call them that now, but that's what they were, they just didn't know it yet. Ambulocetus is remarkable because it has an internal ear system that could hear just as well underwater as well as land, suggesting the animal was transitioning from a land-locked to more aquatic lifestyle. Fairly solid evidence that whales originally lived on land (though those ancestors had ancestors who lived in the ocean).

This is one of the many cool subjects mentioned in Ken Miller's lecture on evolution, and how it aught to be taught in the classroom. What I love about Mr. Miller is that he is a theist who, like me, goes to church and believes in the Christian concept of God and intelligent design (or ID), but sees that it is different from science. ID cannot yet be tested or proven through observation so it is by definition not a science. All around our country, folks are arguing otherwise, and men like Ben Stein are creating films lambasting the scientific community for keeping perspective, so it is important to take a long look at what we define as science and the importance of keeping education as objective as possible.
Anyway, for those of you who are curious about life, the universe, and everything, check out Ken's lecture (it's entertaining, I promise)!

Was Charlene Sinclair a prehistoric Juno?

A recent edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences claims that dinosaurs probably experienced a high rate of teen pregnancy.
UC Berkeley (go Bears!) paleontologists Sarah Werning and Andrew H. Lee found medullary bone, a calcium-rich deposit of bone tissue that acts as an internal resource for eggshells and only develops prior to ovulation, in the fossils of three adolescent specimens: an Allosaurus, a Tyrannosaurus, and a Tenontosaurus. These animals died before full maturity, but showed clear signs of pregnancy. Werner and Lee say teen-pregnancy was most likely a survival mechanism. Many dinosaur species had a high adult-mortality rate, so early reproduction was the best way to ensure the future of the species.
Paleontologists also say this growth pattern resembles mammals more than it does reptiles. Resembles Triassic trailer trash to me.

For those of you interested in religion and science, you may want to check out Duelity, a film that tells the Biblical account of creation through a scientific voice, and evolution through a deistic syntax.

BACK...IN OUR FUTURE!

Christopher Lloyd is coming back as everyone's favorite scientist (sorry, Mr. Nye), Doc Brown in an O'neal McKnight music video. A clip from the set can be found here.
In bizarrely related news, real scientists today are making leaps and bounds in brain-to-machine algorithm technology, the field Doc is toying in before his accident in the bathroom. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said Wednesday that they've developed an algorithm for a neural prosthetic aid that can link an individual's brain activity to the person's intentions; and then translate that intention into movement. More on that here.