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Swiss illustrator Martin Panchaud created a massive infographic that tells the entire story of the first Star Wars movie. How massive? It’s 465152 pixels long.
This long ribbon reminds the ancient Chinese script rolls that had to be rolled in and rolled out simultaneously in order to be read. I like this stretch between ages, cultures, and technologies.
So cool. The style reminds me a bit of Chris Ware in places.
Brooklyn-based illustrator and design Mark Dingo made these postcards based on Wes Anderson’s films, one for each movie. (via @timothy_schuler)
If you’ve read a book like Danny the Champion of the World or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, you have seen the work of illustrator Quentin Blake.
Type foundry Monotype have created a typeface from Blake’s distinctive handwriting. Each letter has four variants so the text looks more random, like actual handwriting:
From illustrator @takumitoxin, a wonderful rendering of the events of Mad Max: Fury Road in the style of an ancient Egyptian painting.
Fury Road is out on Blu-ray today (and streaming). This movie was the perfect summer entertainment.
In celebration of English footballer David Beckham’s 40th birthday, ESPN commissioned Helen Green to take us on an animated voyage through Beck’s many hairstyles.
See also every David Bowie hairstyle (also by Green), every Prince hairstyle, and David, a piece of video art by Sam Taylor-Wood of Beckham sleeping for an hour and seven minutes.
Hannah Choi is making illustrations of all the women Don Draper has slept with on Mad Men in chronological order.
I love Guillaume Cornet’s fanciful and intricate drawings. He’s done Paris, New York, and a London apartment building, among others.
Society6 recently put a camera on Cornet while he did his Paris drawing, condensing 75 hours of painstaking work into a 2-minute time lapse.
My favorite little detail highlighted by Society6 is the appearance of the Emmet minifig in the NYC illustration, complete with the Piece of Resistance.
The American Museum of Natural History’s research library has an online exhibit of bird illustrations taken from the book Extraordinary Birds. (via @kellianderson)
Helen Green drew all the hairstyles worn by David Bowie from before he was a star in 1964 on up to the present day. Here’s they are in a glorious animated GIF:
Green also did a one-sheet of the B&W drawings. See also every Prince hairstyle from 1978 to 2013. (via @Coudal)
From the collection of The University of New Mexico, a big collection of cutaway diagrams of nuclear reactors.
Richard Evans rendered some of the best-known Studio Ghibli characters in pixel art style.
Richard Swarbrick makes these great impressionist animations of sports events, mostly soccer but also cricket and basketball. Here’s one to get you started…the 5-0 drubbing FC Barcelona handed to Real Madrid during a 2010 Clasico:
It’s amazing how much Swarbrick’s illustrations communicate with so few strokes…Mourinho’s face is my favorite. Here’s the actual match for comparison purposes. And here’s Maradona’s sublime goal against England in the 1986 World Cup (original video):
You can find many other examples of Swarbrick’s work on his web site and on his YouTube channel. (via @dunstan)
From Diego Mazzeo, illustrations of a bunch of different mechanical animals, including a whale, horses, elephants, flamingos, giraffes, a griffin, and a dragon.
James Gulliver Hancock is on a mission to draw all the buildings in New York City.
Hancock’s blog has spawned a book and prints are available as well. (via brain pickings)
I really like Sophie Blackall’s illustrations of missed connections ads from Craiglist and other sites. The style reminds me a bit of Maira Kalman.
If this were on Tumblr, she’d already have a book deal.
Update: About that book thing:
Ms. Blackall’s whimsical drawings have also caught the attention of publishers: She says she’s currently negotiating a deal to create a book of her illustrations, which would likely land on shelves sometime in the next year to 18 months.
There’s a dynamic quality to this Moleskine sketch by Stephanie Brown that you don’t often see with such spare illustration. The rest of her stuff is worth a look as well…Flickr too. Somewhat NSFW. (via sex in art)
The spouting bean concept illustrated by Jillian Tamaki for the “Green Chicago” issue of Hemispheres, the inflight magazine for United Airlines, is a little bit of genius.
Maira Kalman tells a wonderfully illustrated story about democracy (and Salisbury steak).
Christoph Niemann shares a series of his New York City cheatsheets, including tips for getting on and off the subway at the proper points, muffin poking (you know, for checking freshness), and a door opening maneuver called “The Northside Eagle”.
Whenever I rode the subway with my two older boys, I tried to hold on to their hands at all times. In the process, I developed a special move. I think anyone who saw it must have been impressed.
I would hold the boys’ hands as we briskly made our way out of the station, then, just as we reached the turnstiles, I would let go. We would pass through the turnstiles simultaneously, and so smoothly that the boys’ hands would still be up in the air when we got to the other side, where I would grab their little fingers again in one fluid motion. (Requires practice.)
These are great fun.
Illustrator Bob Staake explains the process behind his cover on this week’s politically themed New Yorker, including rejected alternatives and a video progression of the finished design. Staake still uses a copy of Photoshop 3.0 on MacOS 7 to do his illustrations. That was a great version of Photoshop…I remember not wanting to switch myself. (via df)
Update: Staake uses OS X with MacOS 9 running in the background:
Let me clear up today’s rumor: I do NOT work in OS 7. I use OSX and run classic (9.0) in the background. Photoshop 3.0? Yes, STILL use that.
These Mad Men illustrations done by Nobody’s Sweetheart are fantastic.
Oh, Joan! And wallpaper-sized to boot! The full-sized Sally Draper’s Cocktail Cheat Sheet is awesome. (via merlin)
Yeondoo Jung does real-life recreations of children’s drawings. (via quips)
Time lapse of a gorgeous Chad Pugh illustration from start to finish (in HD).
The video is a condensed time lapse of screenshots over a several month period. Total physical drawing time is close to 40 hours and I’d add an equal amount of time for concept time and readying the print. A screenshot was taken every 5 seconds, which actually results in a full 18 minute video.
This illustration inspired Vimeo’s wonderful login screen. A limited-edition print of the finished illustration is available. (via jakob)
Some clever drawings by Russell Weekes. The fig 1 fig 2 one make me chuckle every time I see it.
Linzie Hunter’s illustrations of spam subject lines. I wish she did prints of these. See also: Spamshirt.
Jennifer Daniel has a nice one-page portfolio of design and illustration work.
A friend of mine who works at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln emailed to let me know that they’ve posted both audio and video of a talk that Chris Ware gave at the school last week. If you’re short on time, the real meat of the video starts around 18:30 when Ware starts a slideshow that delves into his process. In addition to his series of Thanksgiving-themed New Yorker covers from last year, he also talks about some of his other work, including Rusty Brown and the strip he did for the NY Times Magazine.
80 wonderful handdrawn typographic posters by Job Wouters. (via type for you)
Antony Hare is one of the few people from the olden days (i.e. 8-10 years ago) that I still check in on regularly…I really dig his simple illustrations. For the past few months, he’s been putting time-lapse videos of some of his drawings on YouTube, including a drawing of Steve Jobs, one of Robert Altman, and another of David Lynch.
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