Untitled (Balance/Control)

Joey Jacks is the man

http://youcallmechild.blogspot.com/

Some progress

Cake Walk (in motion)

A small batch

Here are some comics I have made this semester. The first, entitled "Home At Last/Cake Time", is (*WARNING*) quite vulgar, for those sensitive readers out there, & "based on true events". The second, "Bluetooth Madness", has captions written by Ernest Kim (<-- click click), and title, speech bubbles & illustration by me. The third, "Work/ Sleep", is a 4- page story about some frogs and a sleepy snake.




PS: I actually had a dream where I saw a vision of a crucified frog.

Cake walkin' (animation still)

A still from a very short walk animation that I am scanning into the computer right now. Then editing.

Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem

Ernst Haeckel: Kunstformen der Natur, 1899-1904

Link to more pictures here.

Goldfish bowl

A few posts back I posted a bit of writing about a vision - if you will - that I had while meditating (yeah, I'm one of those guys). That sitting was inspiration for me to create a kinetic sculpture. Here are some early sketches of my idea:



The idea is to create a sculpture that in a way is like a giant Weeble or Bozo Clown Bopper (in principle, at least - Weebles wobble but the don't fall down). A goldfish bowl will sit on top of a rounded, bottom-heavy stand. To one side, a motor will raise and drop a hammer (probably made out of rubber; if not, out of some other soft material), which will fall to hit the side of the bowl, causing the whole sculpture to wobble about. Somewhere in the piece I hope to have a light, normally turned ON, connected to a tilt switch, that will flicker ON and off when the sculpture is moving (a tilt switch is an electronic component with moving parts inside that will complete and break circuits depending on the orientation of the switch). I am not sure yet whether or not I want the lamp to be hanging above the bowl or to be illuminating the water from below. The hammer will hit the bowl most likely 1 or 2 times every minute (maybe even less, like once every two minutes - it will all depend on the wobble). The whole sculpture will be plugged into the wall to get its power.

This piece is about the difficulties I have in finding calm in my life. The goldfish bowl is an inspiration taken from the shark tank vision, a moment of almost total control over my peace of mind. The literal imbalance of the piece is the imbalance of my emotions and thoughts. The hammer will swing consistently but slowly, allowing the object to come to a rest and for the light to stop flickering before upsetting the balance once again.

Bang

"Bang" by Jim Woodring. An exemplary case of comic art. Or an exemplary case of comic art inspired art? I dunno.
*Swoon* "My hero."

"Play Date"

By Jim Woodring

Shark tank

I saw a cylindrical tank of water, made out of clear glass, diameter roughly 10 feet, height roughly 8 feet. In the water was a large shark, almost featureless, no telling signs of what kind of shark it was. Also in the water was me, although I was not seeing from the perspective of the diver-self in the tank, but from some point outside of the tank, some other self. The tank sat in a blank grey void.
The shark was extremely irritated and thrashed about uncontrollably, biting with teeth and scratching with skin. There was no blood, no carnage, only a strong feeling of panic, pain, and discomfort. I could sense these feelings coming from both my diver self and the shark. Although the self outside of the tank could see clearly, the self in the tank could not; the water was too muddy and murky. The water was also extremely sugary, and the taste of this sugar water in the diver-self’s mouth was strong and unpleasant.
After taking all of this information, I realized that I may be able to control this reality.
Instead of making the shark, mud, and sugar disappear, a simple and straightforward solution to my problems, I saw that there must have been a reason that these things were present in the first place, and decided to act differently. I started to increase the size of the tank, by tens, hundreds, thousands, millions of times its original size. My point of view outside of the tank became useless – there wasn’t any outside of the tank anymore. I took the eyes of the diver, and the two selves became one.
The water had also grown in volume to fill the tank, but the dirt and sugar had not. The same amount as from the original tank had stayed in this tank, and so had dispersed throughout the huge volume of water. I could see clearly, and the water seemed pure and clean.
The one shark had become three. I could sense them at the bottom of the tank, swimming around one another. Their actions were slower, calmer, and more natural than the first shark. They no longer filled me with a sense of anxiety. I knew of the danger they possessed, but I had accepted them as part of the tank. I regarded them almost as one would regard dogs, and allowed them to come to the top of the tank to swim around me.
I did not leave my area at the top of the tank, and unless allowed otherwise, the three sharks stayed in their place at the bottom.

Moongazer

INVASION - Moongazer (EP version) from Marek Steven on Vimeo.

Glassblowers Unite!

Water Street Glass Works
Ryan Gothrup - The Website

Jerry Catania is my glassblowing instructor for this and next week. He is an amazing guy, I feel very lucky to have been taught by him. His website is the first link, which is the site for his studio in Benton Harbor, Michigan.
Ryan Gothrup was the TA for the class, he makes flowers with superhuman speed & ray guns. ZAP.

Final Drawings and then some

Orbit Machine

Here is a much more refined prototype than the one I made before (come to think of it, I don't believe that the other prototype was ever really completed). Anyways, there are some problems with the chain drive and the (handmade) rollers, and I have barely even begun to really flush out what images are going to be on top of the rings (it will be a moving drawing or painting when I finally complete it).

Animation Pencil Tests

Untitled

Faces #2

Faces #1

Breathing Hill 1

So here are the parts that I will be using to create a "breathing hill". The first solenoid let's air in, the second let's it out. The piece of aluminum will be faced by a milling machine, then drilled and tapped to allow for some attachments to be screwed into it. I think I will be getting a larger inner tube, but for now, this is good enough for the purposes of creating a model. There are many more details that need to be worked out, but this is the basic bone structure.