Oh Your God! This is awesomely awesome!

These might be the coolest bunch of videos I've ever seen...EVER.

Animated, gibberish speaking monsters + unsuspecting real world Belgians =
http://www.demonsters.be/2009/01/

My Portfolio Website

Bee Plus.net

I guess this would be version 2.1 of my portfolio website. I'm pretty proud of it considering my super limited knowledge of code. But somehow I've managed to piece it together by reappropriating chunks of code from here or there. It's mostly just html tables, which I hear are pretty out of vogue, but building tables is about all I know how to do. So...stick with whatcha know right?

Anyway, I think the new gallery is pretty sweet. Its basically just an embedded flickr set, so it will be super easy to update. The images I have up now are more or less just test images - more are on their way. I'm toying with the idea of adding a "blog" page, and either embedding my blogger page into the site with an iframe (a page within a page), or finding something to convert the rss feed to html and pasting that in. So far my experiments with both have had mixed results. For now I just have a link to the blog.

I'm also thinking that I should remove the "Design" from "Bee Plus Design." Seems a little pretensious, especially since I'm still a student and I've never had a paying design gig of any kind.

Any suggestions? General comments?

Guess What This Post is About? Not Bears, That's for Sure.

How does this sound as a potential title for these illustrations?
Number One Threat to America:
(with nothing after the colon, at least on the cover, because I think that's clever)
Stephen Colbert has already taught us all what the number one threat to America is, but maybe he's wrong, maybe its zombies, or killer clowns, OR maybe even apathy. Apathy is probably a big one.

"Benny" The Anatomical Teddy®

From American 3B Scientific

The teddy contains especially finely crafted removable organs some of which can be fastened with a Velcro strip. This gives the patient a better understanding of their own body.
Some of the organs in and on the teddy are provided with a Velcro strip: Ears with auditory canals, 2 tonsils, windpipe, heart, lung, liver, gall bladder, spleen, digestive system with oesophagus; stomach, bowels, appendix, anus, pancreas, urinary system; kidney, ureter, refillable bladder, urethra with an exit for catherisation or bladder x-ray.

• The zipper on the stomach can be opened from the top or bottom and simulates an operation of the abdomen and chest
• The bones of the legs and arms can be demonstrated by opening the zippers
• Spine, chest and ribs are palpable
• Artificial blood (in the form of fruit tea) can be put into 2 tubes in the arm and hand andwithdrawn with a cannula
  

Benny is washable and his fur is made of a flame retardant polyester fiber which gives him an extra soft and fluffy touch.
He is used mainly in doctors’ offices, hospitals, schools, kindergartens etc.



All this can be yours if the price is right. And the right price is a mere $229.

Teddy Rides the H-Train version 2.0, and a Vectorized Fat Ass Teddy

Maybe I should stop posting every little thing I do? I like these guys though, so and I wanted to share. After working with the line weight on these two I've decided that Cyborg Teddy sucks - he's definitely going to need a lot of reworking.

Cybear. 2nd Draft. Because I'm Bored.

I'm trying to figure out how to operate the gradient tool in Illustrator. I've never really had any reason to use it before.

It's a lot less intuitive than I would have thought.

Anyway, I'm liking how this one is coming together. I did away with the black stroke that I've been using and I'm trying to rely on color and shading (I realize that the lighting and shadows probably don't make sense in this image yet - it's a work in progress).

Cyborg, Alien Invasion, and Undead Teddy

Here are a very more bear sketches for your amusement.

It seems like this whole idea is starting to leave the fine art realm (if it were ever there to begin with) and is drifting towards...I dunno.......doodles during high school biology class? These three are a definite departure from my original concept of teddy bears on the fringes of society. I guess these guys would fit better under "teddy bears in sci-fi 'B' movies."

Fuck it. I'm having fun. I'll figure out how to defend them against the wine-drinking, beret-wearin' types later.

Suppose now I should vectorize a few of these guys and see how that goes.

Sometimes Desperate Times Call For the Use of Overwhelming Force

The title of this blog has nothing to do with the content; I just thought it had a nice ring to it. It should definitely be the title of something.

Another Weird Bear Poster by Moi

I'm considering doing a whole series of these. Maybe I'll call it "Teddy Bears on the Fringes of Society." Or something to that affect. Just imagine teddy bears stabbing each other outside of night clubs, having sex with each other in public bathrooms, and cooking Crystal Meth in their trailers. Lately I've just been obsessed with subverting the image of the teddy bear. Its this amazing piece of Americana that no one really questions. To me its already a perverse icon; I mean think about it, we take an apex predator, an animal that's be known to eat humans alive, and we make plush versions of them for our children to play with. So I'm just taking it one step further. I'm just making the perversion a little more obvious.

As far as the actual illustrations go, I'm still unsure. I think the two I've done so far are a little plain. It seems like they need to be more stylized - I want them to be really eye catching. Maybe colored pencil? Maybe watercolor? I don't know. I feel like I really need to challenge myself this year, and since drawing (both freehand and computer aided) has never been something that I've been particularly good at, thats what I want to focus on. I really want to be able to draw better.

And if these go as well as I want them to I want to make a book. Maybe 20-30 illustrations; part children's book, part coffee table book, a little humorous, a lot perverse. I'm thinking 8x10 hardback. I've been looking into it a little. It's not cheap to have books made.

Thoughts?

The Joys of Tilt-Shift Photography

Tilt-shift photography is the process of taking images of real places and through a series of manipulations making them look like miniature models. Basically you take an image at a high angle, with a super shallow depth of field, and over-saturate the colors, which results in images like these...

Effing awesome right!? I really want to try this. You can find more examples here, along with some tutorials.