Be Cool Like Carl

Kind of a weird post, but here goes!

In 2009 I made an image and posted it to the Something Awful forums in a Carl Sagan thread, based on a phrase another use had used offhandedly- "Be Cool Like Carl." I was inspired to make this wallapaper:

Then, a more colorful "starfield" variant:

Looking at it now it's a little rough, but I'm still pretty proud of it. Fast forward to today, and I offhandedly searched for the phrase, "Be Cool Like Carl," and I found this:

Whoa! Looks like my image had gotten around, even inspiring an admittedly cool looking variant (the first result). But, more interesting was this: 

I'm not entirely familiar with how Zazzle operates, but it struck me that I should probably establish an origin for this image in case it takes on a life of its own. Here's the original Threshold "pull" from the original image:

Note the lack of thumb and hand, which is why you can see my wonky vectors:

And here's a pic of my Flash workspace:

Finally, if anyone's wondering, that font is "Barnes Erc," which I altered to include empty spaces for the "B's," "O's," etc.

This is all probably for naught. After all, it was just an image made for fun (inspired by something someone else said). But! You can never be too careful. Lois van Baarle has had to contend with her art being blatantly stolen and printed onto clothing, and then never seeing a dime from sales. Watch out, people!

"The Locals" episode 6 write up

In August 2012 my friend Ben asked me to animate for his YouTube show, "The Locals," where they capture audio from TF2 matches, cut it down into a mostly coherent conversation between players, and then hand out sections to animators to bring to life.

I wasn't able to complete it until January 2013- a shameful delay, I know! But, keep in mind I was  working on the LEGO movie at the time, as well as a Sonic Bunny animation, and a side project for an inner-studio Film Festival. But complete it I did, and I'm happy with what came out.

Here's the video:

Here's the bits I animated:

Here's an animation breakdown of that fight sequence:

And here are some Pentagram doodles, doodled tonight to cap off this blog post: