PSYOP's motto is “Persuade, Change & Influence” and I think they've done a pretty good job at all three! Take a look through the archives to see a wonderful array of creative animated advertisements, and see for yourself. The picture shown here is from the beautifully animated MTV HD ad. They are everything that's good about modern advertising.

Mad skillz.

This fun site calls attention to all the great math problems that work themselves out in our roadway signs. For instance, here's a sign found on Highway 85-ALT southbound out of Warm Springs, Georgia showing a simple multiplication problem, 3 x 12 = 36. Neat right? Well, consider the genius that figured this one out... LINK WOW. Just... wow.

For more math fun, chck out the PI Phone Number Search Engine.

Gopher Broke, a short animated movie about a clever but very unfortunate gopher. It's more than cute, it's OMG cute.

More animated shorts
More Blur short films

Google SketchUp is an easy-to-learn 3D modeling program that lets users create models of houses, sheds, decks, and other home improvement projects for free! This program has a number practical of uses, from interior design and architecture to landscaping and mechanical design. Once you've created your 3D project, you can share them with others and print your plans. You can even export your model to Google Earth

Draw shapes then push and pull them to the size you like. Create details, apply textures... the sky's the limit! SketchUp doesn't just stop at home improvements. You can create virtually anything! Why not visit the Gallery for a look at what other people have created using the program?

Never fear, there's also a Pro version of SketchUp approved for commercial use that enables the user to print and export large resolution images. Create organic shapes, export as MOV or AVI video and save other popular 3Dformats like DWG, DXF, 3DS, OBJ, XSI, VRML and FBX. Pro users also get free email technical support for 2 years.

Fun for all ages, iSketch is a fast paced game in which players take turns drawing and trying to guess the word that's being drawn. Think chatroom Pictionary!

I'm totally addicted.

I've always been interested in graffiti as there's been plenty of it here in Flint. I often wish I could have snapped pictures of "the block" near my old high school as it has changed over the years. The block is a wall that seems to serve no other purpose than having been unofficially designated for graffiti. Needless to say, it has been painted a great many times (once or twice by yours truly). This cool site, Graffiti Archaeology is a project devoted to the study of graffiti-covered walls as they change with time. Most of the pictures have been taken in San Francisco by many different photographers from the late 90's to present day. This site itself is beautiful and dynamic. It presents archives of the artwork in the form of a time line complete with dates.

Related links:
Art Crimes
Nozzles
Graffiti Archaeology ala'Flicker

Austrailian artist, David Jensz, was commissioned to create a sculpture for the Civic Library & Link project in Canberra's Civic Square. City News offers a first look at the sculpture which is comprised of two curved planes that have been woven from copper pipes. At $220,000, the artwork, titled "Fractal Weave" is the most expensive piece meant to adorn the civic center. With a title like that, there's no guessing what his inspiration was.

Noting his theories and inspiration, Jensz mentions fractals, physics, Hawkings and Einstein. You can read more about what makes this interesting artist tick (and see more of his artwork) here, here and here.

Click image for a larger view of the new front page of deviantArt.

Log in if you're a member and click here for a secret 20 minute preview of DA v5.

Mmmmmm smooth.

Jeremy Shafer of BARF (Bay Area Rapid Folders) and author of Origami to Astonish and Amuse is a connoisseur of entertainment. He juggles fireballs, unicycles, handwhistles... and probably most impressively, he folds. He folds paper, that is, and he folds it into the most ornate tessellation patterns!

"One of Shafer's signature pieces is the "flasher." The flasher hat below folds up instantly to a cylinder no bigger than a roll of toilet paper. In fact, some of Shafer's flashers fold up by themselves if you let go of them.

As a student at the University of California at Santa Cruz, he majored in mathematics because "it was the most origami-like of the majors," and he presented a senior seminar on flashers. Even his professors were baffled, Shafer recalls. "I taught them how to fold a flasher," Shafer says. "I was practically having to fold it for them, because they had the instructions in front of them but they couldn't follow them. That was quite a turnaround, you know—you have all those geniuses, and they can't even fold the basic flasher!""

He offers some PDF diagrams of origami here. Videos of him folding and unfolding his unique wonders of multi-colored paper can be found on the Exploratorium Magazine site. Jeremy is a truly fascinating individual!

Other interesting links:

Regular and Semi-Regular Tessellations in Paper
Puzzellations - Tessellation puzzles
Fractallations - Fractal Tessellation puzzle.

The DesignMaster Color Calculator is probably the best color picker I've ever played with! Not only does it tell you the RGB, CMYK and HTML color values, but it also allows you to save that info to the built-in clipboard, making it easy to copy and paste into other applications or code. It also gives you a nifty color wheel that shows you complimentary colors and a number of other harmonious color schemes. There's nothing to install, and of course, it's free.

While you're there, take a moment to look at the free templates, contracts and tutorials DesignMaster Training has to offer.

My mother who is an avid quilter told me about a woman who makes quilts out of fractal patterns. I did a search online and found a couple websites of particular interest. First, take a look at this breathtaking gallery of colorful mathematical quits created by the talented Rose Rushbrooke. When you're done ooo-ing and ahhhh-ing over those, check out some of the fractal quilt designs created by Diana Venters and Elaine Ellison of California. These women all share a love of color and mathematics and this can be seen in the beautiful quilts they've handmade. Impressive!

I've got my mind made up. I must have one.

Browse the doodle galleries of DoodleBug and you'll be surprised at what you find there! Lots and lots of black and white doodles from the very primitive to the extremely detailed and realistic! Vote for your favorites! Weeee! Social doodlers unite!

Hehe, speaking of doodles, check out this Doodle Clock and The Box Doodle Project while your at it.

Calling all geeks! LibraryThing lets you catalog your books online and find people with similar libraries, or get suggestions from people who share the same taste in literature. Tagging makes the world wide web go round and it definitely makes it easy to search for books based on author, content, title, etc.

Here are some stats taken from their super-nifty Zeitgeist page:

Books cataloged: 2,288,631
Total users: 32,317 (since August 29, 2005)
Unique works: 710,505
Total tags: 3,326,124
Total reviews: 27,269
Total ratings: 285,853
User-contributed covers: 60,836

If you don't want others to see your collection you can keep your account private and no one will be able to see your books. I guess if you want to keep some books private but still share the rest of your collection you could set up two accounts... but wouldnt it be cool if you could do that from the same account?

Artnanomy is an educational site that shows artists how the muscles in the face work using digital animation. Expressions can be hard to capture for some artists so this is a wonderful tool for learning which muscles are at work when a person is surprised, happy, or angry. The interface provides an excellent hands-on atmosphere and encourages user interaction.

Consider this one bookmarked!

Could it really be the longest page on the Internet? These artists have put together a seemingly never ending "worm" of images, each one blending with the last. It's definitely a bright, fun and insteresting look at modern day pop culture. The graphics worm is now 63.88 ft and it has over 90 images so far!