No ship that small has a cloaking device!

Active camouflage or adaptive camouflage, is a group of camouflage technologies which allow an object to blend into its surroundings by use of panels or coatings capable of altering their appearance, color, luminance and reflective properties. Active camouflage has the capacity to provide perfect concealment from visual detection.

In Fine Art

Desiree Palmen's Camouflage

In Cinema

John McTiernan's Predator

In Videogames

Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

 

 In Real Life!

Susumu Tachi's cloaking projection system

 In Nature?

Chameleons don't got shit on Octopi

Guitar Hero

 From the depths of the internet comes a boy! A guitar prodigy that makes your boyfriend's band look like a bunch of sissypants hacks! He's been playing all his life, and shows no sign of stopping. Hell, I already want to give him a job. Sungha Jung from South Korea is a true life guitar hero, and for your viewing pleasure I've arranged a short video and a long video. Start with the short one while you still think you're too busy to listen to the long one, then realize you might have more time than you think.

 

This arrangement is just so haunting.

Wait for 5:40, then immediately think the kid is awesome as fuck.

Blu Hoo. Don't cry!

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Blu is a street artist hailing from the far away land of Bologna, Italy. His most notable works are giant surrealistic murals painted over the course of days on the sides of Bolognan buildings and the video composites of him completing these works. The videos are just a delightful trip to watch, as objects and characters spring to life in the walls and crawl all over the ground and ceilings. This gives Blu's murals facets of multidimensionality and a surreal lifelikeness.

A lot of his work is politically motivated and at first Blu did works whilst raging against the machine, but as his skill and scale grew, so did his popularity with "the man." Now he regularly does openly permitted commission pieces and collaborations with other artists.

Link Bay

• An Interview With Blu
  
• Blu Homepage

Dan Brown's Project Description Form

Project Name:

The Stinky Cheese Dan, and other fairly stupid tales.

Project Description:

I've always loved cartoons. I consider them to have a great deal to do with shaping what a child will become in their adolescent years. There is power in cartoons. They were perfect little worlds with no real pain and suffering. Friends remained friends for years and did not change. Life-changing problems were solved in 30 minutes of adventure. Even death was temporary.

When I was little there was nothing I yearned for more than to become part of the on screen action. I knew well and good that this was impossible, but all the same it's what I wanted. Now, using technology this is finally possible, to a degree.

I intend to composite myself into a number of different animated settings. Timeless classics and modern marvels alike. I will attempt to mimic the appearance of the denizens of the world in which I will be a guest. Most importantly, I will show the impact of a “real” human being upon these virgin worlds. I will be out of place, unwelcome, and a blight on their world; bringing with me only crime, pain, sadness, and death.

Conceptual Concerns:

The folly of Man is my project's central idea. From the Bible to the Matrix, everyone knows that Man is as capable and adept at destruction as we are at creation. I'll be juxtaposing these capabilities by destroying something that was previously created.

Technical Skills Covered

My first action will be to scour the net and my own dvds for source material. Once I have my scenes, I'll begin photographing myself in a studio environment. Then the boring part's over!

Thankfully I have the power of Photoshop to aid my endeavors in this project. If I didn't have it in my toolset my project would be a silly cut and paste exercise. It still will be, mind you, but I'll be doing all sorts of liquefaction, blur, lighting and color matching, and image reconstruction on top of cutting and pasting myself into these scenes.

Formal Guidelines:

Describe the basic form of the project in terms of medium, size, quantity, presentation form. This is also where you will set a due date. *Note: due date flexibility will be discussed in class.

I'll present my prints matted with a 2in border. The prints themselves will be 16inx12in, using the same 4:3 aspect ratio found on older televisions. You could also call it “full screen.” The size will be the same as a television marketed at 20in (diagonally). I want to do 6 images, and should have them all completed and ready to present on the 29^th of October, 2009.

Artistic References

Of course, visionary cartoonists like Chuck Jones, John Kricfalusi, and Shirow Masamune were inspiration for this project. But in deciding to take it into the direction of the macabre, I looked to one of my favorite children's books. Lane Smith, the illustrator of The Stinky Cheese Man, and concept designer for movies like James and the Giant Peach and Monsters Inc. gave me some ideas of where I want to take my own character as far as distortion and darkly humorous imagery are concerned.

Readings Watchings

• Roadrunner & Coyote shorts
  
• Sylvester & Tweety
  
• Ren & Stimpy
  
• Ghost in the Shell
  
• Transformers
  
• Voltron
  
• Pokemon
  
• Spongebob Squarepants
  
• South Park
  
• Rocky & Bullwinkle
  
• The Flintstones
  
• Batman
  
• GI Joe
  
• The Simpsons
  
• Powerpuff Girls
  
• Kim Possible
  
• Angry Beavers
  

Grade

I'll consider my project a success if I can add a darkly cynical bent to these toons by including myself bearing the vices of humanity. As always, the quality of image will be of utmost concern to me.

Goals List

• Scour the net for quality cartoon stills in the highest resolution I can find.
  
• If the resolution is terrible, enhance image by hand.
  
• Photograph myself, mimicking lighting and shadow of scene where applicable.
  
• Composite myself into scenes.
  
• Distort myself into a monster, bearing in mind that cartoon's specific art style.
  
• Print images.
  
• Matte images.
  
• ???????
  
• Profit.