The World Going Down the Drain

     This image was painted in Spain, near a storm drain.  This image is meant to communicate mainly the artists viewpoint of the direction the world is heading.  I believe this is a great representation of that worldview.  In my journal section, I wrote a part about the importance of site specificity.  Would this image have the same effect if it was on canvas and placed within a gallery?  I would say that it would not.  It might get interpreted as the world melting or something similar, but not that the world was going down the drain.  So for me this image shows that street art must draw its meaning from the material in which it is placed or made from.

Lego Street Art

     I grew up with legos.  In the above image we have an optical illusion than looks as if a lego army is in the middle of the street.  When viewed from other angles, the image becomes distorted, as the picture below shows.  I found this image by simply searching for Lego street art.  The artists have correctly represented Lego men not only in their appearance, but in their attire and accessories.  The inspiration for this piece was the Terracotta Army found in China.  The event this was drawn at was the Sarasota chalk festival in Florida.  The Terracotta Army was buried with the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang.

Steampunk

    I found this image via deviantART, one of the main sites I will discuss in my paper on fanart.  Steampunk is best described expediently as a depiction of what the past would have looked like if the future had happened sooner.  Normally, steampunk clothing falls into the British Victorian era or American Wild West.  The main point of steampunk is to imagine an alternative history, one that mainly employs steam power.  The man in this image is wearing a Victorian era style hat, a pistol of complex design, and his clothing is leather with metal bolts to fasten everything together.  One of the traits that makes us him is the capacity for imagination.  No other species would be able to invent an alternative history as they are unable to think any further ahead than their immediate need.  Many of us wonder what what life be like if things happened differently and steampunk is one way of doing that.  What would our world look like if we ran solely off of steam power?  Would that make any difference in environmental impact?

Video Game Cosplay

     League of Legends, a game developed by Riot Games, is a tower defense type game.  It is 5v5, with each team of 5 starting at the opposite end of the map.  The objective is to get into the other teams base and destroy their nexus.  Above is an image of a professional cosplayer who is dressed up as Ezreal, one of the characters or "Champions" from the game.  Cosplay has become huge in both the video game industry as well as the movie and anime industries.  At the bottom of this post is a picture of the actual character from the game.  While the above person is a professional, there are many people who make their own costumes or buy them online from websites dedicated to cosplay costumes.  I dressed up as a main character from one of my favorite anime shows one year for Halloween.  The materials that non-professional cosplayers use varies, but they are extremely creative.  Some people have spent hours and hours on one costume alone.  Some have made weapons that exist only in video games in real life.  It has been great to see what people are capable of when they let their imagination fly.

Instagram as an Anime Character

Instagram by Jon-Lock on deviantART

          I love anime.  When I first saw this as part of a post on Kotaku, I decided to look further at his page on deviantART.  He has humanized many different social media sites and internet browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and as pictured above, Instagram.  While Instagram is something I have only recently become interested in, I do feel like this captures Instagram if it was an anime character called "Insta".  He has taken elements that are found in anime, i.e. the anime eyes, the fashion, and futuristic tech, and applied them to the different social media sites.  When it comes to anime and fashion in Japan, the sky is the limit.  Japan has some crazy AND awesome fashion.  In this image specifically, he uses brown as the main color with different shades, black for the buttons, glasses, and headphones, and white for the cuffs and collar.  The colors for the bow tie, collar accents, and headphones match those of the sites icon.  Insta's hairstyle is a men's hairstyle that is very popular in Japan, with the top being very long with short sides.  The link underneath the image links to his deviantART profile, he's got some pretty awesome stuff! Check it out!

A Capella Disney Medley

          I grew up watching Disney movies.  I find this image interesting because two people were able to recreate some of the iconic Disney songs from my childhood.  At the beginning, when the guy is singing the intro in Zulu I was listening for the (post)alveolar click.  He nailed it.  Since this is an A capella medley, they layered their own voices doing the different parts.  They recreated not only the melodies, but also by using both audio and visual mediums, a person is able to identify and recall both the original characters as well as the emotions of the songs.  It reminds us of our childhood dreams and hopes.  The time when we are unaware of the "real world" and all that that entails.  These two did an amazing job.