OnelargeprawnThe evil curator of www.onelargeprawn.co.za ;)
You may have seen our previous post about of a Peregrine Falcon killing a duck in mid-air. If you’ve ever wondered what it must be like to fly on an eagle’s back, this little compilation from YouTube user Srachi lets you vicariously soar through the skies and view life from the bird’s point of view.
[via Laughing Squid]
A challenger appears…on the lawn. In the category of “games we wish were real”, Nick Vaughn creates this most awesome mashup of Street Fighter and Plants vs Zombies.
Ryu and the gang need to use their spam attacks against the encroaching horde. As the wave swells, it seems the zombies are about to cure our heroes of a disease called life. Who alone can save them? Find out below in Street Fighter VS. Plants VS. Zombies.
[via @JoeyHiFi]
Some say that a good day is any day that you’re alive, but rapper Ice Cube was a little more specific on the matter in 1993. In this hour-by-hour illustration, digital artist Fernando Reza visualises that glorious day in south central Los Angeles when Ice Cube had a pork-free breakfast, won at dominoes, got complimented on his sexual prowess. That day he didn’t even have to use his AK. Check out the illustration and listen along to the song after the jump.
Beauty is in the eye of the bee-holder. The people over at the USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab do research on the native bee populations in the greater United States to get a better picture of how these bees interact with their natural environment. Speaking of pictures, they take multiple macro shots and stitch them together to create a complete and up-close view of the amazing insect. Lab chief Sam Droege makes their large catalogue of scientific photos freely available on Flickr.
Have a look at some of the lab’s stunning macro bee and wasp photos after the jump.
In A Brief History of Time, everyone’s favourite theoretical physicist, Stephen Hawking, tries to explain complex cosmological concepts to the non-scientific layman. If you don’t have the time to read the 212-page bestseller, have a look at this wonderful cutout animation produced by The Guardian, where messieurs Hawking and Penrose explore the cosmos to find out what is at the centre of a black hole.
This video is part of the The Guardian’s Made Simple series. You can see the other videos here.
[via FastCo]
A quick glance at Josip Kelava’s Behance portfolio and it’s easy to see the passion that the Croatian-born graphic designer has for typography. He also loves characters from cartoons, comic books, and video games. In latest series of illustrations, Kelava uses his super Photoshop powers to create portraits for some of his favourite heroes and villains.
He includes elements from the universes in which these characters live, Link’s name for example seems to be spelled out with the triangular elements of the Triforce. Jungle hunter Yautja looks menacing in front of the Predator glyphs, while Superman has his birth name done in the Kryptonian alphabet. Have a look at Kelava’s Heroes and Villains after the jump.
Italian illustrator Alberto Seveso is great at capturing reactions. For a Due Colori, Seveso dropped coloured inks into water. He is back with a new series, Dropping, that asks if ink mixes with oil. The answer is beautiful.
See the photos Seveso’s high-speed photographs after the jump.
Even though the PlayStation Vita is a 19 months into its life cycle, fans of the FPS genre haven’t had much to crow about. Developer Nihilistic created Resistance: Burning Skies, the very first twin-stick FPS title for the Vita but set the bar lower than a snake’s belly. Embarrassingly, the very same developer put in another uninspired effort towards the end of 2012 to produce one of the worst titles in the popular Call of Duty franchise: Black Ops Declassified. Roll on September 2013, and Killzone: Mercenary tries to impress the masses that have long given up on a solid FPS on their portable games console. Is third time the charm, could this be the “killer app” Vita users have been waiting for? Find out after the jump.
Mario Paint on the SNES featured a music maker that allowed gamers to create their own melodies. Mario Paint Composer is the Windows (and Mac) version of that music maker, and in the right hands is capable of creating some wonderful covers.
Pianist Adam Shin skilfully arranged different elements in the Mario Paint Composer timeline to create an instrumental cover of Daft Punk’s funky track, Get Lucky. Shin uses hearts for the bass, mushrooms for the bass drums, aeroplanes for the guitar effects, and the Game Boy sound to stand in for the vocals. Have a listen to his chiptune rendering of Get Lucky below.
[via Wired]
Every year for the past 23 years, the state of Nevada prepares for an invasion during the last week of August. At this year’s Burning Man Festival, some 68,000 people gathered together in the dusty Black Rock Desert for a week of booze, dance, and self-expression. The culmination of festival was the ritual burning of a large wooden effigy, The Man.
The festival has become so big that it can been seen from space. A European Space Agency satellite snapped this photo in 2011 from a height of 600 kilometres above the Earth. Here’s a closer look at this year’s revelry courtesy of Eddie Codel and his DJI Phantom quadcopter. Codel’s UAV took to the skies and captured daytime views of the major art pieces including The Man, the wooden pyramidal complex called The Temple of Whollyness, and Marco Cochrane’s “Truth is Beauty” sculpture.
To see photos from Burning Man, have a look at The Atlantic’s gallery.
[via The Week]