My fantastically packed weekend went fairly well as I hope yours did. Despite tons of travel and sleeping on floors and couches I had a good time, though I still find going back to visit my old school feels a bit strange. I spent most of my drawing time developing a character for yet another comic idea I had. I hope to actually develop and release this one online soon. Our meeting was very brief this morning and I barely had time to draw a face. As such, today's sketch will be an old portrait from a few meetings back that didn't fit with the doodles I typically post as its a full piece. I took the extra time from the short meeting to quickly add some splashes of color.

And now on to our inspiring works of the week. First off is this stunningly beautiful music video for "In Your Arms" by Kina Grannis. Though I generally wouldn't hunt down this type of music, this video's got the song stuck deep in my head and I'm pondering buying her album.

Obviously the impressive part of this video is the method: stop motion Jellybean art! What's even more dumb-founding is that it was all done practically, even poor Kina who had to lay on a glass sheet above the art for each frame (and she's in most of the video). The entire production took 2 YEARS! I can only imagine that the label and artist had no idea what they were signing up for when they agreed to this brilliant concept. 288 000 Jellybeans later they gave us this. Check out the behind the scenes to gain a better appreciation for the effort put in here.

For stills lets take a look at the work of Kim Keever who creates ravishing landscapes using fishtanks, light, pigments and a nice camera. I love dream-like art and these pieces are truly magnificent dreamscapes of epic proportions (namely of the small fish-tank-size variety).

The amount of work and preparation that goes into such pieces must be staggering. And then once he begins mixing pigments into the tank I imagine his shooting windows are fairly narrow. Though at the same time, these terrarium-like worlds have the added benefit that they change and evolve with time so one model could lead to many  derivative works when photographed differently. The behind the scene shots really give you a good idea for the kind of work that goes into his process.

And lastly to get your blood good and pumping, just don't look down...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RdA1nPINVZw