Some say our ability to recognize ourselves in our reflections is a defining human characteristic. From Narcissus to Snow White, our obsession with reflections has permeated our lives. You could say this is an extension of our vanity and consciousness. A close relative to reflection, symmetry, is in fact one of the most important aspects of any creative work. Either playing to or against it can create striking works from simple elements. We seem to prefer this sameness but asymmetry can be just as potent if not more so.

Deadlines loom and thus today's sketch is a quick one. More of a proof of concept rather than a full piece. Reflections have been integral to my work. It is by looking at a mirror that I learned much of the human face and anatomy. In fact, to this day when I draw a face from scratch it looks quite similar to its creator. I'm convinced it is this self-modeling that makes it easier for artists to make things that resemble themselves. For instance I've always found it easy to draw tall lanky men but difficult to draw female, elderly, or fat people without reference.

Christian Montenegro experiments with symmetry extensively in his vector work. I love how his work evokes the medieval portraiture of old while maintaining a modern graphic and comic feel. Many feel like details of some larger Bosche piece, a classical favorite of mine, seen through a modern illustrator's lens. In fact, many of his series deal with similarly classic themes such as the Seven Deadly Sins or Tarot Cards (seen below).

Of course there is no lack of symmetry in web design. Most pages rely on it in fact, with small exceptions made for logos and menus. But few do it with the precision or resplendence of the website for studio Soleil Noir's 2012 New Year's wishes.

The site is a mesmerizing cacophony of color and animation. Truly, I'd say this is less a website as it is an interactive power point presentation. However I have to commend it for its use of  brilliantly colored, overlapping and animated elements. Sadly it has the same failings of many of these ever-so-trending parallax scrolling sites: performance, navigation, purpose, and smoothness are all lacking.

If you stick solely to the navigation links on the right, each slide animates nicely. However as you scroll they begin to slow down. Thankfully the animations are not driven by the scroll itself like on so many other sites of this ilk but since they're all animated seemingly all the time, performance seems reduced (I find it ironic that one slide is titled "believe in flash" but the entire site is done in HTML5). Also, the lack of a clear purpose makes this an interesting art piece but little more. But this is fitting as the piece is meant solely to highlight what the company is looking forward to in the New Year, a visual resolution list of you will.

What spurred this interest with reflections, symmetry and mirrors this week you may ask? Well it was one well done, rainbow colored (this week's sub-theme apparently) video. Reminiscent of an OK Go music video for its lo-fi ingenuity, the music video for Off the Wall by Yuksek is disarmingly gorgeous. After feasting your eyes on its magnificence I'd suggest shutting down your computer and enjoying your reflection in the darkened reflection of your monitor. Not only will you disconnect for a bit but you'll get a feel for what your poor computer has to stare at all day. Enjoy!

The Sketching Mechanism is a series of weekly posts, published on Mondays, containing the artistic musings of Mobile Designer/Developer Ben Chirlin during our Monday morning meeting at the NY Creative Bunker as well as his inspiring artistic finds of the week.

On August 31, 1955, a small vehicle — just 15 inches (38 cm) long— became a major attraction at the General Motors Powerama auto show in Chicago. It was not a toy. It was the first solar-powered car in history, or more specifically, a futuristic miniature that attempted to establish the foundation for a future where vehicles are fueled by a clean, inexhaustible energy source: the sun. Do have a peek at this web-site to know about the best fleet tracking services that is available around the area.

A DECADE-LONG EVOLUTION

This first miniature model “solar car” was named Sunmobile and was the brainchild of William G. Cobb, a General Motors employee. It ran on 12 photovoltaic cells attached to its roof, producing the energy needed to power the little vehicle’s engine. The Sunmobile painted a futuristic picture of where the car industry could be headed, except that it was impossible to bring the concept to fruition because the maximum power that the solar panels could produce was not enough to run any of the automobiles of the era. It was the first of many prototypes, learn more about the benefits of Effuel.

The first real-size, sun-powered model came a few years later, in 1960. U.S. company, International Rectifier, converted a 1912 Baker Electric, into a solar-powered car that reached just over 12 mph (20km/h) with a duration of three hours.

The Bluebird, built by Ed Passeneri in 1977 is considered by some to be the first real solar vehicle. It had three wheels and could move by dint of the energy created by photovoltaic cells, without the use of a battery. In 1982, The Quiet Achiever became the first solar-powered car that could go for long distances. It covered 2,485 miles (4,000 km), traveling from the west coast of Australia to the east coast in less than 20 days.

The 1980s ushered in what is still today the primary use of solar-powered vehicles: racing. In 1985, the first official solar-powered vehicle race was held in Switzerland: the Tour de Sol. The best known race today is the World Solar Challenge, which was first held in 1987. It is now a biannual event, and for the most part its participants are university and corporate teams. The automobiles that participate are light vehicles covered in solar panels which was bought from solar system St. George — typically a single square — and they move on three wheels about the size of bicycle tires. Hence they are a far cry from a workable prototype for present day commercial automobiles.

TODAY’S SOLAR-POWERED AUTOMOBILES

Apart from the world of racing, photovoltaic cell technology is not currently prevalent in the automobile market. The primary obstacles are the prohibitive cost associated with rolling out the technology, the space constraints which cap the number of panels that can be placed on the car, the distance the car can travel, and the speed it can reach.

There are a number of solar-powered vehicle initiatives that have tried to open the door to the consumer. One of the most talked about is Lightyear One. With a distance capacity of 435 miles (700 kilometers), it uses photovoltaic cells that, according to its creators, can store 20 percent more energy than traditional ones, and they operate independently, even when some are covered by shade. With a €150,000 price tag, it is not a viable option for most people, but the idea that this technology and Squickmons CNC burn tables could be used by other manufacturers holds interesting promise.

It's hard to say two sentences about inspiration without mentioning dreams. The most interesting thing about dreams is that they are an entire world, separate from our waking one. Though the true nature of dreams is not fully understood, there are many theories running the gamut from the physiological to the spiritual in nature. I believe that dreams are by and large our way of digesting information. We have a voracious appetite when it comes to ideas and just as a burger must be taken apart by our bellies, so must the latest episode of 30 Rock by our head. However this process can be quite messy as many dreams are strange amalgamations of reality and surreal, the cerebral and primal.

The above is a detail from a larger piece I did a long time ago while traveling through Italy. It's a scene from one of the most vivid dreams I've ever had. The dream wasn't necessarily scary as it was tragic but it was so intense that I nearly cried after waking up. It would be nice to paint the entire piece but just doing this one part half-assed took long enough as it is.

My fascination with dreams goes back quite a ways and is partly how I justify my fairly atrocious sleeping habits. I even kept a dream journal at one point (a practice I highly suggest everyone try). This passion for the Sandman's empire greatly influenced my tastes, leading me to adopt surrealists like Dalí and Chagall as favorite artists early on. The work of one Jacek Yerka brings such work to mind. His combination of hyper-realism and surrealism is reminiscent of some Dalí works yet they possess a unique attention to detail that even Dalí forwent. In addition, the artist's meticulous layouts are quite captivating.

If that weren't enough, his tendency towards symmetry is yet another aspect of his work I love. Clearly his work would be right at home on an album cover...maybe a few decades ago. My only issue with his work is that despite the wide variety of scenes, they all share a very similar palette and sense of scale. Most use a combination of pastel yellows, greens and blues with slight variations. Likewise all focus on a singular subject or setting at medium length possibly with some landscape in the background.

Of course it is very difficult to get across any sensible idea using surreality and as such very difficult to create a website one could safely call "surreal." Jim Carrey's website comes to mind for its whimsical nature, a good reflection of the man himself, but Flash is the devil so we must search elsewhere as hard as it is to avoid in cases like this. It's actually quite hard to find "surreal" sites which is a real shame. I've always felt that a websites greatest potential is to become a window to another world so why not a dreamworld? Thankfully a few such sites exist and Dreispitzhalle is one of the few of those to do it well.

The layout of this site simply gorgeous, with its stunning black and white backgrounds cut into strange abstract patterns. This makes the page feel very kinetic, as if it's about start moving at any moment. I also love subtle touches like the smooth menu hover states and the amorphous animated logo and matching browser bar icon (nice touch!).

In contrast to its absence in web, dreams are almost inescapable in film. Indeed one of last year's biggest hits, Inception, was completely based around the concept. While the dreamworld is often used as a parallel setting, often the setting is never explicitly declared to be a dream but we somehow reflexively know it to be i.e. if the walls are melting. Dreams, like so many great inspiring things, are universal to the human experience allowing all to recognize and empathize. Some even claim to have shared dreams and there are even certain dreams common to all people (teeth falling out, naked in school, etc.), not to mention the entire science of dream reading. It's hard to know whats true or not when it comes to the unconscious world (third eyes, not so much). Yet maybe that's fitting since that's how that worlds works anyway. If the following video were true, it would all be a lot more straight forward. Sweet dreams.

The Sketching Mechanism is a series of weekly posts, published on Mondays, containing the artistic musings of Mobile Designer/Developer Ben Chirlin during our Monday morning meeting at the NY Creative Bunker as well as his inspiring artistic finds of the week.