Adam Norwood: Tumblr

Legendary Disney animator Ward Kimball also drew on the side for antique-auto-enthusiast magazine the Horseless Carriage Gazette (and he contributed a lot over nearly 30 years: his name comes up frequently if you search for him in this index of the magazine). He also worked on custom ads for Mobil that ran in the Gazette, like the nice tattooed guy above, or this fun one with the Mobil Pegasus.

According to an interview cited by Cartoon Brew, an angry Walt Disney made Kimball stop contributing to the magazine, even though it was on his own time and for gratis. Thankfully these scans are cropping up on the Ward Kimball Facebook page, along with lots of other great stuff!

What happens when a physicist considers the passage of time in Goodnight Moon? Chad Orzel, physics professor and blogger, attempts to measure it using the illustrated passing of the moon versus the wall clocks:

These two methods clearly do not agree with one another, which means one of two things: either I’m terribly over-analyzing the content of the illustrations of a beloved children’s book, or the bunny’s bedroom is moving at extremely high velocity relative to the earth, so that relativistic time dilation makes the six-minute rise of the moon appear to take an hour and ten minutes. Calculating the necessary velocity is left as an exercise for the interested reader.

(Photo credit: Chad Orzel)

(Source: blogs.discovermagazine.com)

WAX MODEL from 1917: Smallpox lesions on face of 15 year old boy

Sorry for the icky photo, folks, just wanted to share a striking bit of anatomical illustration! This image led me down the rabbit hole of looking into the art of moulage, casting realistic wax models with “wounds” and other dermatological problems for use in medical training. Obviously a much better way of introducing a classroom full of doctors to diseases than wheeling in an actual smallpox patient. There’s a photo book on the subject called Diseases in Wax: The History of Medical Moulage that I might have to track down. At $180 on Amazon, though, I sure hope that the library here has it…

(Via the Otis Historical Archives of the National Museum of Health & Medicine on Flickr)

brandonnn:

The Autumn Society Of Philadelphia: PIPE!

“God speed, my little viking!” If only there was a way to illustrate the smell of air escaping from a tire.

Makes me feel like we’re all just wired up like a 66 punchdown block. Hopefully with a bit neater cabling.

(From the Otis Archives Flickr stream of Walter Reed’s medical museum)

The New York Times has up a nice review of the new Charles Addams exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York:

The city street is dark and deserted. The buildings are empty. There are no witnesses. A lone man carrying a briefcase, after a long day at the office perhaps, approaches a subway staircase. Out of the subterranean gloom, a giant human hand protrudes, its index finger beckoning the office worker, inviting him into the depths. His eyes are wide with astonishment, his face showing the hint of a grin, as if the bizarre, illicit invitation were not entirely unwelcome.  […]

Above is my personal favorite Addams cartoon, perhaps one of my favorite cartoons of all time. His drawings are often cited as finding their humor and inspiration in the macabre — I think their lasting appeal comes more from his ability to find joy in laughing at and rejecting the bleakness of modern life.

A stylistically interesting medical drawing from the excellent Otis Historical Archives of the Walter Reed hospital: “Drawing. Life cycle of Balantidiasis”, part of a small set of other cartoons available on their Flickr stream. Gotta watch out for those protozoa.

A note from famed animation director Richard Williams to his crew working on Who Framed Roger Rabbit? about the importance of the gaze between the toons and the live actors in establishing the believability of the scene. In matters of animation composition, this guy knows what he’s talking about: his Animator’s Survival Guide is a compelling read for artists of any stripe working with visual storytelling, and he’s also the man responsible for the great-but-famously-troubled production of The Thief and the Cobbler (if you’ve never seen it, fire up your favorite torrent client and look for Thief and the Cobbler: the  Recobbled Cut — it’s a must-watch).

(Via Signal vs. Noise)

Album art recreated quickly for the Windows 3.1 era:

The drawings in this collection were made by various users in a discussion forum on the website www.foreverdoomed.com. Using MS Paint, and other rudimentary computer drawing programs, users attempted to recreate their favorite album covers and let others on the forum guess the band and title from the artwork. […] Some gave themselves a limit of five minutes to recreate the most recognizable essentials.

I sort of like these. I’d forgotten the subtle charm of MSPaint’s spraycan, though I’d always envied MacPaint’s patterns.

(Via Coudal Partners)