Something Left, Something Taken is the creation of husband-and-wife team Max Poter and Ru Kuwahata of Tiny Inventions. And it’s great, fun stuff. We love all the different types of animation — hand-drawn, stop motion, Flash, After Effects and puppetry — as well as its general quirk. Like J. Otto Seibold and Vivian Walsh’s Mr. Lunch books, a favorite of ours — who coincidentally are also a husband-and-wife team. Cue the Mates of State.

Also, Max and Ru have an in-depth behind-the-scenes/making-of post report for Something Left, Something Taken, covering everything from the felt padded gloves photographed as the characters’ hands to the water made of Jell-O. Really fascinating stuff. Full credits for the video are available here.

The above graphic is taken from the Tiny Inventions blog.

The final round of logos for Elk Hill Advisors, a financial advising company based on the east coast.

Fonts in this series include Caslon and Futura.

A series of draft logos for Reistrup Realty, a real estate group in Austin, Texas that offers signature services for first-time homeowners as well as luxury clients.

Fonts in this series include Avenir, Eurostile and Gotham. The final logo, the single Julie, was a hand drawn signature re-traced as a vector and cleaned up in Illustrator.

Situated just outside of Pittsburgh, Braddock has been shaken by severe financial misfortunes over the past few decades. Its mayor, John Fetterman, has received national attention for trying to save his town with the help of artists, craftsmen, musicians and business owners. As part of the Go Forth ‘Ready to Work’ campaign, Levi’s will donate more than a million dollars over the next two years to help refurbish the Braddock community center and support the town’s urban farming program.

To bring the campaign together, created in partnership with Wieden+Kennedy, Levi’s teamed up with director John Hillcoat (“The Road”). It’s a bit of eye candy shot on location in Braddock for a Monday afternoon.

I see a bit of John Ford or Terrence Malick in the two-minute short that features a series of glimpses of local residents. Though I have to wonder if this financial investment by Levi’s is a good long term strategy for the town’s survival and prosperity.

The above photo is provided by Brandon King (via Flickr).

This is a photo of a great horned owl at the Cameron Zoo in Waco, Texas. The ultraviolet lights were on at the time.

It’s a brilliant zoo. Definitely much more than was expected for Waco (no offense). Lions, tigers, elephants, rhinoceroses, giraffes, orangutans, jaguars, an ocelot, crocodiles and three Galápagos giant tortoises — it’s pretty awesome. They’ve got a 50,000 gallon saltwater reef aquarium featuring fish native to the Flower Garden Reef in the Gulf of Mexico.

Absolutely worth the drive from Austin.

The above photo was taken June 2010 in Waco, Texas. See it here in my Flickr photostream.

This is an awesome visual exploration of the physical environment of New York. The City We Imagined / The City We Made Includes the Bronx, Queens, Staten Island, Brooklyn and Manhattan. This is the sixth in an ongoing series of Architectural League exhibitions about contemporary architecture in NYC.

This installment is part of a larger exhibition on view until June 26th in SoHo, NYC.

The above photo was taken November 2009 in NYC. See it here in my Flickr photostream.

Here’s a mix of cover songs to kick off the summer. We won’t do cover mixtapes for the whole summer like last year, but we thought it’d be a nice one-off.

Some songs were picked because of their new albums out, like High Violet from the National and Heaven is Whenever the Hold Steady — though both are a few years old. And some were picked because they’re fun. (So you know, Mates of State and Nada Surf are also due for new albums this summer — Crushes (the Covers Mixtape) and If I Had A Hi-Fi — and they’re albums of cover songs.)

Franz Ferdinand’s cover of LCD Soundsystem “All My Friends” is great, jaunty and angular — it really suits their style and serves the song well too. As songs from the 80s, “She Sells Sanctuary,” “When Doves Cry” and “A Little Respect” work in their new contexts. If you didn’t know “The End’s Not Near” wasn’t a song by the New Year, you’d think it was a Band of Horses song. The cover versions by the Ooks of Hazzard, Mr Little Jeans and Matt Weddle are fun re-inventions of tracks by MGMT, Beyoncé and Outkast.

On a side note, cover songs seem to be all the rage these days. Whether it’s the A.V. Club’s “Undercover,” Peter Gabriel’s “Scratch my Back,” Levi’s Pioneer Sessions or the Starbucks Sweetheart compilation. Wonder if cover songs will soon jump the shark?

1. Franz Ferdinand – All My Friends (LCD Soundsystem cover) from A Bunch of Stuff EP
2. the Wedding Present – Box Elder Mo (Pavement cover)
3. M. Craft – She Sells Sanctuary (the Cult cover)
4. Mates of State – Laura (Girls cover) from Crushes (the Covers Mixtape)
5. Kate Miller-Heidke – Walking On A Dream (Empire of the Sun cover) from APRA Award Nominations 2009
6. the Hold Steady – Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window? (Bob Dylan cover) from I’m Not There Soundtrack
7. Radiohead – the Headmaster Ritual (the Smiths cover) from their November 9th 2007 webcast
8. Dr. Dog – Heart it Races (Architecture In Helsinki cover)
9. Band of Horses – the End’s Not Near (the New Year cover)
10. the Ooks of Hazzard – Kids (MGMT cover)
11. Mr Little Jeans – Single Ladies (Beyonce cover)
12. Barbara – Pursuit of Happiness (Kid Cudi cover)
13. JC Brooks & the Uptown Sound – I Am Trying To Break Your Heart (Wilco cover)
14. Regina Spektor – No Surprises (Radiohead cover) to benefit Doctors Without Borders buy from iTunes
15. Kate Walsh – A Little Respect (Erasure cover)
16. the Soft Pack – Grinding Halt (the Cure cover) from Perfect As Cats: A Tribute To The Cure
17. the National – Pretty In Pink (Psychedelic Furs cover) from their 2007 Daytrotter Session
18. Matt Weddle (of Obadiah Parker) – Hey Ya (Outkast cover)
19. Nada Surf – Love and Anger (Kate Bush cover) from If I Had A Hi-Fi
20. Damien Rice – When Doves Cry/Babe I’m Gonna Leave You (Prince cover, Led Zeppelin cover)

Download zip file.

Oh, and we think this YouTube video of the kids from Staten Island P22 doing Phoenix’s “Lizstomania” is pretty fun. Very bright and cheery.

This mixtape — yes, I still call ‘em tapes — will be hosted until I post a new one so get it while you can. All copyrights remain with respective writers, publishers, etc. If you like what you hear, support the artists and creatives however you can.

The photo at the top of the page was taken April 2010 in Austin, the knitting is from a group called Knitta, Please (awesome name). I spotted it during Art City Austin. See it here in my Flickr photostream.

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My final 10 entries for the 30/60/90 project. The above photo was taken in Austin, Texas on New Year’s Eve in 2009.

Daily writing prompt, Day 90
Where I’m from.
- Kristoffer Diaz, playwright

Where I’m from. I think that the turtle was out of line at the meeting today, raising his little hand seven times during the opening remarks. His shell would turn bright green and his hand would shoot straight up into the air. It’s just a neighborhood meeting, after all.

Where I’m from. The color of the trim should match the stone in the house — it’s better feng shui, she said. He shot back, the color of the trim should compliment the siding — a bit darker though, a dark mocha.

Where I’m from. Better to be over-prepared than under-prepared, that why I always pack a spare set of batteries and a lamp for the projector that I will be presenting with.

Where I’m from. Too much sauce on a pizza is forgivable but too much cheese just doesn’t help anyone.

Where I’m from. Dad, have you ever heard of something called mutton busting, she asked. Do what, he said. Mutton busting, she repeated. Mutton bustin’, he asked. Yes, mutton busting, she answered. No Texas accent, he asked. I don’t know, she said. Like sheep hunting, he asked. Sheep hunting, no, she said. They wouldn’t stand much of a chance. It’s when little kids ride around on sheep as though they were adults on wild horses or bulls.

My last 10 entries for the 30/60/90 project. The above photo was taken in east Austin a few days before the 2009 East Austin Studio Tour.

Daily writing prompt, Day 80
White people.
- Kristoffer Diaz, playwright

transcribed from Dave Chappelle’s standup: (There was one time where me and my white friend Chip) were driving. Now I’m not driving, Chip is driving and he’s driving a little crazy, he’d been drinking. I don’t like to let my friends drive drunk but you know I was smoking a joint, I couldn’t really say shit to the guy.

We stop at a red light, and a car pulls up next to us, and I’ll never forget it, Chip looks at me, he’s all drunk, and he’s like “Dave. I’m gonna race him.”

I knew it was a bad idea but I was high, I tried to explain to him it was a bad idea but all that came out was “Well, nigga sometimes you gotta race, I don’t know.” Man, that light turned green and Chip took off, zig zagging and shit so no one could pass us, the other car didn’t even know we was racing. Then, the police seen us and pulled us over.

Now you gotta understand, I’m scared as shit. I mean c’mon, the car smells like weed, we’ve been speeding, this man is fucking drunk. I was scared, Chip was not scared at all. It was weird, he didn’t even turn his radio down, isn’t that weird a little bit? I mean if you get pulled over, wouldn’t you turn your radio down? No one wants to their ass get beat to a soundtrack and shit. Know what I’m sayin’? Chip had the music blasting, ‘We’re not goin’ to take it.’ He said “Dave just relax. Let me do the talking.”

You want to know what he said? This is almost exactly what he said, I couldn’t believe it. “Oh, oh. I’m sorry officer. I didn’t know I couldn’t do that.” I was fucking shocked.

The cop said, “Well now you know, just get out of here, just get the fuck out of here.”

Chip said, “Okay, I will sir. Thank you. (Turning to Dave) What? What’s wrong with you Dave?”

(Dave) “I didn’t know I couldn’t do that?”"

(Chip) “That was good wasn’t it? Because I did know I couldn’t do that!” (Maniacal laughter)