Technabob » characters

Bare Essentials: Characters Get Minimal, Still Recognizable

Range — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 14:00:04 +0000

Bare Essentials is a book by Dennis de Groot featuring images which reduce popular video game, comic book, and other characters to their most basic representation, using simple geometric shapes. Just like those pixel characters by Ty Lettau, they reduce characters to their most basic essentials.

There are 50 different characters in Bare Essentials, and almost all of them are easily recognizable. The book was released recently, and it’s available from Lebowski Achievers for €25 (~$34 USD). There are even some prints of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle (Donatello) that made the cover. They sell for €50 (~$68 USD) and are each signed and numbered.

deGroot is a Dutch designer who created the illustrations, and the project was brought to print with the help of Nalden.

[via Fubiz]

Super Bros Pixel Art: 8-Bits or 16-Bits of Awesome?

Range — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 15:00:38 +0000

I’ve got to admit that I have a weakness for any design that contains big pixels. There’s a sort of retro allure that’s involved with the creation of these kinds of designs.

These particular pixelated cartoons are the creation of Ty Lettau.

To date, he’s created 696 characters from cartoons, movies, and video games, all rendered in that pixelated feel. Highlights include Star Wars, Alien, Final Fantasy, all sorts of superheroes and more.

It’s kind of amazing how easily you can recognize these pixelated characters, despite the relative lack of detail. It just shows you that your brain really doesn’t need much information to distinguish different characters.

You can check out the entire Super Bros collection here.

[via Thaeger]

Intricate Movie Icon Sculptures Made From Recycled Steel

Technabob — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 03:09:28 +0000

These amazing pop culture art works feature familiar movie and TV characters hand-sculpted from reclaimed metal.

The guys over at Art From Steel create over 450 different creatures out of recycled steel, ranging from Wall-E to the Terminator to Gundam and everyone in between. While the small sculptures might be assembled from just a few parts, some of the larger ones are built from over 2,000 components and take up to 12 craftsmen and 30 days to build. Check out the image gallery below to see some of my favorites. I love that Edward Scissorhands!

Sculptures range in price from as little as $46 bucks for a mini Wall-E, all the way up to $4000 bucks for an insanely detailed Alien. You can find the entire metal menagerie over on the Art From Steel website.

Don’t see your favorite character? That’s okay, they’re happy to do custom commissions. Me? I’m looking for a giant steel Q-Bert and Dig Dug for my front lawn.

[thanks for the tip, Jay!]

Ascii Curtain has Plenty of Character(S)

Technabob — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 17:01:41 +0000

This cool fabric curtain may look like a tree from afar, but once you’re up close, you’ll see that it’s made of tens of thousands of tiny ASCII characters.

Created by Dutch designer Nienke Sybrandy, the huge (18′ x 11′) curtain panel was digitally printed with dot matrix characters to give the impression of intricate tree branches from a distance.

Now if only I could get her to make me one with some real ASCII art on it, I’d hang ‘em all over my house.

[via NOTCOT]