animations

Admit it. Go on, admit it. You always wanted an ice sculpture centerpiece. I know I have. I'm not ashamed to admit it. An ice sculpture may be cheesy or fancy depending on your perspective (not to mention the sculpture), but there is no denying there is something just kind of neat about watching an ice sculpture slowly melt before your eyes. With little or no work, you can now have your very own ice sculpture (over and over again).

These Ice Sculpture Molds, available in Penguin or Angelfish, may not be the high art ice sculpture you would … Read more

DoInk is a free online drawing and animation tool that runs right in your browser. You can treat it like Microsoft Paint and use it to do just a quick doodle, or take advantage of its layer cloning and vector-based designs to create relatively advanced animations.

I chose the latter, and put together a pretty slick looking animation in just a few minutes. Adding additional frames is simple and intuitive, and the app saves everything you're working on in the background (and in the cloud) so there are no local files to worry about. You can also hop between … Read more

You've got to hand it to Samsung's marketing people. When it comes to selling stuff on the Internet, cute animals seem to work, and that's exactly what the company's loaded its latest viral vid with. It's several little fluffies taking part in day-to-day activities using the large screens of Samsung phones as support. They use them as a PC monitor, a movie screen, and even to play back an image of a romantic fireplace, though the inference of the one kitten making the sexy moves on the other kind of creeps me out. I'm … Read more

A rodeo association has agreed to pay $25,000 to an animal welfare group to settle a lawsuit over the improper removal of videos from YouTube that showed roped calves being dragged off to die and tasers being used on tame horses to get them to buck.

In December 2007, YouTube removed dozens of rodeo videos after getting takedown notices from the Colorado-based Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association that claimed copyright violations under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

The group that posted them, Showing Animals Respect and Kindness (SHARK), with the help of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, sued the rodeo group last summer. … Read more

Putting the clumsier applications of animated wallpaper to shame, DeskScapes wields Windows Vista's 3D hardware acceleration to result in crisp, buoyant, sometimes photorealistic animated wallpaper in the .Dream format.

Dynamic wallpaper this nice is a visual extravagance, but one with a catch. You're welcome to use the three bundled deskscapes without charge for as long as you'd like. But the swaying grass and rippling water will pull you to the online gallery of publisher- and user-made motifs you can download for free or for a premium. This is where the app gets you--you can install all the … Read more

PARK CITY, Utah--The Sundance Film Festival broke the mold--so to speak--when it kicked off Thursday night with a feature-length clay animation film, Mary and Max, which innovated on many levels.

Robert Redford's annual opening night speech, which preceded the screening, was the perfect prelude to the Australian-made film. After assuring the packed auditorium that "even when times are bad (economically and politically)...it can be good for artists," Redford assured the audience that Sundance would continue to be a showcase for work that's diverse, unique, and often full of "surprise."

And when it … Read more

A quick followup to my post yesterday on the top ten vinyl sellers of 2008: I just called my local record (I do mean record) store, Sonic Boom, to reserve a copy of the new Animal Collective record, Merriweather Post Pavilion, on vinyl. It came out on Tuesday, January 6. The clerk laughed and said he'd never seen such a hot-selling LP. Not only were Sonic Boom's copies one by the end of the 6th, they can't order more because their distributor's out, and they can't find another distributor because the label's out. They'… Read more

This morning I was hungry for waffles. Not pancakes, but waffles. Sometimes I keep a box of Eggos in the freezer, but those aren't really waffle-waffles. Eggos, at least to my taste buds, are more of a buttery blueberry cookie than they are a waffle, so popping a couple of those in the toaster ain't gonna do the trick. The craving is for waffles and waffles only. Unfortunately, I only have a cheap waffle iron that produces less than stellar results. It is in this frame of mind that I go window-shopping for waffle irons.

This VillaWare V2001F UNO Farmyard Waffler … Read more