Swainson’s #warbler that’s causing a minor sensation today at Strawberry Fields in #centralpark #nyc Singing, too. #birds #birding #birdscp #birdcp He’s still here, I took this a few minutes ago. Please be mindful and respectful if you come by, give everyone a chance to see! (at Central Park – Strawberry Fields Memorial)
Found this handsome little guy on the beach today! This is a Snowy Plover, one of the bird species that I work to monitor and protect. The nesting season is just getting started, so the males are starting to come into their breeding plumage.
Have you ever wondered what goes into making a book cover? We were dying to know how the artists made such a tantalizing and deliciously poisoned apple for THE SHADOW QUEEN by C.J. Redwine, so we went behind the scenes with Sean Freeman and Eve Steben (who work under the name There Is) to see just how it was done.
First of all, have you seen this cover?
Go on, take a closer look:
For a poisoned apple it sure looks delicious!
So where did the idea for the apple come from?
Sean Freeman: “The original idea actually came from the publisher’s art director and the author. They felt a dark and poisonous looking apple was the concept encapsulating best the story. As we have somewhat of a soft spot for type treatments involving food, we immediately jumped into the project.”
Sean and Eve decided to carve the letters into real apples to make sure they got the type to look just right.
Sean Freeman: “For The Shadow Queen artwork, I think it was essential to make the piece by hand: the little imperfections you get by actually carving an apple can only be achieved by actually doing the real thing. That way, you also get total control on every element: the grain texture, the depth, the slightly rounded edges, the peel finish, the oxidation coloring… The appetite appeal you get through photography is really key to the realism of the artwork when you play with food – and this is very hard to achieve through other media.”
First they painted several apples black.
Instead of carving the entire title onto one apple, only a few letters were carved on each apple at a time.
How did all those individual apples become the one iconic apple we see on the cover?
Sean Freeman: “The hero fruit was created with shots from several apples, which we then assembled ‘in post’ – selecting the perfect bits for everything: top, tip, shape, grove, skin texture, etc. Even the leaf was specially hand-picked from a tree to match, while the ink drop was model-made. The idea was to end up with a fruit that the viewer wouldn’t feel the digital work in the piece, and basically just feel like picking and giving a big bite into it – hyper-realistic, round, beautiful, super-fresh and juicy-looking.
“We then tested several paints and finishes for the fruit skin in-camera: [using] different types of condensations [and] formulas to play with the pulp color, and several tools for the carving – a lengthy, experimental styling process that led us to what we felt was the magic combo in terms of look and feel.”
“From there, we established the best ratios for the type to fit onto our apple in a harmonious composition, worked out the optimal scale to maximize the realism and organic details of the lettering – such as the grain of the flesh in the carving. Finally, I designed the type itself, which was then hand-carved, gently sprayed and shot, letter by letter.”
“The post-production phase included stitching up the different apple parts together as well as integrating the lettering and the poison drop, a bit of retouching, and a touch of color grading. Although this sounds quite straightforward, the digital side of things was an overall pretty labor intensive part of the project; which the addition of water droplets made slightly more complex, in the other hand it also filled the fruit with beautiful details which made the piece look much more natural in the end.”
And all of that hard work turned into this gorgeous image!
It’s not quite shipping, because that’s not what it’s about. But I love Emily and Crystal’s on-screen energy so much that I want them together in every Brainscoop video from now to forever.
Random thoughts on Overture, the Personal Space generation ship:
I wonder what the name is from. I was thinking I remembered a title card that said OVERTURE in 2001, which would be a cool thing to have named it after. But this page doesn’t mention it, and I didn’t see it when I took a quick look just now. I’ll have to do a full re-watch to look for it. (Any excuse to re-watch 2001.)
Looking at the space shuttle docked on the central hub for scale, that really is a big spaceship. Because a space shuttle isn’t exactly small:
…but it looks tiny docked on Overture:
Since I found the higher-res version of the overhead view at http://ift.tt/1QC8yDU, I realized there actually are two shuttles, on one each side of the hub:
I speculated before that the drive plate/pusher plate (whatever you call it) was at the lower end of that long boom you can see extending downward in this image:
After reading more about Project Orion I realize there also needs to be some kind of huge shock-absorber mechanism so that the nuclear explosions that power the ship have their impetus converted to constant acceleration that won’t squish the crew.
I also realized that since the two donut-shaped rings with the crew quarters have empty space surrounding them, that’s actually the drive plate/pusher plate that I’m seeing behind the rings and crosspieces in the overhead view.
I’ve been wondering about that structure jutting out to the left in the overhead view. What is that? Maybe something to hold an antenna array far enough out so it can “see” past the drive plate to communicate with Earth? Hm. Except once they’re coasting they should be able to reorient the ship however they want, shouldn’t they? And it doesn’t really look like a boom to hold an antenna; it’s a lot more substantial than that. And why does the rendering show it getting darker the farther away from the ship it is? Is it curved? Definitely a mystery.
If Overture is similar to the “momentum limited” version of Freeman Dyson’s design talked about at that Project Orion Wikipedia page, they would have set off something like 300,000 1-megaton explosions, one explosion every 3 seconds, causing them to accelerate at 1 g for 10 days, eventually reaching a speed of 10,000 km/sec, or 3.3% of the speed of light.
Then they would coast for as long as it takes to reach their destination (not counting deceleration time at the end). Reaching Alpha Centauri at that speed would take 133 years. If it’s 25 years and 4 crew per shift, that would mean they’d need 6 shifts and 24 crew. Presumably they have more people in stasis, though, so they can be revived for colonization after arrival.
There’s no particular reason to think they’re going to Alpha Centauri, though; it could easily be (probably would be) some other exoplanet-containing system further away. And they might be traveling slower than Dyson’s estimated speed. Either of those factors would make the trip longer.
I’m curious about the stuff on the chalkboard in this shot of von Braun (Mark Tierno) describing the mission to his team:
12 lightyears and 1200 years’ travel time? So maybe the ship is doing 1% of the speed of light, rather than Dyson’s 3%?
There are 12 stars within 10 lightyears of Earth, so 12 lightyears seems like a reasonable distance for Overture’s destination. That would mean 48 shifts’ worth of crew, or 192 astronauts, plus however many more colonists. That’s a lot of cryosis tubes to look after. No wonder Dr. Blasto is a little neurotic.
Margaret Hamilton was the lead software engineer of the Apollo Project. Here she stands next the the listings of the Apollo Guidance Computer source code, which she wrote herself by hand.
And she also designed AMI 1.0, Overture’s onboard therapy computer. Bet you didn’t know that!
Western Emerald, Chlorostilbon melanorhynchus by George Cruz
Via Flickr:
Endemic hummer for Choco Corridor. Founded in feeders of San Jorge de Tandayapa Hummingbird Sanctuary.
Best Birdwatching, Natural History and Photography tours in Ecuador! http://ift.tt/1cEUVan
The cast: If you’re a fan of literary-inspired webseries, you already know (or should know) Sean Persaud (A Tell-Tale Vlog, Kissing in the Rain, I Ship It, I Didn’t Write This).Brent Bailey was Alex Knightley in Emma Approved. I’m into literary webseries, so those are the first actors I noticed. But I’m also an old-school Trek fan, and I remember Tim Russ’s Tuvok as one of the best things about Star Trek: Voyager. I’m not familiar with the rest, but Battlestar Galactica fans will be excited about Nicki Clyne, Richard Hatch, and Tahmoh Penikett. There’s a nice mix of ages and ethnicities; it feels like a real space crew. I can’t wait to meet them.
Behind the scenes are more people who’ve been involved with things you may have loved. Dana Luery Shaw, writer and transmedia producer, worked on Classic Alice and Welcome to Sanditon. Zack Wallnau, credited for story and as director of photography, worked on most of the past projects from Shipwrecked Comedy and Yulin Kuang.
It’s sci fi (and gives every indication of being intelligent sci fi, which means a lot to me) but it also sounds like they’re approaching it from a vlog-series perspective, with a focus on characters and relationships rather than technology. Science fiction was one of my first loves; I grew up obsessively reading and re-reading Heinlein, Niven, and Zelazny. Later I fell equally hard for musicals and period drama, which led to Austen and eventually to a quirky modern-day YouTube adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. So bringing a literary webseries sensibility to sci fi is just, like, everything I didn’t know I needed.
I’ve talked elsewhere about how excited I am about the transmedia. Everyone remembers that LBD won an Emmy. But they forget that it won mostly for how groundbreaking and immersive the transmedia and world-building were. The hints I’ve seen make me think this show could be a worthy successor.
And the top reason to support the show: Because of how adorably choked-up Tom Pike gets in the Kickstarter video when he describes talking to a real-life astronaut.
Vampires don’t like sunlight but moonlight is actually also sunlight
Tell that to the werewolves.
Moonlight is only about 14% reflected sunlight, with a different spectrum (some wavelengths gets more absorbed than others, some more reflected, etc). If the two spectra of moonlight and sunlight were compared side-by-side with no mention of their origin, they basically appear as two completely different light sources, one peaking at the yellow wavelengths and the other peaking at the blue-green wavelengths.
To summarize; moonlight is not sunlight, it is reflected sunlight with a lot of its information lost or altered.
Does this mean that, with the right set-up, you could make light sources which mimicked moonlight accurately enough that it sets off someone’s lycanthropy? I’m not sure what such a device would be useful for, but it’d be neat nonetheless.
Technically, yes. In practice, whether it’s simple to do so or not will depend on the exact mechanisms that causes the transformation. I suspect the easiest way would be to get a lamp that mimics sunlight and shine it onto a surface of lunar regolith trapped behind a thin layer of transparent material to protect against oxidation.
this is amazing thank you
Okay but consider that the moon and the earth drift apart juuust a little bit each year—assuming that one’s lycanthropy is triggered by the AMOUNT of moonlight since what lore I know of consists of transformation on the full moon—eventually we’re going to be far enough away from the moon that the symptoms of lycanthropy will disappear forever
Actually no! I just heard a bit on NPR about this two days ago :3
The Moon is slowly drifting away, but it’ll eventually reach a static orbit and stop; it’s not going to fly off into space. What will happen though is kinda weird. When the Moon stops drifting away, the Earth-Moon system will become tidally locked. After that point, only one side of the Earth will ever face the Moon again. So it won’t be that lycanthropy will disappear forever; it’ll just only happen on half of the Earth :] :] :]
That raises another question though; will having the full moon always out, even during the day, mean that lycanthropes will always be shifted, or will the direct light of the sun overpower its effects during the day :?
HOLYSHIT, TIDALLY-LOCKED LYCANTHROPY PLANET
THIS IS THE BEST HIGH FANTASY KINGDOM DIVISION IMAGINABLE
THE KING OF ALL WOLVES!!!! A BORDER WITH BORDER CONFLICTS AND ROGUES WITH DUAL IDENTITIES!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH
I am gonna be so sad if I cannot see the moon any more one day
The moon is a beautiful lesbian I want to be able to gaze up at her on cloudless nights
What I took away from this is that Moonlight is basically pirated art that a new artist put through Photoshop and put their own watermark on
“Original moonlight, do not steal”
Not to hijack, but my favorite novel ever, for ever and ever, concerns a world that no longer rotates, where magic rules the night and science the day.
All of tis is beyond amazing and @lies I would love to have the name of that novel.
