Kat Johnston

Tag: Interesting Links

  • The Orly Owl done another way.

    The ‘Orly’ owl is generally such a happy, peppy fellow… lets see what the other ‘Orly’ looks like.

    The ‘O rly’ owl is a cute little fellow. He’s a snowy white owl sporting the simple little litters ‘O RLY?’ beneath him. For those who have never seen or heard about him, check out the wiki. Now I for one like the phrase, but to me, one side of it only has been covered – the incredulous ‘oh really?’ as opposed to the other that I rather like. The one dripping with barely contained sarcasm after being told either something you already know (that they know you know), or perhaps just after you’ve been told such a tall tale that it barely belies belief for a moment, let alone serious consideration. Well… those are a couple of em, anyway. I’m sure it works in many more situations too.

    Thus, I present to you, my own little ‘O rly’ owl. The owl who says ‘meh’ soon afterwards. Not the incredulous, perhaps shocked or surprised type, but the rather more realistic and perhaps a touch disenchanted type. The type that has a wry upwards curl to the edges of their beak (since we are, after all, talking about owls right now). The kind that can deliver such a line with the appearance of dead-pan seriousness, even if their words might have an inflection of amusement.

    That is Archibald, the alternative ‘O Rly’ owl.

    Oh, by the way, on an entirely unrelated but still rather interesting note, take a peek at this great article about emerging trends in logo design. Its interesting even if you’re not a design person, promise!

  • Who has two shiny eyes, a hooked little beak, and an obesity problem?

    He’s Deiter, Deiter, Deiter the pudgey owl, he’s Deiter, Deiter, listen to him hoot and howl!

    Deiter the pudgy owl! Come on, you have to admit, even with a little extra around the edges, Deiter is a very handsome young gentleman. Well, that is my view in any case!

    We’re returning to my owl addiction for a day or two perhaps – and you can certainly blame Lins for bringing it on. She gave me a link to this site that featured mad scientist alphabet blocks (which I would dearly like a set of, by the way). If you will notice, in the upper left hand corner is the Inhabitots logo – owls! Both the alphabet blocks and the cute little owls were just too much to ignore, so the pen drew Deiter of its own accord when I sat down to make something just now.

    On another little note, our carpet is almost dry from its dousing in water from the rains the other night.. luckily it seems as if no more got in with last night’s downpour, which included hail too this time. Apparently greater storms are brewing for Saturday though… wish us luck.

  • The Last Lecture.

    Just another little owl who sits upon my page.

    This drawing was done last night, while chatting to a friend of mine. She has a certain love of owls, so this is just what sprung to mind as I was sitting there with a notebook and the pen of the day… still the green one, as you can see, because it was close to hand and thankfully, still working.

    I’m going to share with you what I have been doing for the morning thus far. I’ve been sitting back and watching the Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. Its worth every single minute and yes, I did tear up. I’m a wuss. I know that he is one of those people that would have affected so many lives in so many ways… even if he himself didn’t even know it. He acknowledged himself some of the people who really had that great influence on him too.

    I wonder sometimes whether some of the people I have known and have affected me in such a way even know about it. I can thank, for example, one particular teacher for giving me the drive and belief in myself enough to go to university, rather than take the other options that had been laid before me. Honestly, it even affected my decision to take it further, to do my Masters. Lord knows if I will ever go on to do a PhD, but if I do, I will still acknowledge that that particular person is partly to thank for that. I doubt that they even realize it.

    Its a funny thing, isn’t it? We all make our little marks on the world and sometimes don’t even have a clue. I know that I can recount things that made a big difference in my life that to others isn’t even a part of their own memory any more because it lacked the importance to be retained.

    Its just odd, I guess, the importance we place on some things that is insignificant, really, to another; the poem you showed your 6th grade teacher, who turned around and said ‘keep going’, even though they didn’t have to, or that friend you’d capture lizards and frogs with and then learned more about with. Did you know that the real name for the cane-toad is ‘bufo marinus‘? Even just single, blessed moments, like ripples in a pool (to use that tired old metaphor), I can name dozens that wouldn’t even start to be remembered by other people, but were significant to me.

    Funny, huh?

  • Awww…. cute! A raccoon for you.

    Kat Johnston Sketch – just a very quick one today… a quick raccoon!

    Just a very quick little sketch to show today, because I have other things that are begging to be done and demand my attention. Thus, I present to you, a raccoon. A quick raccoon. A speedy raccoon. I don’t understand why I can’t remember having seen a cartoon with a raccoon as a super-hero: after all, they’ve already got the mask thing covered. A quick google-search for ‘raccoon super hero’ does bring up a few options (including a bad-ass machine-gun toting marvel creation), but none that I had previously encountered myself, so far as I can remember. Am I missing one? Why have I got an unfulfilled childhood gap that a super-hero raccoon with duel powers of cuteness and ferocity could have filled?

    Ah well… until such a cartoon is made, I’m just going to have to content myself with watching Pom Poko again soon. Yes, I know they’re not really raccoons, but with the power to transform, look cute and use their testes as personal parachutes, its about as close to cute raccoon super heroes as I feel likely to get today without leaving the house. Either that, or it’s you-tubing for Secret Squirrel cartoons… with his oh-so-sexy mask, he might just be close enough to a raccoon to quench my craving.

  • A Useful Lecture.

    Kat Johnston Sketchbook – The first page of yet another book… I decided to go to town on this one.

    I decided yesterday, as I went into my media writing subject, to dedicate the first page of this new little notepad to a bit of drawing… then post it with no cropping, no centering in on a good spot and cutting out the rest, or any of that sort of stuff. Thus, I present to you the first page of yet another notebook. You can click on the image to zoom in and get a bit of a better closer look… might be helpful to read some of the writing close-up.

    If I am drawing during a lecture or a class, this is the sort of stuff that does actually generally come out… it isn’t something to distract me from what is being said, it is… hmmm… lets say an almost meditative technique? It is something to do with my hands as my mind is focusing on something else (what is being said by the lecturer, teacher, etc). My mind is fairly unfocused on what I am drawing – its more a stream of consciousness than anything else, flitting here and there and everywhere as I listen to and absorb other information.

    Yes… sounds like a complete cop-out as to why I am wasting my time sketching when I should be ‘concentrating’ on something else… but I actually find it helps. I don’t entirely know how… perhaps some pseudo-meditative thing whereby the action of doing something without thought focuses the mind on that which actually requires attention.

    Or perhaps it is just that things flitter through my brain almost constantly and getting them on paper gives them somewhere to go… empties out the random things to let the important stuff have some space up there. Eh, those are a couple of theories, in any case.

    One of the best things to come out of the lecture, oddly enough, was a showing of an old film regarded by some to be the ‘worst film ever’. Plan 9 from Outer Space was shown, just the first half dozen scenes, and I was laughing the entire time… I love films that are just so bad that they’re good. Just to give you a little taste of just how brilliant this film is… watch a clip from the opening of the movie. Its well worth checking out!