“It’s none of your business what my company does, just design a beautiful website”

Dating advice, just in time for Valentine’s Day! Because what more could a girl want than a man to clean up after?

Also on Tapastic because I am trying that site out. Maybe look for more dumb minicomics from me there in the future.

The Warm Little Tauntaun by joebot is $11 today only (2/11) at TeeFury

Disney Interactive is making a move into sponsored content. They recently launched It’s a Small World: The Animated Series, an eight-episode group of Web shorts that is sponsored by language instruction company Rosetta Stone and their new children’s app Lingo Word Builder. To date the episodes have been presented on Disney.com, Disney’s YouTube channels, and across Disney’s connected TV apps. “At Disney Interactive, we’re constantly looking for new ways to bring fans closer to the Disney characters and stories they love,” said Mark Walker, senior vice-president of Disney Interactive Entertainment. “With It’s A Small World: The Animated Series, we’re leveraging the interactive medium to bring a classic Disney experience to life for a whole new generation. Rosetta Stone is an excellent partner for us as we share a common goal to inspire children by producing compelling experiences on digital platforms.” The sponsored content model has gained a lot of attention in online advertising over the past couple years, but it is hardly revolutionary for animation. In the 1950s and ’60s, the majority of animated TV characters like The Flintstones, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and Rocky & Bullwinkle were sponsored by corporate brands, and brand mascots would often be animated alongside the main cartoon stars. One of the biggest proponents of reviving the direct sponsorship model on the Internet was Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi who started pushing the idea as far back as the mid-1990s. It’s amusing to see Kricfalusi’s ideas followed to a tee nearly twenty years after the fact—and by Disney no less. Besides the six internationally-flavored language-loving children who star in It’s a Small World, there’s also some unintentional branding going on, notably a hot air balloon that resembles Mr. Pringle and a bird who looks like Twitter’s corporate logo. Classic Disney characters also pop up in some of the episodes. Austin, Texas-based Powerhouse Animation handled production duties on the series. The shorts also feature original music by Richard Sherman, who was the co-composer of the ride’s original song “It’s a small world (after all)” that debuted at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. Disney produced one episode explicity themed around its sponsor’s Rosetta Stone name, which can be seen below:

kumikopyon:

Kumagoron x siretoco

Special donuts from Hokkaido, Japan.

Flavors: Hokkaido Milk, Hokkaido Pumpkin, Cocoa Chip, Choc Chip, and Salty Fresh Caramel

Source: http://en.rocketnews24.com/2013/10/07/these-doughnuts-from-hokkaido-are-unbear-ably-cute/

Want~ 

Once you have a smartphone, unfortunately, there is no going back. It's your own personal drug and it's available all the time.

Your smartphone is your planner, alarm clock, radio, calculator, video player, gaming device, and personal computer all in a device smaller enough to carry in your pocket. Once you have one, it's ridiculously hard to live without one. Sad, but true.



See more: Your Smartphone Relationship

Capsule toys are always ready to trade a few yen for some novelty, and in one of the latest the vending machine tchotchkes are offering a line of small figures featuring the Statue of Liberty freed from her classic pose.

 

Unrelated to Space Dandy's (in)famous ball-gag Statue of Liberty head spaceship, Takara Tomy Arts' Panda's Ana has been doing spoofs of the famous sculpture.

 

 

Lady Liberty joins their Un-Thinker, released late last year.

 

 

 

via matt_alt

 

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Scott Green is editor and reporter for anime and manga at geek entertainment site Ain't It Cool News. Follow him on Twitter at @aicnanime.

One of my own attempts at needle felting from a couple years ago. One of the penguins from penguindrum.

Ever since Disney announced the purchase of Lucasfilm in 2012, virtually everyone in the comics industry knew there was a ticking clock on Dark Horse’s Star Wars comics; it’s only natural, after all, that the entertainment giant would move the profitable Star Wars license in-house, similar to how it shuffled the Disney and Pixar titles from BOOM! [...]

Q: Where do you stand on the modern day love affair with "the toughening" of Alfred Pennyworth? -- @danceformyhorse

A: I've joked before about how I love Alfred more than most people love Batman, but let's be real here: that's only half-joking. Alfred is easily one of my favorite characters in comics, and I could happily read an entire series about the adventures of the Batman's Gentleman's Gentleman, even if it just focused on the problems of how to keep a robotic Tyrannosaurus and a giant penny from getting too dusty while cleaning up Batman's anti-crime basement. So believe me when I tell you, friends, the idea of a tough-as-nails Alfred Pennyworth is far from a modern invention.

Alfred's been a badass since day one.

Continue reading…

When I reported the other day on the winners of the Japanese government’s manga competition, it reminded me there was another international manga contest, the Morning International Manga Competition. I wasn’t the only one who wondered what had happened to the contest, as someone posted the question on the Tumblr of the manga publisher Vertical. [...]

“Let’s export these to Microsoft World.”

Visitors to Disneyland Paris will soon have the opportunity to experience life as a rat scuttling along the baseboards of a charming Parisian restaurant, sniffing out crumbs and bits of discarded food.

sourcedumal:

foodffs:

CARAMEL APPLE NACHOS

Really nice recipes. Every hour.

yum

One of the major figure events of the year, Winter Wonder Festival takes place this weekend, and Good Smile Company's big plans include an exclusive Attack on Titan Armin figma. To hype this, as well as the release of the Mikasa figma, they and Max Factory have posted pattern to print your own Colossal Titan mask.

 

Go here for the full sized JPG and PDF 

 

 

The figure, with three facial expression, cloak and 3d maneuver gear goes for 4,500yen

 

 

Be sure to send your photos as a Titan with your figmas to the Figma Blog: figmablog@maxfactory.jp GSC's blog be introducing everyone’s photos on the blog at a later stage!

 

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Scott Green is editor and reporter for anime and manga at geek entertainment site Ain't It Cool News. Follow him on Twitter at @aicnanime.

Anyone who is remotely interested in the CG artistry behind "The LEGO Movie" should drop everything and head over to fxguide to watch this half-hour behind-the-scenes look at the making of the film.

On March 25, Abrams will release "Adventure Time: A Totally Math Poster Collection," a collection of 20 removable posters.

“Snow is an opportunity, because it’s a white canvas.  It’s a lighter’s dream, in that the lighting is the color.  The local color is minimal at best in all these snowscapes, so it’s all about the lighting.  We consider it a blank canvas that allows us to actually paint with light.  We’re having a lot of fun with that.” - Lisa Keene, Frozen assistant art director

Shimura also publishes new one-shot in Yomikiri Citron

"Cleaning story of love and bravery" to begin this March

You wanted him. I wanted him. Let's face it, pretty much everyone with a soul wanted Nendoroid Link from The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. And now he's finally here! Well, not quite, but we have at least got the first pictures of him. As pretty much everyone expected, he's almost painfully adorable and one of the best fits ever for the range, since tiny body/massive head is basically his design in a nutshell. Can anybody resist this cutie?

[via Twitter and Earlbox's Flickr]

Read more...

Winter Wonder Festival this year seems poised to ruin me financially and, just when I thought I couldn't get any more excited following a figma Motoko Kusanagi announcement, here comes an image of Detective Conan's (US: Case Closed) eponymous boy detective, Conan Edogawa! But wait, there's more! Pictured right next to him is a shadowy figure (a.k.a. the unseen guilty suspect or criminal) in figma form as well. C'mon! This much DO WANT! is just criminal.

The pair will presumably be packaged together and the criminal seen in the background (the one that mirrors the black silhouette seen on the show) will likely be the paint deco for the figure. My only concern is that Conan himself doesn't look like he has joints worked in yet. Although a figurine scaled within the figma line is neat and all, I'm not sure if I'd bother buying the character in a non-articulated form. Oh well, maybe he'll receive a Nendoroid down the road...

You better believe I'll be following this case closely.

Read more...

A little fanart of Solid Snake, Major Kusanagi, and Solano.

Been playing through MGS4 and it’s got me thinking about Giannis Milonogiannis’s Old City Blues. Giannis built his New Athens on this crossroads where Kojima, Shirow, and Nihei’s work all intersect, and then made that place completely his own. Now I can’t think about any of their work without bleeding into his a little bit, and that’s a good thing— his work is fantastic.

Giannis is on tumblr, and you can read his comic online.

Drawn in ink on paper by Jake Wyatt

Robin Hood

Hit Reset by CoDdesigns is available at Redbubble

domabaem:

SO i just found out about this manga called toriaezu chikyuu ga horobiru mae ni (something close to before the earth perishes, according to google translate) by an artist/illustrator named nemu yoko. it is apparently about girls basketball, and it has 4 volumes!! there is no translation out anywhere, and i need to read this more than i need air to breathe. 

a roughly translated synopsis: 

One day in front of the Dadakusa girls’ basketball team, a man calling himself a prophet appears. “The earth will perish if you don’t win the prefectural tournament.” Find out the fate of the earth, basketball, and love by reading Toriaezu Chikyuu ga Horobiru Mae Ni.

here’s a few caps that i could find!!

i am very willing to start up some sort of project to translate this manga if there’s interest for it!! i can do some typesetting, but i would need help w/ translation!! also, each volume is around $2-$5usd, and would probably need to raise some donations as i have no source of income. please let me know if you’d be interested in helping out, or even reading, as i’d like to see if there’s a big enough demand for a project! thanks for reading!!

Oh, I have the first 2 volumes of this. I like it ^^ 

Dinosaurs are great. They dominated the world for over 170 million years, and one line has survived to the present day as birds. But they’re hardly the be-all and end-all of prehistory. In the wake of the mass extinction that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs, prehistoric mammals proliferated into a variety of astounding forms that were just as fantastic as those of the dinosaurs they succeeded. Instead of letting them be persistently overshadowed by dinosaurs, it’s time to give fossil mammals their due.

[Read More]

 

Uintatherium

Even if you haven’t heard of Uintatherium before, chances are you’ve seen one. The rhino-sized, knobbly-headed, saber-toothed herbivores are museum mainstays and often included in packs of plastic prehistoric creatures. Despite the mammal’s fame, though, these strange creatures are enigmas even to experts.

Uintatherium is a Bone Wars beast, named by Philadelphia naturalist Joseph Leidy in 1872. Since that time paleontologists have found out a bit about the natural history of Uintatherium—that it likely browsed on relatively soft vegetation, had a small brain, and those impressive canine teeth differed in length between the sexes—but one overarching mystery remains.

Uintatherium roamed America’s prehistoric west between 50 and 40 million years ago at a time when bizarre, archaic mammals were dominant. That has complicated efforts to figure out what sort of mammal Uintatherium actually was. The strange mammal and its kin have been cast as early ungulates, relatives of other totally-extinct groups, and even as early, distant cousins of rabbits. Wherever Uintatherium fits into the mammal family tree, though, it was truly one of the most spectacular beasts of all time.

 

Andrewsarchus

During a 1923 expedition to the Gobi Desert, paleontologists on an American Museum of Natural History discovered the huge skull of a carnivorous mammal. Nearly three feet long and still possessing fist-sized teeth that would have chawed flesh and cracked bone, the cranium belonged to an animal the researchers dubbed Andrewsarchus. For years artists restored the animal as a wolfish predator—think of a real life version of Gmork from The Neverending Story—but more recent research has made Andrewsarchus even stranger.

Andrewsarchus lived sometime between 45 and 36 million years ago. How the carnivore went about stalking and dismantling prey during that time is frustrated by the fact that only the skull and a few accompanying bone scraps have ever been found. Still, from that skull and the mammal’s relationship to an extinct group of “hell pigs” called entelodonts, Andrewsarchus likely ran after prey on long, stout legs tipped in hoofed toes that brought the carnivore close enough to deliver a devastating bite powered by thick neck muscles. With any luck, future fossil finds will tell paleontologists how close the real nightmare was to the reconstructed version.

 

Amphicyon

The name Amphicyon translates to “ambiguous dog.” That fits. This eight-foot-long, burly carnivore looked like a fearsome combination of bear and dog. And with several species spread through Africa, Eurasia, and North America between 21 and 9 million years ago, these carnivorans were clearly successful.

Exactly what large bear dogs like Amphicyon ate is only known from rare fossil associations. Even though bear dogs look like they could’ve taken down large prey, a 9 million year old aggregation of damaged musk deer skeletons found in Spain suggests that these predators at least sometimes chased down prey smaller than themselves. Then again, in Portugal, paleontologists have found an even older rhino skeleton scored by Amphicyon tooth marks. Whether the bear dog killed the rhino or scavenged the carcass isn’t clear. The bear dog certainly looked capable of doing either.

 

 

Gigantopithecus

Prehistoric apes never got close to King Kong size, but Gigantopithecus was still one impressive primate.

First discovered as a curious tooth in a Bangkok apothecary shop in 1935, Gigantopithecus is thought to have been almost ten feet tall when standing upright and weigh about 1,200 pounds. These are rough estimates, though, as very little of the Gigantopithecus skeleton has been found. Paleontologists have accumulated hundreds of teeth and several lower jaws, but nothing more. Quite frustrating for a huge ape that inhabited Asia between about 1 million and 10,000 years ago and that prehistoric humans likely saw in the flesh.

All the same, teeth are rich sources of fossilized information about prehistoric creatures. In the case of Gigantopithecus, the shape and microscopic details of teeth collected so far suggest this prehistoric cousin of organutans fed on fruit, seeds, and bamboo. Too bad all the non-avian dinosaurs were long dead by time Gigantopithecus was dining on the undergrowth, further dashing King Kong dreams.

 

Amebelodon

Elephants are among the strangest and most impressive of mammals, but their prehistoric cousins were even weirder. Chief among the long-lost elephantine oddballs was Amebelodon—a “shovel tusker” that tromped across North America and Asia between 9 and 5 million years ago.

Instead of the short, high skull of living elephant species, Amebelodon had an extraordinarily long face with two prominent, squared tusks jutting out from the lower jaw. How this extinct proboscidean used such dental tools is a puzzle.

Some researchers took their shovel-like appearance at face value and suggested that Amebelodon scooped soft water plants from Miocene marshes. But, based on subtle damage to those tusks, in paleontologist W. David Lambert has suggested something different. Instead of being stuck in swamps, these elephants were able to tackle a greater range of vegetation and may have even used their trunks and tusks in conjunction to saw through tough plants. Time will tell if the saw-tusker title catches on.

 

Paraceratherium

Paraceratherium was a terrestrial titan. Stretching 26 feet long and weighing up to 20 tons, this prehistoric relative of living rhinos was the largest land mammal of all time.

Don’t let the relationship fool you. Like most rhinos throughout prehistory, Paraceratherium didn’t have a horn. The form of the herbivore was more like a rhino in a giraffe-like shape, with a large head balanced on a long neck that allowed Paraceratherium to browse high in the trees of Eurasia between 35 and 20 million years ago.

Why such giant, tree-cropping rhinos disappeared is a mystery, but archaic elephants may have had something to do with it. As articulated by paleontologist P.V. Putshkov, prehistoric proboscideans that moved into Paraceratherium habitat may have pushed over trees to get at some of the leafy greens up top and literally changed the landscape in a way that left tree-dependant Paraceratherium starving. Who knows whether evolution will ever spin off another mammal as enormous as the lost rhino.

 

Thalassocnus

Despite their sluggishness, living sloths are skilled swimmers. But one of their giant, prehistoric relatives was even better. That was Thalassocnus, the seashore sloth.

Between 8 and 2 million years ago the ancient coast of Peru was home to a succession of five species of Thalassocnus, with each slightly more adapted to an amphibious life than the last. From the shape of the skulls and scratches on teeth created by ancient beach sand, paleontologist Christian De Muizon and colleagues have suggested that these sloths started out snarfing stranded seaweed that washed up along the shore and occasionally dipped their heads into the shallows to feed. Over time, however, the sloths started venturing further out into the water, anchoring themselves to the bottom with their huge claws as they plucked and chewed aquatic vegetation. Whether these fossil species were as adorable as modern baby sloths is an open question.

 

Maiacetus

There were once walking whales. A fantastic array of fossils from Asia, Africa, and North America have allowed paleontologists to retrace how ancestral cetaceans walked into the surf and became increasingly adapted to life at sea between 50 and 40 million years ago. And of all the early whales found so far, Maiacetus is the most beautifully-preserved.

Maiacetus was a whale caught in the middle. The skull, limbs, and spine of the cetacean were already well-suited to a mostly-aquatic life, as shown by a pair of fantastic skeletons paleontologist Philip Gingerich and coauthors described in 2009. Both were startlingly complete and still articulated—rare for any fossil vertebrates—but one specimen contained a surprise.

Preserved inside the ribcage of one Maiacetus was the partial skeleton of a young individual. Gingerich and colleagues interpreted the bonus fossil as a fetus, hence the scientific name translating to “Mother whale” for the beast. But paleontologists J. G. M. Thewissen and William McLellan raised another possibility—perhaps the little one wasn’t a fetus, but “a calf and was cut into pieces by the larger individual and then partly ingested.” The debate remains, leaving it uncertain whether the moniker Maiacetus should be taken literally or with irony.

 

Doedicurus

Imagine a heavily-armored sloth with a morning star for a tail. That’s a good approximation of Doedicurus. One of the glyptodonts, a diverse group of armadillo relatives encased in bone armor, this 13-foot-long mammal was a living tank that trundled across South America between 2 million and 15,000 years ago.

What makes Doedicurus immediately recognizable to fossil fans is the nasty tail club. Many glyptodonts had some sort of caudal weaponry, but the remains of Doedicurusstand out for resembling a bony bat with large pockmarks around the tip. These divots supported long spikes in life, although exactly what the herbivore used them for isn’t clear. The shell of Doedicurus was so large that the beast probably couldn’t have seen what it was swinging at. That’s not the best defensive strategy. Instead, paleontologist R. Ernesto Blanco and collaborators have proposed that glyptodonts were swinging these intimidating weapons at each other. Just think of the sound club-on-shell would have made.

 

Homotherium

Smilodon is undoubtedly the most famous of the great sabercats, but Homotherium deserves just as much attention. A “scimitar-toothed cat” with elongated canines and a lanky build, Homotherium was a lion-sized carnivore that spread from Africa through Eurasia and the Americas between 5 million and 10,000 years ago. For most of human prehistory, Homotherium was right there with us.

As with other Ice Age sabercats, only bones and degraded DNA testify to the life of Homotherium. Yet there is one spectacular site in Texas that illuminates just how clever this cat was. San Antonio’s Friesenhahn Cave is a sinkhole that Homotherium used as a den. In addition to the remains of several Homotherium individuals, including saberkittens, the cave is replete with the bones of young mammoths. From the details of the bones, adult Homotherium would either kill or scavenge a baby mammoth, dismember a limb, and drag their meal back to the safety of their cave where they could gnaw mammoth flesh at their leisure. In short, Homotherium did has mammothburger.

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Brian Switek is the author of My Beloved Brontosaurus and Written in Stone. He also writes the National Geographic blog Laelaps

Joan of Arc