Office Toy Satisfies His Cabin Fever In This Animated Short by Director Tom Jenkins.

'Address Is Approximate' is a sweet little stop motion animated short made as a personal project by director Tom Jenkins. A lonely desk toy longs for escape from the dark confines of the office, so he takes a cross country road trip to the Pacific Coast in the only way he can – using a toy car and Google Maps Street View.

The short was shot using a Canon 5d MkII, Dragonframe Stop Motion software and customised slider. All the screen imagery was animated - there are no screen replacements.



Music by Cinematic Orchestra. The track is Arrival of the Birds and the album can purchased on itunes here.

Produced, animated, filmed, lit, edited and graded by Tom Jenkins of The Theory

You can view 'making of' pics on Facebook here.

Google Wishes Charles Addams A Happy 100th Birthday.

In celebration of what would be his 100th birthday, Google honors Charles Addams with a "horror" doodle. The American cartoonist was best known for his black humor and macabre characters. His first drawing in The New Yorker ran on February 6, 1932 (a sketch of a window washer), and his cartoons ran regularly in the magazine from 1938, when he drew the first instance of what came to be called the Addams Family, until his death. He was a freelancer throughout that time.


above: Charles Addams (aka Charles Samuel Addams)

Born 1912 in Westfield, New Jersey, he signed his cartoons as Chas Addams.

The Google logo shows some of his figures who became known as the "Addams Family"; Gomez Addams, Morticia Addams, Pugsley Addams, Wednesday Addams, Uncle Fester, Grandmama, Lurch, Thing and Cousin It. Addams' typically styled Victorian buildings were said to be an inspiration for both Alfred Hitchcock's ("Psycho") and Edward Hopper. He died on September 29, 1988.

Happy Birthday, Charles Addams.

music: "Scheming Weasel" by Kevin MacLeod

info courtesy of wikipedia, youtube and google.

Google Wishes You Happy Holidays With An Interactive Animated Jingle Bells Light Show

If you didn't check out the Google doodle today, it's a sweet interactive animated doodle that when all the buttons have been depressed, plays a little light show accompanied by an instrumental 'jingle bells' ditty.

Click on the glowing button beneath the G and it becomes a snowflake:

Click on the glowing button beneath the first O and it becomes Santa:

Click on the glowing button beneath the second O and it becomes a bell:

Click on the glowing button beneath the second G and it becomes a snowman:

Click on the glowing button beneath the L and it becomes a candle:

Click on the glowing button beneath the E and it becomes a present:


According to Nathan Naze, Software Engineer at Google "Working with our doodlers, we had the bright idea to string lights along the Google homepage (and, because we can, added some interactive features). Of course, instead of using nails and hopelessly tangled strings of lights, we used JavaScript, Closure, and HTML5 or Flash to play the music (depending on the browser)."

Here it is in its animated entirety:


Happy Holidays back to you, Google!

The Best Artist & Architect Google Doodles Since 1998.

above Google Art Doodle by Laura Sweet

This is the first installment in a series of posts which will highlight various homepage versions of the Google logo since they began. Referred to as Google Doodles, I gathered my personal favorites since their inception in 1998 and will be sharing them with you over the next few weeks.

The Google Doodle during their beta phase in 1998:




First, a brief history.
The Google Doodle has come a long way since their first in August of 1998 when Google founders Larry and Sergey played with the corporate logo to indicate their attendance at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert.

The very first Google Doodle:


The crudely drawn homepage doodle was hardly impressive. During the years following, namely 1998-2008, the homepage Google Doodles were very simple, and hardly blogworthy, iterations where in most cases one of the letters was replaced by an object or a small drawing was added to the logo.

The 2004 Leap Year Google Doodle was typical of the logos during 2002-2008:


Occasionally series of Doodles were created. Changing daily but honoring the same theme as in the case of the Summer and Winter Olympic Games, The World Cup, Dilbert cartoons and a few other examples. But these, too, were largely unimpressive.

As the years passed, the Google Doodles became more inventive and more imaginative. Some were even interactive, some animated and some so intensely illustrated, it was hard to make out the word Google.

The Happy Holidays Google Doodle in 2010:


Today, in the first post of this ongoing series, are the best of the Google Doodles honoring artists, designers and architects since 1998. They are listed in alphabetical order by surname. Some ran in selected countries only, so you may not recognize all of them, but they are all worth a look.

The Best Google Doodles - Part I Artists, Architects and Designers

Karen Appel, Netherlands:

James Audubon, world renowned nature artist:

Arthur Boyd, Australian painter:

Constantin Brancusi, Romanian sculptor:

Mary Cassatt, American painter:

Paul Cezanne, French painter:

Marc Chagall, Russian-French painter and stained glass artist:

Leonardo Da Vinci, Italian painter, writer and inventor:

Will Eisner, American comic writer and artist:

M.C. Escher, Dutch illustrator and graphic designer:

Josef Frank, Austrian architect and artist:

Walter Gropius, German architect:

Hokusai, Japanese wood cut artist:

Robert Indiana (for Valentine's Day), American painter:

Frida Kahlo, Mexican painter:

Peder Severin Krøyer, Norwegian-Danish painter:

Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Scottish architect and designer:

Rene Magritte, Belgian painter:

Michelangelo, Italian sculptor and painter:

Piet Mondrian, Dutch painter:

Claude Monet, French Impressionist painter:

Alphonse Mucha, Czech Art Nouveau painter and artist:

Isamu Noguchi, Japanese-American sculptor, painter, architect and designer:

Taro Okamoto, Japanese painter and sculptor:

Nam June Paik, Korean video artist:

Pablo Picasso, Spanish painter and sculptor:

Jackson Pollock, American painter:

Ilya Repin, Russian painter:

Norman Rockwell. American illustrator and painter:

Mimar Sinan, Turkish architect:

Wayne Thiebaud (for Google's 10th birthday), American painter:

Vincent Van Gogh, Dutch painter:

Diego Velasquez, Spanish Painter:

Andy Warhol, American artist:

Frank Lloyd Wright, American architect:

Zhang Daqian, Asian painter:


The Doodle team, which consists of Marissa Mayer, Dennis Hwang, Mike Dutton, Susie Sahim, and Jenifer Hom has created over 300 doodles for Google.com in the United States. In addition, over 700 have been designed internationally and submissions by guest doodlers, Google Doodle contest winners and the general public have also been produced.

Meet The Doodlers (video):


Want to take a whack at designing your own Google Doodle? Go ahead, you can submit your own to proposals@google.com

My next post on Google Doodles will feature the best of Inventions & Discoveries, don't miss it!