#double-take

Pokémon TF drive promotional art (page 2)

Color version of Page 2 of the Pokémon TF drive comic, which I think really shows now how my clothes are just "Indigo League jacket over Hoenn trainer clothes". Raichu gets the Johto backpack, which is white with black straps (and a red pokéball logo). The comic's stuck at page 6 because the ending doesn't make sense without a lot more TF-ing (and, well, badly-paying dayjob keeping me busy) The hardest part of this was actually reconciling the colors of the references. The promotional art for Indigo League is all gif images which had a limited color depth back then, Johto really only had the original watercolor concept art, and Hoenn colors were supposed to come from the Jirachi episode special—except that specials, like movies, have a higher budget and hence more vibrant colors...and it clashed. I ended up normalizing them all to the limited pallet (no pun intended) of the original gifs. I know this isn't what I said I'd do, but I did this as a bit of art therapy to avoid going into a more serious burnout.

Double-take....

SOUTH CHINA SEA (April 18, 2020) -- United States Navy Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Bunker Hill (CG 52) (foreground) and Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Barry (DDG 52) team-up for a routine patrol.

(Yes....the U.S. Navy continues almost routine operations around the world, albeit with the added challenges of keeping their ships -- their Sailors -- coronavirus-free.)

This is, indeed, a rare sight....seeing the same obvious hull numbers on two different warships from the same country. But, by a quirky coincidence stemming from how U.S. Navy cruisers and destroyers have been numbered in recent decades....

....we get both CG 52 and DDG 52 side-by-side....

....for this double-take.

                                            _____________________

>>Note: There’s a huge difference in the design and intrinsic missions of these two ships, despite their having similar hull numbers.

In broad generalities, a cruiser (the closest ship in the photos above) is primarily designed for anti-air defense (protecting the aircraft carrier from incoming missiles and attack aircraft)....

....while a destroyer focuses its missions on anti-surface (ships) and anti-subsurface (submarines) offense.

They may appear to have some similar weapons systems....but they’re likely loaded with different variations of armament to suit their different missions.)

                                              _____________________

>>CLICK the photos for a closer look....

Capt. George Malcolm Ashmun USMC and Ensign Frank Andrew Jagger USN.

Or Brad Pitt and Quentin Tarantino...

There was this.

First is Susan Kare, the graphic artist who back in the 1980s designed many fonts and iconic images for IBM, Microsoft, Apple... And I do mean literally iconic: many are still the function icons we click on today...

Second is @dduane​, someone I’ve known pretty well (cough) for nigh on 35 years. If you squint you can see the framed art for the first edition of “So You Want To Be A Wizard”, the cover art for “The Wounded Sky” and her own painting of Sunspark the fire elemental from “The Door Into Fire”...

Then there’s Diane again, and Sigourney Weaver when she was in “Alien”.

Okay, it seems I have a thing for slender American women with curly hair - but that doesn’t explain this one. :-P

I was looking for some other image entirely when it caused the usual scroll-scroll-scroll-WHAT?-backup-backup, because I knew I’d seen that face somewhere before. And (you know the feeling) I couldn’t place where.

Then the penny dropped. I’d seen one of them recently on TV, when the Talking Pictures satellite channel showed Laurence Olivier’s “Richard III”, and here’s a photo of British actor John Phillips as the Duke of Norfolk.

The painting is of Polish-German actor Bogumił Dawison in the stage role of Richard III. I’ve cropped it and converted it to monochrome (but nothing else) and set it alongside another photo of Phillips.

The two images are separated by about a hundred years...

Me:

Me: WAIT.

If there’s one thing I remember about grade school, it’s that people really, really don’t condone running in the halls.

And one U.K.-based tile company has a solution to that problem. They’ve created the perfect optical illusion that will have customers and pint-sized scoundrels thinking twice about running around. When designing the interior for their new showroom remodel, the folks at Casa Ceramica set out to create something that quite literally stopped people in their tracks.

At first glance, it looks like the floor is caving in, but that’s all part of the plan.

Twitter / Duncan Cook

Casa Ceramica owner, Duncan Cool, demonstrates the perfect technique for handling this epic optical illusion before revealing that the giant hole is all in our minds.

Here’s how to navigate our floor! #tiles #Manchester #Lovetiles #Illusion #Aliceinwonderland #CharlieAndthechocolatefactory pic.twitter.com/fn8kV2Wcz9

— Casa Ceramica (@casaceramica) September 22, 2017

If you can believe it, this was designed so that the hallway would look totally normal to anyone entering or looking through that glass door.

Twitter / Duncan Cook