“It is the creation of art through the curation of time.”

A great essay by Clayton Cubitt.

Curation, curation everywhere. And what of photographers? The curation of moments. Of perspectives. Of angles. This has always been so, although the technical limitations of primitive photographic technology falsely imposed a performance art aspect on the medium, a "dance" if you will. The notion that a large part of the creativity of the medium was the ability to recognize and capture moments in real-time was the central conceit of the Decisive Moment. But in fact, much of what Cartier-Bresson describes is not about the art, but mainly about the tools that he had access to…

As you can see.  Pull it over your head and wear the visage of Scroobius Pip as a mask.  Insane.  Also, frankly, a bit disturbing when they’re the first thing you see on Instagram in the morning.

Buy them here.  Scroobius notes that, although they’re a men’s cut, “The girls in the shoot were liking the small and mediums.”

You all know Scroobius Pip, right?

The day I can do without a keyboard case for the iPad, I’m getting one of Miranda’s Moodycases.  These things just look gorgeous.

I love Ellen.  She did my author headshots.  With a bit of luck, I’ll be seeing her this month.  You can see more of this shoot at her site.

They knocked this up during the creation of GUN MACHINE Trailer 1, about which more soon.

Meredith Yayanos is one of my oldest friends.  You may know her from arts journalism, from performing as a musician with Amanda Palmer or Jim Sclavunos’ The Vanity Set, or from co-founding COILHOUSE magazine.  Now, with multi-instrumentalist Dan Cantrell, she has formed The Parlour Trick in order to release the album A BLESSED UNREST.  And you can pre-order it, with various levels of additionally beauty, via Kickstarter.  It actually got funded within hours of going live.  But, please, click through.  If you like even some of the music you’ve heard here over the years, then I suspect you’ll enjoy this.  It’s an amazing record.

A new album by old mate of warren ellis dot com Kemper Norton?  I’ll have some of that.  And so will you.  Click through to buy for a very reasonable price, or stream the whole thing here.  G’night.

Ellen is the best.  And this is a very affordable way to own or gift her images.  (This search string will throw up a bunch of posts about Ellen and her work here.  She did my author headshot.)

A clip from the mechanical of the GUN MACHINE cover.  Which I’m probably not supposed to show you, but still.

Joe Hill is a very nice man.  (I would point you at his website, but it’s down as I write this.)  You can find him on Twitter as @joe_hill.

DISCORDIA is an ebook about the state of Greece this past summer, written by Laurie Penny and illustrated by Molly Crabapple.  They went to Greece together to get boots on the ground, Molly sketching and Laurie making notes right there.  It’s published by Random House.  It is really, really good.

If you click through here, the Look Inside should show you Paul Mason’s excellent foreword.

The editor, Dan Franklin, wrote an interesting bit on its genesis and production here:

Molly actually created most of the art first and Laurie wrote after it. I explained to Molly that the majority of readers would be using black and white e-ink devices, so she focused on black line-drawings with the only colour really being the red bloodstains of the violent anti-Golden Dawn protests.

She created a mix of predominantly finished pieces and sketches to communicate the in-the-moment nature of the reportage, sketching as Laurie did notes. We’ve ended up with 36 pieces in the finished ebook, which weighs in at 24,000 words – and if anyone complains about that being priced (under) £2 ($3), they don’t deserve it.

Obviously, I’m biased, as I adore both the little monsters.  But I think it’s turned out to be one of Laurie’s very best pieces, and Molly, who’s been levelling up all year, hit a new high mark in the illustration herein.

And, right now, it is literally $3.10 in the US and under £2 in the UK.

(amazon.co.uk)  (amazon.com) (ebooks)

@warrenellis Blur Studio VFX/CG Sup sharing #Grounded short film with you! Big fan! vimeo.com/32438100

— Kevin Margo (@MargoKevin) September 24, 2012

Kevin Margo, as he notes, comes from my friends Blur Studio.

One astronaut’s journey through space and life ends on a hostile exosolar planet. Grounded is a metaphorical account of the experience, inviting unique interpretation and reflection by the viewer. Themes of aging, inheritance, paternal approval, cyclic trajectories, and behaviors passed on through generations are explored against an ethereal backdrop.

Grounded VFX Breakdowns from Kevin Margo on Vimeo.

A strong piece by Molly, special to CNN, with new art.

Going into the police van, they snapped my picture on a Fujimax Polaroid knockoff, hipster party style. I gave them my best grin. A man in a suit passed by, looked us over, and said to the police, "nice work."

#freemollycrabapple

So Molly Crabapple went forth into the streets of New York City early this morning, with Laurie Penny and many other people, for #s17, the anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement.  She emailed me a couple of times from the streets.  I knew NYPD would conduct a fairly quick sweep, obviously.  I wasn’t quite prepared for a message from Laurie saying Molly had been arrested.

I don’t know who took this image.  Get me at @warrenellis and I’ll credit you.

Immediately thereafter, we got the hashtag #freemollycrabapple going on Twitter.  Which I find inordinately amusing, not least because she was sending messages from the paddy wagon and probably saw a bunch of it.  Because apparently they don’t take your phones off you when you’re arrested, now?

Everyone in this police van is wicked smart and funny except for the driver

— mollycrabapple (@mollycrabapple) September 17, 2012

Interestingly, what evidently happens is that NYPD insisted everyone get on the pavement, and once they were on the pavement they were arrested.  What I am pleased about is that Molly’s arrest wasn’t one of the violent ones – because nobody in the NYC power structure gives a shit about sending the message that they will beat non-violent protestors to show how devoted they are to preserving the peace of breakfast in the financial district – and that, frankly, she gets to see the inside of a black maria and a cop shop.  Because that is going to give her a wealth of new stuff to draw angry, in the mode of her Shell Game pieces.

She will be out of the nick before Friday, when the second ARIADNE goes up, I’m sure.  In the meantime, she’d love it if you went to Twiiter and posted with the hashtag #freemollycrabapple .

Somewhere in NYC, a cop is listening to an angry short artist in heels spewing obscenities in four different languages #freemollycrabapple

— Warren Ellis (@warrenellis) September 17, 2012

Comic pro con emergency supply received

Also:

@warrenellis actually spent the entire con making all those asking about FELL to promise they’d actually buy it when it’s back. They did.

— Ben Templesmith (@Templesmith) April 16, 2012

Shots from my friends and acquaintances on Instagram, for a change.

There seems to be a scotch egg theme, due to a bunch of London friends descending on Brockley market:  Matt Sheret on the left and Kieron Gillen on the right.

(I’m sparing you the uncomfortably close-up shot Matt Jones took of Chris Heathcote eating a “scotch egg” that is actually a creme egg wrapped in fried peanut butter)

But frankly this morning is all about Stoya’s epic find on the streets of New York City:

Oni Press editor Charlie Chu took this photo of the forthcoming Antony Johnston/Sam Hart graphic novel THE COLDEST CITY.  I have liberated it, because, well, look:

That’s a book designed to be displayed with other books, in genre sections, not in the “graphic novels” dump where Posy Simmonds sits side by side with, I dunno, Frank Miller and Chester Brown and Bryan Lee O’Malley.  And it is just a really nice-looking object.  Congratulations to the team, and designer Keith Wood.

(A few more shots at this link here.)

You all know Ariana. She designed warrenellis.com and keeps it running, she designed SHIVERING SANDS, she makes the IEU t-shirt designs, she designed the covers for things like CAPTAIN SWING… she’s basically brilliant and I couldn’t do without her.

And now she’s doing this: restoring some public-domain vintage demonic illustration.

Right to the point: I want to design and print a deck of 69 large (3.5″x5.75″), full-color cards, each featuring an illustration from the Dictionnaire Infernal. I’d also like to create a supplementary PDF for the deck, with all 69 card images and extended information about each. If you’re already familiar with the images I’m talking about, you can scroll down to the “accountability” section to see what this project would entail.

You can click through to read all about it right now (and possibly see the best demon anteater image ever), or Ariana can give you the pitch like this:

The documentation is thorough, and the work is absolutely beautiful. Please do give it a look, and, if you like it, share it around. Thanks.

link | FB

A couple of things I’ve mentioned on Twitter:

The guy who made the Tactical Defense Pen – which is actually a really good pen – is intending to make The Ultimate Clicky Pen.  Use of the TDP indicates that when he says that, he means it.

And Jess Nevins, who wrote the brilliant FANTASTIC VICTORIANA and the LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN Annotations, is writing THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF GOLDEN AGE SUPERHEROES.  Which is a great big bit of cultural archaeology.

A crowdfunding attempt to produce a Professor Elemental video series.  You remember Professor Elemental and his “Cup Of Brown Joy,” don’t you?  Course you do.  Behold.

Ryan Kelly is the artist on the new DC Vertigo comics release SAUCER COUNTRY and the webcomic COCOTTE.  Oh, and here’s the Flickr link for this image.

And that’s it for me this week.  I’m going to go away and see if I can remember how to emblog, because I do seem to have totally lost it…!

Have a good weekend.

(Ellen)

My old mate Garth Ennis is Kickstartering a children’s book, to be illustrated by Rob Steen:

ERF is the story of four friends at the dawn of time; Figwillop, KWAAAH!, the Booper, and Erf himself, and their adventures in the primordial world of long ago. The four take their first nervous steps out of the ocean and onto the shore, and are soon exploring the exciting new lands beyond. But danger lurks in the prehistoric jungle, and soon our heroes come face to face with the mighty and terrifying Colossux . . . An evolutionary tale of love and loyalty for children aged four and up.

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