Art By The Books

While I used to treat render time as a coffee break – a quick chance to stretch my legs, maybe grab a cup of coffee – that was before I started working on heavy duty video and graphics projects.  Compressor’s progress bar is now my slow-moving yet equally matched opponent, willing to take as long as it wants either out of spite or sheer, unabashed hatred for yours truly.  What that means is that render time has become…well…daytime.  And that leaves me with a lot of time to fill exploring the outermost edges of the internet.

Although that translates into my watching a lot of videos of squirrels on waterskis, every once in a while I find a truly awesome website.  Like this.  It’s the homepage of Jim Tierney, an illustration student at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.  His senior thesis project – a series of interactive covers for classic Jules Verne novels – is ten tons of sheer awesome, and probably better seen than described. Check out the video below to see what I mean.

I love the style of illustration, the interactivity and the overall look of every single one of the books – I can honestly say I would read twice as much if hardcovers were this much fun to play with. I emailed Jim to let him know how much I appreciate his work and it turns out that in addition to being a great artist, he’s a really cool guy. I’m buying prints of three book covers – one for the office, two for home – and can’t wait to have his work up on my wall. Looking at them makes me realize I should use all this render time to write a novel, if only so I can hire Jim to design an awesome cover…