Contest Help

Hey folks, I want to have another contest and I have a couple of ideas for what it could be, but I'm interested to hear if you have any suggestions. It could be an specific material, technique, subject matter or it could be something to do with one of the 365.25 skulls I made. What do you think?

Crabby Skull

My friends Christi LaMountain and Russ Reed discovered this excellent barnacle residue on horseshoe crab shell simulacra on a recent beach visit!

Skull-A-Day 2.0: Update

Hey folks, as we near the end of the first month of Skull-A-Day 2.0 I thought I'd check in with you all and give you an update of things here at Skull Central. I've received nearly 200 submissions for 2.0, since I started asking for them in mid-April! I thought it might slow down, but right now I'm still getting an average of 3-4 submissions every day! As long as they follow the rules and are in focus(!) I generally post everything I get, which has led to a problem...I've got nearly enough for half a year already and the ones I'm receiving today won't get posted for many months! I'm trying to decide how to remedy this situation (be more picky about posting, post more a day, have jumbo posts on the weekends), but I'm not sure what to do. I'm open to suggestions here, so feel free to let me know what you'd prefer to see.

Thanks again for all of your support. I'll be posting some updates of old skulls and letting you know about book news as it comes so keep checking back and telling your friends about the site!

[UPDATE] Skull of Cabbage: Day 33

Another week and the hot weather continues. The Skull of Cabbage survived a heavy thunderstorm and still continues to dry out. Probably not much longer before it's completely dry...

Veggie Skull Runners-Up

Three runners-up in the Veggie Skull contest:

While we've discussed the classification of some fruits & vegetables, there's little debate that grapefruits are definitely fruits, however Starbeuck from France still gets an "A" for effort for submitting this experimental piece which has been "cut, hollowed out, painted, hung, let to rot, let to dry, submerged in a tube full of sugared water and pulp, and surely still more later!"




AdamD/DESA missed the deadline by a few hours with this lovely pumpkin (another vegetable fruit).

Melissa Sopha AKA Couchgirl 13 sent this very, very late, but still cute, baby carrot entry. She says, "no carrots were harmed during the shooting of the What's Up Doc? Skull, however they all died later when they were consumed by the notorious carrot theives, Pudd'n and Pie [guinea pigs], who were later arrested for their crimes against veggies and various fruits."


Thanks again to everyone who participated. Stay tuned for a new contest in the near future.

Mexican Skull Mask

Hiller Goodspeed of Orlando, Florida recently made this fine Mexican sugar skull inspired mask...

Veggie Skull winner #5

Congratulations to Christiane in Switzerland who is the fifth winner in the Veggie Skull contest! She made this fantastic skull out of strips of zucchini (courgette for those of you in the UK):

A variation:

Two days later:

Bloody Skull

Joe Cook of Tucson, Arizona made this fun/gory image! He says, "It's a pic of a skull and crossbones I drew in my own blood after cutting my finger laying tile. The coolest part is it still lies under the new tile I laid and everyone who enters my house steps over it as they pass through my front door." Don't try this at home kids!

Veggie Skull winner #4

Congratulations to Elena from who is the fourth winner in the Veggie Skull contest! She carved this sweet little radish that she grew herself...

Global Skull

Sonia & Gabriel Freeman of Un Mundo Feliz made this happy image for their book Pictopia...

Veggie Skull winner #3

Congratulations to Marcela Roberts from Dallas, Texas who is the third winner in the Veggie Skull contest! She carved this cute "Tomato of the Dead" (which I realize is technically a fruit, but what the heck, it's still a great piece)...

I Club Skulls

Fabio Iashi of Parma, Italy (whose site MyMoleskine.net was also nominated for the Best Personal Web Site Webby!) made these fun illustrations...


And appropriately enough here's an image from the first page of his own Moleskine notebook...

Skull-A-Day Press: Red Couch Interview

My interview on Level 3's Red Couch at the Webby Awards in online now! Click HERE to watch.



And to see other interviews from that evening go HERE.

[BONUS] Stenciled Jeans

Eris did a fine job using my Stylized Stencil Skull on a pair of jeans! She says, "My intention was to use bleach and then color the skull in. As you can see, it bled and dripped a lot, as I have never tried this before. I tried to adjust the design and just give my little skully some dancing legs but it's not quite what I was hoping for. I don't mind, I still wear them lots and am looking forward to trying again!"

Veggie Skull winner #2

Congratulations to Angela in Alaska who is the second winner in the Veggie Skull contest! She made this fantastic turnip carving (with turnip skin inlays!)...

Mexican Sugar Cookie Skulls

Phaedra Vandenbrun made this skullicious looking Dias De Los Muertos cookies! She says she makes them every year for Halloween. I wish I could go trick-o-treating on her block!

Veggie Skull winner #1

Congratulations to Brandi Sims' 11 year old son Alex who is the first winner in the Veggie Skull contest! He did an excellent job carving a potato...

Foot Impression Skull

Laura Gosnell discovered this sneaky simulacra on her foot! She says, "I was given a pair of new boots, and after wearing them on a long walk to try to break them in, this image was on the top of my foot (if you look closely, you can see a very angry skull). I thought it might be a neat secret thing that the boots were designed with, but it appears to be purely coincidental." I know you guys sometimes have a hard time with the subtle ones, but I definitely see it, do you?

Wild Beast Skull

Sean Siem made this great sculpture titled "skulltacular north american 4 point skull" using Sculpey & Apoxie and finished it with silver paint...

[BONUS] Music For Looking At Skulls

The band We'll Write kindly asked for permission to use a photo they took of my Papercraft Skull for the artwork to their new track "Bleached Bone Fields". I was happy to oblige knowing that they were offering the track for FREE and under a Creative Commons license. It's just an added bonus that it happens to be a great tune as well!

Get your FREE MP3 HERE.

[BONUS] Found in San Francisco part II

I spotted this creepy fellow hiding on a tree in the primitive plant section of the San Francisco Botanical Garden in Golden Gate Park. (The image is actually rotated 90 degrees clockwise). After I cropped the image I discovered a second simulacra in the upper right hand corner!

[BONUS] Found in San Francisco part I

I discovered this skull simulacra lurking on the wall of the de Young museum in San Francisco at a fantastic exhibition of Dale Chihuly's work! This was made from light cast through a large multicolored bowl...

Donut Skull

Brooklyn, NY artist Scott Teplin, shared this fun donut illustration he made (which was recently on display at the Art Amsterdam art fair via g-module gallery)...



And check out what's in the illustration he made for the current issue of McSweeney's...


See more of on his great work on his blog HERE.

Eye Skull

Marcel Achard, from Montréal made this keen illustration...

[UPDATE] Skull of Cabbage: Day 24

Well I got back from my vacation late last night and was happy to discover that the Skull of Cabbage hadn't been carried off by a wild animal or dissolved despite the continuing hot weather! And no, it doesn't rest in a refrigerator between shots, it has sat on my back porch the whole time. It also still doesn't smell bad, though it is getting fairly dried out and has a nice tan. I probably won't continue a daily record at this point, unless there's a dramatic change, I'll just post a once a week picture until it stabilizes (or vanishes)...

Skull-A-Day: Webby Update

Hey all, just back from a much needed vacation and I've got a few fun things to post over the next few days. First, here's a recap of the Webby Awards event:

The night started with a pre-ceremony cocktail meet and greet in Wall Street. It's was ridiculously hot in NYC that day and everyone was sweating in their finery (myself included). They had a press photographer there so I made sure to get an official sweaty shot, note the belt buckle given to me by Joseph Biondi AKA b13...


After that we headed across the street to the main event. The space was huge and I was seated at a table all the way to the side at the front, so the view of the stage was fairly poor. I figured I must have been placed at the small fry table. Then I asked around and it turned out I was sitting with folks from ESPN and ABC, so I guess they're considered small fries too!

Seth Meyers did a great job keeping the 4 hour(!) ceremony moving along, though everyone seemed pretty tired as the last few categories were announced. Luckily I got my 15 seconds on stage before dinner and could relax for the rest of the evening.


It looks like I'm singing a soul ballad here, but I'm really saying "This could be a spine." The five words that popped into my head before running up to accept the award.

We then headed over to the after party which featured an awesome set by Ludacris who was promoting his new project WeMix, that actually seems pretty cool.

The two highlights of the night...

Walking by a table with the following people sitting at it: Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, David Byrne, Cindy Sherman, and Steven Colbert! I couldn't bring myself to ask for a group photo, but I did say "hi" to Laurie in passing.

Finding out that Ben Huh of I Can Has Cheezburger? is a fan of Skull-A-Day!


FYI they don't actually give you your award statue that night, so I haven't gotten my "spine" yet, but rest assured I'll photograph it with a skull atop when I do get it!

Thanks again to everyone who voted for the site and helped make this crazy thing happen!

Castle Greyskull Ruin

Butt Johnson shared this simply amazing lithograph of Castle Greyskull in ruin he made!


[UPDATE] Scherke from Germany sent this photo that may explain why Castle Greyskull fell into ruin...

Paint Animation Skull

Sylvain from Grenoble made this fun animation for an art class using 129 still photos...

Baby Skull

I've shown ultrasound images before, but my friend Joriel's is a particularly creepy one. Say "hello"...

Pile O' Skulls Painting

Frank Piccirillo a painter from Providence. R.I. showed off his lovely work...

Six-Pack Skulls

John Padgett discovered the skull-y nature of these six-pack holders...

Lock & Key Tattoo Skulls

Big Mama Kaboose in San Jose, CA showed off her and her fiance's 10th anniversary tattoos! The heart is by Shana and they key is by Adrian, both at Guru Tattoo in San Jose...

Drain Skull

Jennifer in Ohio made this cute/gross skull out of her own hair that she had been collecting in the shower for a few days!

Rust Skull

Roberto Arboleda from Ecuador spotted this awesomely creepy simulacra on some metal...

Red Sky Skulls

Paul Michael Duffy in Northern Ireland shot this lovely photo featuring some sneaky skulls. How many do you see?...

Car Repair Skull

My friend Julien in Istanbul made this fun piece while waiting for his tire to be repaired!

Skully Awards

Just got out of the Webby Awards ceremony, I'll post some pictures soon, but figured you'd want to know what my 5 words were. I had settled on a couple of ideas: "Yes, I still love skulls". AND "Next we save the universe". I figured I'd decide at the last minute, but right be fore going on I was inspired by the trophy's shape so instead I picked it up and looked at it for a moment and then said..."This could be a spine!"

Thanks again for all the great suggestions everyone!

Beer Bubble Skull

My friend Ekin in Istanbul made this cute fellow in her beer...

[CONTEST] Veggie Skulls

Some of the most popular skulls I made were the ones that used vegetables, so I want to see what you can do! You've got two weeks to make your best skull out of arranged or carved vegetables and send it to me. I'll post all of the submissions sometime after the June 22nd (midnight Eastern Time) deadline and give away an Ornament(al) Skull print to each of my top five favorites!

[UPDATE] Thanks to everyone who submitted the winners are being posted now!

Techno Skull Belt Buckle

Mikko Anttonen a blacksmith in eastern Finland created this fantastic belt buckle when he was studying at the College of Crafts and Design...


Check out more of his work HERE

War Baby Skull

Custom toy maker Bob Conge made this amazing piece, "WAR". He says...

I wanted to create an image that would make the viewer feel the horror of war and perhaps move them to take a stand against its ravages of life and land. The Dick Cheney smile on the skull is no accident.

The WAR figure is a one-up hand cast urethane from my original sculpt. It is 10" high by 6" wide with glass inset eyes. The body and feet of the WAR figure are made up of the dead bodies of solders, crashed airplanes, blown up tanks, barrels of oil, etc and his legs are the trunks from burned and broken trees.

As inspired by, "I am become Death,The shatterer of Worlds", from The Bhagavad-Gita.

Frankenskull

Illustrator-Artist Extraordinaire Nate VanDyke shared this terrific image...

[UPDATE] Skull of Cabbage: Day 10

The temperature has been in the high 90's here for several days now and I'm surprised the Skull of Cabbage hasn't been cooked! My lens however did not like the quick transition from air conditioning to the humid outdoors and quickly fogged up before I took this shot, sorta sexy looking now, eh?...

P.S. I'm heading out of town for 2 weeks, so the cabbage updates will be on hold til I return! I'm sure there will be some dramatic changes by then. Don't worry regular daily submission posts will continue while I'm gone thanks to modern technology!

Nesting Skull

Stefan Gross in Rotterdam, The Netherlands constructed this simply amazing "REBIRDY Skull Nesting Box"! Be sure to watch it in use in the video below...