If you’re a fan of pop songs, particularly from the 1960’s when the three minute pop song was perhaps at its peak as a musical form, you’re familiar with the concept of a “golden intro”, that delicious first 20 or 30 seconds of instrumental music before the vocals start, that was often a thing of beauty in itself, above an beyond what may or may not have been a great song in total.

For examples, listen to the exquisite first 20 seconds of the Beach Boys’ California Girls or that wonderful descending pattern that forms the intro to the Kinks’ beautiful Waterloo Sunset; ahhhh - fractional moments of musical bliss. (The existence of these little bits of beauty was, of course, accentuated in being defaced by disk jockeys of the time, who made an infuriating, deranged, grafitti-like art form out of talking over entire song intros and ending their blabbering only microseconds before the song’s vocals started, but I digress…).

Similar to the wonderful hidden jewels of song intros, the introductions, or opening credits, of films have long been a repository for gems that often stand out from their surrounding work; which again, may or may not be up to the quality of the intro.

In recent years the opening credits, once considered a form of entertainment in themselves, also prominently in the 1960’s, have been de-emphasized, their place having been taken by the closing credits. In either case, the titles of films are a sort of hidden and underappreciated art form, rarely in the spotlight but as worthy of attention as animated shorts.

In another example of Why I Love the Internet, there is a site out there devoted to just that concept. Forget the film, watch the titles is part of the Submarine Channel, a portal for independent film. When I first wrote about it back in February, the project was just getting off the ground and the selection was small. On checking back, I’ve found the selection expanded, well worth a return visit.

Much to my delight, it now includes the great closing titles to Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (sequence at left), one of my favorite pieces of short animation in recent years (and a prime example of the credits being considerably better than the movie). These were designed and directed by Jamie Caliri, who was the director of the terrific animated ad called “Dragon” for United Airlines last year (see my post on Jamie Caliri).

Like that sequence, the Lemony Snicket titles were done essentially with painted paper cut-outs, artfully drawn, arranged and animated. In the case of the Snicket sequence the lead animators and layout artists were Todd Hemker and Benjamin Goldman. Forget the film is good about not only giving you the credits for the credit sequences, but links to further information.

The collection is not growing rapidly, but you can sign up to receive their newsletter and know when the next title sequence gem has been added to the showcase.

Ephemera is defined as printed or written material that isn’t intended to be preserved. Magazines and newspapers, for example, are meant to be transitory, disposed of once read (the pile of National Geographics in your grandfather’s attic notwithstanding.)

Even many books are meant to be ephemeral; computer instruction manuals, for example, are out of date the instant the ink is dry because the next version of whatever it is has jut gone into beta.

Ephemera has a long history (ironically enough), as one person’s transient junk is another’s lasting treasure (witness baseball cards and comic books).

For literally hundreds of years, printed matter has been produced that was quickly made irrelevant by new events. Often this material is accompanied by illustrations, images that are as varied, weird and bizarre as anything intentionally created by fantasy artists.

It used to be that this material was relegated to dusty libraries and second hand book shops, where diligent curiosity seekers would occasionally turn up forgotten gems of oddness and wonder. But everything, it seems, whether ephemeral or significant, is being scanned and put online at some point, as our entire civilization is squeezed through the digital cheesecloth of the internet and filtered into archival bits.

“PK” (or “peacay”) is an individual who has a knack for finding particularly fascinating bits of treasure amid the cultural detritus as it settles into the great Sargasso Sea of internet archives. He collects the most bizarre and interesting pieces of visual ephemera and displays then for our delight on his long running blog, BibliOddysey, which I’ve written about before.

Now, in some kind of poetic circle of weirdness, some of this material has been collected and printed as a book, BibliOdyssey: Amazing Archival Images from the Internet, in which some of the best and strangest of PK’s finds are collected and annotated by PK for our edification, amusement and delighted bewilderment.

The book is part of a nascent publishing venture by the Fuel design group, a well known design firm in the U.K. In his description, PK points out that “With pre-production topping out at somewhere over 500 years, BibliOdyssey might well be the slowest book ever published.”

You can read about the book on the Fuel site, or on the BibliOdyssey site, where you can also, of course, get lost in the online display of ephemera. There’s something special and different, though, about the way images appear in print; and in this case the bits of ephemera are being re-released back into their natural element, at home once again in the sea of printed pages.

Let me see if I’ve got this right now, this is a book about visual material from the web that was archived from books, but I’m telling you about it on the web, and pointing you to online sources from which you could order the book…

I hope today is a good day for you to get lost in a time-sink, because here’s another major one.

Netdiver is a site that collects and displays links to websites that the author, Carole Guevin, aided by her techie co-founder Jean-François Simard, has selected as particularly appealing and well done. The overall emphasis of the site is on design, but Guevin has devoted an extensive section to the display of web sites by illustrators, as well has having sections of Photography sites and other Portfolios (largely designers).

There is also a section dedicated to Flash sites, Industrial, Powagirrrls, video and animation and a category for “Imaginative” (as though the rest of them weren’t).

In addition, there’s news, articles and a substantial and highly useful Toolbox for graphic and digital designers. The Sitemap will give you an overview of the available goodies on this extensive site.

The home page is somewhat blog-like, though without dated posts, with items of interest pulled to the fore.

When you enter an individual category you’re dropped on the most recent page of many, e.g. page 16 in the Illustration category. The numerical links to previous pages are arranged across the top of the page under the general navigation.

Guevin definitely has a point of view and specific range of styles in the sites and artists she selects, but it’s wide enough that you may find it accommodates work and designs appealing to a variety of tastes.

Don’t blame me if you look up and find out half your day has disappeared. I warned you.

Short of crayons, maybe the Etch-A-Sketch, which turns 47 this week, has earned it’s tagline of “World’s favorite drawing toy”.

We’ve all done it, right? Artists and non-artists alike, twirling the little plastic knobs, trying to make diagonals and curves, which was a little like patting your head, rubbing your stomach and chewing gum at the same time, trying not to backtrack, striving to make something cool out of that single continuous line, and, finally, resolving ourselves to drawing things like buildings and robots that looked good in straight lines.

Of course, you could always turn it upside-down, shake the mysterious gray stuff (which turns out to be powdered aluminum), to “reboot” your Etch-A-Sketch, erasing all signs of failure, and have at it again.

Well, some of us persevered, learned the curves, and mastered the thing. A striking case in point is George Vlosich, etch-A-Sketch artist extraordinaire, who demonstrates on his site that he can do a lot more than draw diagonals and curves, creating detailed portrait drawings with complex compositions and rendered tones.

Lest we doubt that these drawings were, in fact, created with the aforementioned knob-twirling device, Vlosich has a demo video on YouTube in which you can see a time-lapse movie of him in action.

Ohio Art, the company to whom inventor Arthur Granjean sold the idea for the Etch-A-Sketch after being turned down by several of the major toy companies, doesn’t seem to be making much of the anniversary, but there is an article on Wired with a gallery of Etch-A sketches by Vlosich and others (including a computer adapter - “machine draws with machine, film at 11″).

You can also look at the World’s Largest at SIGGRAPH 2006 or try your hand a a virtual Etch-A-Sketch,like this one from BabyGrand.com or Etchy.org (note that these allow you to use the keyboard). Of course the Etch-A-Sketch has a presence in the Blog-O-Sphere, at blogs like The Etch-A-Sketchist, which has a list of other links.

[Link via Wired]

Did you ever find yourself doodling and daydreaming that a line you were drawing was something physical, like a hill you could slide down? Perhaps you found yourself imagining that the line would become reality, á la Harold and the Purple Crayon, and you could roll or slide away from whatever it was that you were avoiding by doodling.

Well, if it’s an imaginative diversion you want for your doodled line, here’s a nifty little amusement by someone who lists themselves on deviantART as “fsk“.

Line Rider is a Flash interactive that allows you to draw a line, going more or less from upper left to lower right, that will represent the two dimensional topography of a hill. When your line is drawn, you click play and the Line Rider, a small character on a sled with a trailing scarf, will go sailing, bouncing and, if you’re not careful, tumbling down the hill according to forces of imaginary gravity.

The module is quite cleverly done and is much more fun than my dry description would suggest. In addition to a nice bit of semi-realistic slow-motion gravity, fsk has programmed in a good bit of humor in the way the character responds to the physics of your imagined line. Play with several variations of line and you’ll see what I mean.

You can use a hand tool to scroll the drawing area (much as in standard graphics applications) and extend your line well past the boundries of the working rectangle. You can also save lines that you like for future use. fsk states that the interactive is a Beta (still in development) and invites comments and suggestions.

Link via Marco Bresciani.

If you’ve ever said to yourself: “What I really need is a nice cubist time-sink.”, this is the site for you. Mr. Picassohead lets you create your own Picasso-esque faces with drag-and drop eyes, lips, ears, etc. that you can move, resize, recolor and rearrange in a nicely crafted Flash interface. You can save your masterpiece into the gallery or email it to a friend. You can also just click through the gallery and see what the other Picassoheads are doing.

The link below is to the main “Create” area. You can also enter through the front door. The site was created by Ruder-Finn Interactive.

Suggested by Lias Harris

I’m not a fan of most “clever” web site interfaces because they usually sacrifice any shred of usability on the altar of coolness. Ryan Terry’s Ry-guy.com is so clever, however, that it becomes an entertainment in itself. This is one of the most fun Flash interfaces I’ve ever seen on the web. The site is beautifully illustrated and wonderfully executed, with lots of great little touches.

The interface opens in a pop-up window and is an illustration of a street corner. Some animated elements are immediately evident - a car and a dump truck drive by - and other elements only animate when you cursor over them (like the line of laundry). You can search around the image, looking for hot spots that display tool tip identifiers, or “Drop an Alien” from the upper left, each one of which will introduce you to a site section. Most of the “hot” elements are themed to their image (the mailbox is the link to email, etc.). The site sections open in another pop-up. Occasionally the paperboy will ride by and drop a paper that is a link to the “Quick Version”, a condensed portfolio in the format of a newspaper.

Ryan Terry is an interactive designer and illustrator living in Georgia. The site showcases his animation and illustration work. There is a sketchbook lying on the corner.