Zoetrope illustration

The Evolution of Animation – Blackwing Vol. 7

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Blackwing Volume 7 celebrates the history of animation. Vol. 7's unique design features 6 different interlaced patterns that form a 7-frame animation when seen through a viewfinder. The viewfinder uses a process known as "picket fence animation"…

Chuck Jones Creativity Pad Inspiration

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Introducing the Chuck Jones Creativity Pad, our first-ever landscape orientation notebook. Chuck Jones preferred a wide canvas for his sketches. The Creativity Pad is designed to give creative minds the largest unrestricted canvas possible.…

The Legacy of Chuck Jones – Blackwing Vol. 7

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"The rules are simple. Take your work, but never yourself, seriously. Pour in your love and whatever skill you have and it will come out." Over the last century, there may not be anyone more synonymous with their body of work than the legendary…
Vol 7 Pencils and Box

Introducing Blackwing Volume 7 – Tribute to Animation

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Vol. 7 Behind the Design – Picket Fence Animation Tutorial

Each set of Blackwing Vol. 7 pencils comes with six unique designs. When side by side and matched with the corresponding colored dots, they form a 7-frame animation that can be seen using the included Picket-Fence viewfinder.

De Divina Proportione: The Golden Ratio Applied in Art

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The Golden Ratio is a mathematical value that appears all throughout the natural world. When applied to the arts, it becomes a tool for creating balanced, organic works. Artists throughout history have tried to emulate the sense of natural…

Blackwing Vol. 55 – Behind the Design

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Blackwing Vol. 55 – Finding Fibonacci in Nature

This quarter, Volume 55 celebrates the mathematical sequence established by Leonardo Fibonacci. For some, the name Fibonacci might conjure up memories of math class and learning the sequence 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8...and so on, with each third…

Moving to a Different Beat – Coffeehouses and the Beat Generation

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In 1952, John Clellon Holmes published an article in the New York Times Magazine titled, “This is the Beat Generation.” The story introduced the mainstream public to the philosophies and lifestyle of a new generation of young people in…