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Snaiad
Snaiad is a speculative evolution, science fiction and artistic worldbuilding project by Turkish artist C. M. Kosemen, focused on a fictional exoplanet of the same name. Begun in the early 2000s and inspired by earlier works such as Wayne Barlowe's 1990 book '' Expedition'', Kosemen has produced hundreds of paintings and sketches of creatures of Snaiad, with detailed ecological roles and taxonomic relationships to each other. The sheer number of invented creatures and lineages makes Snaiad one of the most biologically diverse fictional worlds. Since Snaiad artwork was first published by Kosemen online, the project has garnered a following and international attention, especially online. Fans of Snaiad have produced fan art, not only of Kosemen's own creatures but also of their own imagined Snaiadi creatures, consistent with the biological principles followed by the rest of the project's lifeforms. Kosemen hopes to eventually publish the project in book form. Premise Snaiad is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Speculative Evolution
Speculative evolution is a genre of speculative fiction and an artistic movement focused on hypothetical scenarios in the evolution of life, and a significant form of fictional biology. It is also known as speculative biology and it is referred to as speculative zoology in regards to hypothetical animals. Works incorporating speculative evolution may have entirely conceptual species that evolve on a planet other than Earth, or they may be an alternate history focused on an alternate evolution of terrestrial life. Speculative evolution is often considered hard science fiction because of its strong connection to and basis in science, particularly biology. Speculative evolution is a long-standing trope within science fiction, often recognized as beginning as such with H. G. Wells's 1895 novel '' The Time Machine'', which featured several imaginary future creatures. Although small-scale speculative faunas were a hallmark of science fiction throughout the 20th century, ideas were ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Open Source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized software development model that encourages open collaboration. A main principle of open-source software development is peer production, with products such as source code, blueprints, and documentation freely available to the public. The open-source movement in software began as a response to the limitations of proprietary code. The model is used for projects such as in open-source appropriate technology, and open-source drug discovery. Open source promotes universal access via an open-source or free license to a product's design or blueprint, and universal redistribution of that design or blueprint. Before the phrase ''open source'' became widely adopted, developers and producers have used a variety of other terms. ''Open source'' gai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spore (2008 Video Game)
''Spore'' is a 2008 Life simulation game, life simulation real-time strategy God game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. Designed by Will Wright (game designer), Will Wright, it covers many genres including action game, action, real-time strategy, and role-playing video game, role-playing games. ''Spore'' allows a player to control the development of a species from its beginnings as a microscopic organism, through development as an intelligent and social animal, social creature, to interstellar spaceflight, interstellar exploration as a spaceflight, spacefaring culture. It has drawn wide attention for its massive scope, and its use of Open world, open-ended gameplay and procedural generation. Throughout each stage, players are able to use various creators to produce content for their games. These are then automatically uploaded to the online #Sporepedia, Sporepedia and are accessible by other players for download. ''Spore'' was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second most visited website, after Google Search. YouTube has more than 2.5 billion monthly users who collectively watch more than one billion hours of videos each day. , videos were being uploaded at a rate of more than 500 hours of content per minute. In October 2006, YouTube was bought by Google for $1.65 billion. Google's ownership of YouTube expanded the site's business model, expanding from generating revenue from advertisements alone, to offering paid content such as movies and exclusive content produced by YouTube. It also offers YouTube Premium, a paid subscription option for watching content without ads. YouTube also approved creators to participate in Google's AdSense program, which seeks to generate more revenue for both parties. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
DeviantArt
DeviantArt (historically stylized as deviantART) is an American online art community that features artwork, videography and photography, launched on August 7, 2000 by Angelo Sotira, Scott Jarkoff, and Matthew Stephens among others. DeviantArt, Inc. is headquartered in the Hollywood area of Los Angeles, California. DeviantArt had about 36 million visitors annually by 2008. In 2010, DeviantArt users were submitting about 1.4 million favorites and about 1.5 million comments daily. In 2011, it was the thirteenth largest social network with about 3.8 million weekly visits. Several years later, in 2017, the site had more than 25 million members and more than 250 million submissions. On February 23, 2017, the company announced it was being acquired by Wix.com in a $36 million deal. History Creation DeviantArt started as a site connected with people who took computer applications and modified them to their own tastes, or who posted the applications from the original designs. As th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
72nd World Science Fiction Convention
The 72nd World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon), also known as Loncon 3, was held on 14–18 August 2014 at the ExCeL London in London, United Kingdom. The convention committee was co-chaired by Alice Lawson and Steve Cooper and organized as London 2014 Limited. Participants Attendance was 7,951, out of 10,833 paid memberships. Guests of Honour * Iain M. Banks: a writer who received both popular and critical acclaim for his science fiction novels published over 25 years, including the Culture series, and for 15 other books published under the name Iain Banks. Banks died in June 2013, having announced just two months earlier that he had inoperable cancer. * John Clute: a critic and writer of international renown, whose extensive work in the genre includes co-editing ''The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction'' and ''The Encyclopedia of Fantasy''. * Malcolm Edwards: currently Deputy CEO and publisher at the Orion Publishing Group, and who has also been a science fictio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John James Audubon
John James Audubon (born Jean-Jacques Rabin; April 26, 1785 – January 27, 1851) was an American self-trained artist, naturalist, and ornithologist. His combined interests in art and ornithology turned into a plan to make a complete pictorial record of all the bird species of North America. He was notable for his extensive studies documenting all types of American birds and for his detailed illustrations, which depicted the birds in their natural habitats. His major work, a color-plate book titled '' The Birds of America'' (1827–1839), is considered one of the finest ornithological works ever completed. Audubon is also known for identifying 25 new species. He is the eponym of the National Audubon Society, and his name adorns a large number of towns, neighborhoods, and streets across the United States. Dozens of scientific names first published by Audubon are still in use by the scientific community. Early life Audubon was born in Les Cayes in the French colony of Saint-Do ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dinotopia
''Dinotopia'' is a series of illustrated fantasy books, created by author and illustrator James Gurney. It is set in the titular Dinotopia, an isolated island inhabited by shipwrecked humans and sapient dinosaurs who have learned to coexist peacefully as a single symbiotic society. The first book was published in 1992 and has "appeared in 18 languages in more than 30 countries and sold two million copies." ''Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time'' and ''Dinotopia: The World Beneath'' both won Hugo awards for best original artwork. Since its original publication, over twenty ''Dinotopia'' books have been published by various authors to expand the series. A live-action television miniseries, a short-lived live-action TV series, a 2005 animated film, and several video games have also been released. Background Gurney's assignments for ''National Geographic'' required him to work with archaeologists to envision and paint ancient cities that no one alive today has ever seen. This in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Gurney
James Gurney (born June 14, 1958) is an American artist and author known for his illustrated book series '' Dinotopia'', which is presented in the form of a 19th-century explorer's journal from an island utopia cohabited by humans and dinosaurs. Gurney is also a paleoartist who depicts and restores in his paintings extinct fauna such as both avian and non-avian dinosaurs. Early life and education Gurney grew up in Palo Alto, California, the youngest of five children of Joanna and Robert Gurney, a mechanical engineer. Encouraged to tinker in the workshop, he built puppets, gliders, masks, and kites, and taught himself to draw by means of books about the illustrators Howard Pyle and Norman Rockwell. He studied archaeology at the University of California, Berkeley, receiving a bachelor of arts degree in anthropology with Phi Beta Kappa honors in 1979. He then studied illustration at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, for a couple of semesters. Career ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Terryl Whitlatch
Terryl Anne Whitlatch (born 1960 in Oakland, California) is an American scientific and academically trained illustrator, known for her creature designs for Lucasfilm and her illustrations in the book ''The Katurran Odyssey'' among others. Whitlatch grew up in the East Bay (San Francisco Bay Area), East Bay, in the San Francisco area. Her mother was an illustrator and her father was a biologist. She studied zoology at Sonoma State University, and later transferred to Academy of Art University in San Francisco, where she graduated. Films Whitlatch has worked with many major studios and effects houses as a creature and concept designer. Clients include Industrial Light and Magic, Lucasfilm Ltd., Pixar, Walt Disney Feature Animation, Pacific Data Images, PDI, Entertainment Arts, LucasArts, Chronicle Books, and various zoos and natural history museums. Whitlatch was the principal creature designer for ''Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, Star Wars Episode I''. She designed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sapience
Wisdom, sapience, or sagacity is the ability to contemplate and act using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense and insight. Wisdom is associated with attributes such as unbiased judgment, compassion, experiential self-knowledge, self-transcendence and non-attachment, and virtues such as ethics and benevolence. Wisdom has been defined in many different ways, including several distinct approaches to assess the characteristics attributed to wisdom. Definitions The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' defines wisdom as "Capacity of judging rightly in matters relating to life and conduct; soundness of judgment in the choice of means and ends; sometimes, less strictly, sound sense, esp. in practical affairs: opp. to folly;" also "Knowledge (esp. of a high or abstruse kind); enlightenment, learning, erudition." Charles Haddon Spurgeon defined wisdom as "the right use of knowledge". Robert I. Sutton and Andrew Hargadon defined the "attitude of wisdom" as "acting with k ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
