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Jolie Rouge
09-07-2012, 10:30 AM
by Erin Strecker

http://ewpopwatch.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/google.jpg

Calling all Trekkies!

As the obsessives among us surely already know, this year is the 46th anniversary of Star Trek: The Original Series. To mark the occasion, Google has created a special Doodle — going live right now on Google’s homepage.

Yesterday, EW talked with Ryan Germick, who headed up this particular Google Doodle, about Star Trek’s pop-culture significance. “We often talk at Google about how awesome it would be to talk to a computer and get exactly what you want and have that kind of engagement, where the computer just knows all [like in Star Trek], and that’s what we’re moving toward,” Germick said. “Other than that, it just seemed like a perfect fit. There are so many Star Trek fans, myself included, it seemed like such a fun thing to celebrate.”

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Did you watch Star Trek growing up?
RYAN GERMICK: I did, yes. I’m early 30s and I grew up watching the original series with my dad, and I kind of realized, the guys on the Enterprise were like family friends to me. I’d watched so many episodes of the show that Spock and the others have a space in my mind like my uncles and my aunts. that technology could be a hope for the future. It was a part of my childhood and it’s awesome to try and bring that to life on the homepage.

[I]I love the GOOGLE word with the iconic hairstyles. Why did you decide to do that?

We went through lot of different iterations. What we’re looking to do is show them. And it seemed like a way to double-down sort of silly, campy nature of what we’re doing with the doodle to put in Kirk’s block of hair, Spock’s ears. It’s a testament to the power of the show, and how iconic it is, that you can just put a couple details on anything, even a letter ‘G’ and know it’s a Vulcan. That was really fun to play with and informs the whole direction of [the silly style].

What’s the process like to make an interactive design like this?

It’s actually more like a story — you can click around and discover things. Find some really unique, tiny nuggets from the show that meet the details of the program we all love. It’s something we’ve wanted to do for a long time. We had drawings and ideas for the past couple of years. We started putting it together in earnest three or four months back.

What do you think Star Trek’s legacy has been?

For me, it was a vision for the future. I think it was also that it was multicultural, pro-science, and full of curiosity and passion. I think like a lot of good science-fiction, it sort of says a lot about its present era. We can really appreciate what Star Trek did in its time. As an adult, you can appreciate how progressive it was. You learned to be compassionate towards all kinds of people — even alien creatures. Also, the style is just incredible: retro-futuristic. There’s so much to love. As a person that loves technology, there is so much to be inspired by. Being able to get the answers right away — that was from a crazy, far-flung era where computers were the size of refrigerators. And now, I’m so happy to work in the industry I’m in. So some of the realities from the vision of Star Trek are coming true. To be part of a company that makes it happen is really exciting.

http://popwatch.ew.com/2012/09/07/star-trek-google-doodle/

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Jolie Rouge
10-15-2012, 04:56 AM
Winsor McCay's Little Nemo cartoon celebrated in Google Doodle
Winsor McCay, the American cartoonist and animator who created the comic strip Little Nemo, has been remembered with a Google Doodle.
By Alice Philipson
11:01AM BST 15 Oct 2012

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02368/google_2368859b.jpg

Today is the 107th anniversary of the cartoonist's Little Nemo in Slumberland and for the first time, Google is featuring an interactive doodle on its home page.

The animated doodle is called "Little Nemo in Google-land" and shows the story of the comic strip in a series of unfolding panels.

Winsor McCay was born in Michigan in 1869 (according to his tombstone, although the year is subject to debate) and his work is thought to have influenced generations of animators, including future stars of the industry such as Walt Disney.

His animated film Gertie the Dinosaur is considered by historians to be the first to feature a character with a likeable, realistic personality to which viewers could relate.

To make the film, McCay had to draw thousands of frames of Gertie on sheets of rice paper.

Little Nemo was published under the pseudonym "Silas" and is set in the nightly dreams of a small boy named Nemo. The drawings featured in the comic have been described as fantasy art, designed to capture the feel of a dream.

At the beginning of his career, McCay worked as a cartoonist for the Cincinnati Enquirer, a newspaper in Ohio. His first major comic strip, 'A Tale of the Jungle Imps' by Felix Fiddle, was published in 43 instalments in the paper during 1903.

The series focused on individual animals and how they adapted to living in the jungle. 'How the Elephant Got His Trunk' and 'How the Ostrich Got So Tall' both appeared as titles in the paper.

Later the cartoonist created a propaganda film named The Sinking of the Lusitania, which told the story of the attack on the ship. His work contained a message designed to inspire America to join World War I.

McCay died in 1934 after experiencing a brain embolism and he was buried in Brooklyn.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/google-doodle/9608878/Winsor-McCays-Little-Nemo-cartoon-celebrated-in-Google-Doodle.html

comment

Thank you for running this piece on a quite lovely piece of internet art, but I'm not sure who did the research on this being the "first time" Google has done an interactive doodles. There have been dozens of interactive doodles!