Dave Packer creates wonderfully humorous short films and animated gifs under the name Sheepfilms. You might recognise his stuff from b3ta.

Here’s his latest one.

The Onion, the bastion of all credible news sources, has revealed that a Walt Disney World maintenance crew accidentally stumbled upon an 2,300 year old underground chamber containing more than 8,000 terra cotta Mouseketeers.

According to photographs surfacing from the dig site, the terra-cotta Mouseketeers are arranged according to rank, from Annette to Cubby, and appear to be marching or tap-dancing in place. On the walls of the tomb, archaeologists have discovered a large fresco that depicts thousands of the mouse-eared foot soldiers bowing before what appears to be a large reptilian figure wearing a crown. The apparent king is shown seated upon a throne of skulls and bears a striking resemblance to Walt Disney.

Akman al Luad H’Beth!

Following the recent rumours of a port, Lucasarts quietly slipped The Secret of Monkey Island onto the iTunes App Store this week without fanfare… So quietly that it still isn’t mentioned on the game’s official site. But yes, that’s right, you can now play the updated point and click classic on your iPhone and iPod Touch!

Weighing in at a hefty (for an iPhone app, anyway) 350Mb, it includes the new “special edition” version with the voices and enhanced soundtrack found on the Xbox and Windows versions as well as the original VGA version, just as it appeared in 1990. Simply swipe two fingers across the screen at any time while playing to switch between them. Swiping two fingers sure is easier than messing with DOS extended memory and Soundblaster drivers for hours on end! Oh how I miss 1990s PC gaming… You really had to work to play a game back then. None of this plug and play nonsense.

I digress…

The new high-definition visuals work just as well on the less than high definition format of the iPhone’s three and a half inch screen. The controls, while seemingly cumbersome at first, work incredibly well once you realise that the screen is functioning in the same way as a laptop trackpad to guide the cursor around. This offers much more precision than if you were to use a greasy finger stump to directly select objects on the screen.

Just as in the original it’s possible to store multiple saved games which means you can let your friends and family have a go. It’s a simple feature that’s surprisingly lacking in many iPhone games that would benefit well from it. Yes, I’m looking at you, Rolando!

In summary, it’s a great port of a lovely revisiting of a fantastic classic. Buy it now and help ensure Lucasarts re-release Sam & Max Hit the Road, Day of the Tentacle and the rest of their point and click adventure back catalogue!

The Secret of Monkey Island £4.99/$7.99 (iTunes App Store link)

Normal service will resume shortly. In the mean time, here’s a Rick Astley/Nirvana mashup by German DJ, DJ Morgoth. (via Douglas Coupland)

Californian illustrator and designer Justin White has been creating a series of Pokémon portrait illustrations.

The idea was to capture each character after a long battle
recuperating inside their pokeball. Or maybe I just wanted to imagine pokemon in a lot of pain. This was really just a fun way to keep active and creative.

You can find all of them on his Flickr stream or in his portfolio. While you’re there, also check out his other great projects including the Mario Brothers portraits and the Alphabet vector illustrations.

Wondering if I can fit the word “illustration” into this article one more time. Done. Enjoy!

The folks at ArcAttack use Tesla coils to “produce an electrical arc similar to a continuous lightning bolt which put out a crisply distorted square wave sound reminiscent of the early days of synthesizers.”

Here’s one, with another guy wearing a “Faraday Suit” to conduct electricity away from the coil, performing the Imperial March theme from Star Wars! Check out more videos on their site.

This is one of the most surreal and entertaining things I have seen in a long time! It’s, apparently, a Thai commercial for Sylvania Light Bulbs featuring a bunch of incredibly odd ghosts.

There’s no point me explaining it, just watch! (thanks Harsh!)

What would have Guitar Hero been like if it were released in the early 80s? I’d imagine something very much like this! I particularly like the grating (but familiar) “game over” sound. (thanks Dave!)

While we have a bit of a running theme of stuff I should have posted ages ago and World of Warcraft, here’s The Onion on the forthcoming World of Warcraft sequel.

‘Warcraft’ Sequel Lets Gamers Play A Character Playing ‘Warcraft’

Ok, yeah, this kind of happened a few months ago now (brace yourselves, you’re going to hear that a lot over the next few weeks!) but it’s still worth mentioning. Previously only available to paying subscribers, comic artist James Kochalka has made the archives of his wonderful daily comic journal, American Elf, free to access. That’s nine and a half years worth of sketchbook life!

They’re also available as a series of books, I have a copy of the first one which compiles the first five years and it’s a lovely big tome. The second volume, which collects 2004 and 2005, is also available and volume three will be available in November.