Those who know me know that I’m pretty much inept at any kind of artistic endeavor. Which makes it all the more amusing that I’ve recently had the chance to pretend to be a real artist a bit lately.

First, the AIGA Collaborate/Celebrate Holiday Party last month featured an auction of a number of pairs of customized boots. Alaina and I were asked to contibute, with proceeds from the auction benefitting the AIGA NY Mentoring Program and First Book, which helps low-income families get their children their first books.

Despite my lack of artistic ability, I’m pretty pleased with how the final results turned out. Picking up on the theme of “pairs”, we went with the pair that we probably spend the most time with — Mario and Luigi. You can see a shot of the results at right here, and Khoi Vinh has another nice shot.

You might also remember the Zidane World Cup Headbutt Animation Festival from last year. It was featured in the Time Shares exhibition at the New Museum of Contemporary art, presented by Rhizome.

Starting today, a redone higher-resolution version of the animation (Zidane Special Edition!) will be shown as part of Avant Gaming, where Cory Archangel will be discussing his Super Mario Movie and the use of video games as an artistic medium in general. If you’ve never seen Cory speak and you’re in Ohio on Wednesday, I can’t recommend attending highly enough. Or take a look at the source code yourself.