Exaggerated faces that look like they’re made of playdough, expressions that scream cosmetic surgery gone horribly, horribly wrong…

They call it jowling, and here’s how it’s done:

Grab a friend. Ask him to loosen his facial muscles, then shake his head side-to-side, fast. Now fire away. (Use flash for best effect.)

It’s so ridiculously fun and easy, there’s a whole website devoted to it. Check out the hall of fame, the how-to video, and the top jowls.

Remember when you made fugly faces at your sister, and your mom said your face would get stuck that way? This is what it’d look like today if she’d been right.

Jowlers.com
www.jowlers.com

p.s. We also really dig David’s studio-lit jowlers at Ironic Sans. (Those are his pics above.)

Scene opens to solar winds gently blowing intergalactic tumbleweeds past the open porch door. An eerie quiet blankets the solar system.

We don’t know about you, but ever since those astronomers kicked Pluto out of the party, we’ve been feeling mighty lonely over here on planet Earth.

But wait! We’ve just the solution: Our pal Dirk wrote up a tutorial that shows you how to turn any panorama or landscape photograph into a full-fledged planet!

Best of all, once you’ve selected an image to work with, the process takes only 5 minutes. (Launching your new planet into solar orbit may take a bit longer.)

Unless you’ve been living under a stack of LPs and 8-tracks for the past few years, you’ve seen the too-hip-for-you iPod ads everywhere by now. On buses, billboards, and buildings, you can’t escape those hipsters jumping and gyrating with their white earbuds.

So you may as well join them.

Over at MacMerc, they’ve got a step-by-step tutorial that’ll have you creating iKids, iPets, and iFriends in no time.

(And if no time is just too long, send your pic to iPop My Photo along with $20, and they’ll do it for you!)

Make Your Own iPod Ad Silhouettes
www.macmerc.com/articles/Graphics_Tips/260

p.s. You’ll find a simpler tutorial at Photoshop Lab. It lacks some of the subtleties of the MacMerc method, but it gets the job done.

Your digital camera can save 500 photos on one memory card, your iPod’s got 5,000 photos on it, and your computer’s packing a cool 25K.

But when was the last time you saw photo #143? Or #2,486?

We’re all buried under a mountain of memories.

You may have 10,000 MP3s, but stick iTunes on shuffle and you’ll hear stuff you haven’t heard in ages. Picture frame widgets for your Mac or PC are the photographic equivalent of iTunes shuffle.

Just load up Picture Framer on Dashboard for your Mac, or Picture Frame on Yahoo! Widgets for your PC, and let the shuffling begin! Both offer a choice of slick frames and the ability to view your own pics, or even view pics from Flickr (your own, or your contacts.)

p.s. The Deluxe version of Picture Framer for Mac normally costs $5, but Photojojo readers can get it for free today (8/21) only! Find out how.

Every photographer knows that the key to the art is lighting. Great lighting can make a photograph unforgettable. Bad lighting can make it unsalvageable.

Enter the Phlash. While camera phone designers have been busy equipping most phones with a cheap sensor that performs poorly in low light and a flash that’s put to shame by a firefly, the Phlash was created solely to light your camera phone pics well.

Simply hold down the Phlash button, compose your subject in its cool, white LED glow, and snap your pic. All camera phones work, and the batteries are replaceable.

Designed to cast an even spread of light a meter away — up to 12x the power of your camera phone flash — you can stick the Phlash to the back of your phone (adhesive backing included) or use the tiny loop of thread to dangle it instead.

Sticking the Phlash to your phone does add a bit of bulk, but if you use your camera phone frequently, it’s worth it to be able to shoot in the dark.

The Camera Phone Phlash
www.phonephlash.com

Last week we told you that the video mode on your digital camera was a fine way to make yourself a flipbook. It is.

But wanna know the real reason your camera records video?

It’s so you can enjoy a good laugh while making friends and loved ones look silly.

You see, when you hold up a camera, people expect you to take a photograph, not a video. So flip your camera into video mode and pretend like you’re taking a photo. Feign technical difficulties while your bud tries patiently to hold his smile and you’re virtually guaranteed an amusing minute or so of strained footage.

Don’t believe us? Check out comedian Katie Dippold’s collection at Long Awkward Pose. (Some favorites: Anthony, Deniz, Jack Jack — what a sport!)

Life is too short and too serious not to play the occasional practical joke. And trust us, you’ll both laugh about it afterward.

Long Awkward Pose
www.longawkwardpose.com

If you bought your digital camera in the past few years, it’s got a mode that lets you take short video clips instead of photos.

But whereas you can print a photo, stick it onto a cupcake, get it made into a sketch for $1, or turn it into a calendar, what’s a body to do with all those 30 second video snippets?

Why, turn them into flipbooks, of course!

FlipClips takes your short video clips and prints them into little flipbooks. Just go to their site, upload a clip, choose a title and cover design, and $9 and 10 days later, you’ve got yourself a custom-made, full-color flipbook.

Sweet!

FlipClips.com
www.flipclips.com

p.s. For a closer look, check out our jackrabbit-fast 40-second demo video.

Stop-motion animation is one of the simplest, most fun animation techniques.

Mix equal parts digital camera, computer, and imagination (you’ve got all three), and you’re on your way.

Although flashier computer-generated animation is in vogue, stop-motion has a rich heritage of its own. After all, who doesn’t love the Gumby shorts of the 50s and 60s, Gumby’s comeback in the mid-90s (you know you’ve arrived when you’re a spokescharacter for the Library of Congress!), and the ever-popular Wallace and Gromit?

And it’s not limited to claymation, either–Tim Burton used stop-motion and puppets to create The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Comedy Central’s Robot Chicken uses stop-motion with action figures and toy props.

You can use just about anything in your stop-motion animation, and thanks to digital cameras and computers, creating one is now super easy.

Although elegant mosaics oft-graced Greek and Roman villas, they’re not so common anymore.

Those ancient works of art took hundreds of hours of painstakingly precise labor. Larger works even employed teams of artisans.

You don’t have teams of artisans.

But you do have LEGOs. And Photoshop.

John Tolva wrote up a tutorial that takes you step-by-step through the process of creating a photo mosaic using LEGO bricks. It’s not gonna turn your studio apartment into a villa, but we think it’ll bring a touch of class to the joint.

Also worth a look: Holly Barhamand made a photo mosaic out of beads, the mathematics behind arranging differently shaped tiles can get quite complicated, and Ed Hall LEGO-fied Starry Night. It took several months and ten thousand bricks!

John Tolva’s LEGO Photo Mosaic How-to
www.ascentstage.com/archives/2006/06/how_to_create_a_1.html