Google Doodles

I don't know how I came across this, but I stumbled on Google's contest over doodles of its logo. Called Doodle 4 Google, it is a competition for K-12 students to "work their artistic will upon our homepage logo." It's been around since at least 2008. This year's theme is "If I could do anything I would..." and the winner will be featured on the Google.com homepage on May 27, 2010.

Here's the link to Google's collection of doodles with its logo.

Here's some of my favorites:

For those of you who aren't familiar with Asterix and Obelix, they are characters created by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo, and are well beloved by me and by a large percentage of the population of France. Asterix the Gaul is the lead warrior in his small Gaulish village during the time in history when Rome had conquered Gaul. He and his best friend, Obelix, like to pound Romans, both aided by a potion developed by Getafix which gives super-human strength. This doodle was created to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the characters.

To commemorate Arthur Conan Doyle's birthday. His creation, Sherlock Holmes, is one of my favorite characters. Holmes is the most portrayed movie character with over 70 actors playing the part in more than 200 films. The best of those actors was Basil Rathbone. Peter Cushing (aka Grand Moff Tarkin) also portrayed him in several films. The term "red herring" (which means a false lead put to distract the reader from solving the mystery) comes from one of Doyle's Holmes stories.

Just because I love Cookie Monster from Sesame Street. "C is for Cookie" is an awesome song! Another awesome song is "Near... Far..." sung by my favorite Muppet, Grover. He is also the star of one of my favorite kids books: The Monster at the End of This Book.

To celebrate Dr. Seuss's birthday. Theodore Seuss Geisel wrote more than 60 books under the name of Dr. Seuss. Some of my favorites are The Foot Book;  Hop on Pop; One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish; and Green Eggs and Ham. I also love the cautionary tale of The Lorax.

He was born in Springfield, Mass., and graduated from Dartmouth College. The college builds a giant sculpture each year and several times, that sculpture has been a Seuss-inspired character.

In honor of one of favorite artists, Vincent Van Gogh. I was lucky enough to see some of his pieces when I was at the Musee D'Orsay, including some of my favorites: La chambre de Van Gogh à Arles, Portrait de l'artiste (1889) and L'église d'Auvers-sur-Oise, vue du chevet.

And one of my absolute favorites.

I absolutely love Wallace and Grommit. The brain child of the animators at Aardman Animation. Aardman was also responsible for Creature Comforts (the British version was much better than the American version), which featured real people talking about inane things, but animated as animals. Here's another link to another short.