Ever seen a boldly-colored monster regurgitate a killer whale? How about happy clouds ejecting t-rexes from their fluffy bosom That’s what Yis Goodwin, aka NoseGo, specializes in: a contemporary style that mixes wacky fictional creatures with the realism of fine art to deliver highly energetic work. His designs feature abstract patterns full of vibrant colors, and characters derived from his imagination and his surrounding environment.

While much of his current work is done on wood panels and the traditional painter’s canvas, he has extended into new media forms. In fact, he recently teamed up with Broken Compass Studios, an indie game studio, to create Catball Eats It All, a cute iPhone platformer based entirely off his hand-painted art.

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The Curious Explorers Illustrated Pocket Companion to Exotic Animals A-Z is an illustrated pocket book for the inquisitive adventurer. Illustrated by Marc Martin, the limited edition, 32 page artist book is a world of lush textured colour and alluring animal illustrations.

This is a simple blog featuring photos of Charlie, a coyote who lives with a person and some other animals. There are a lot of cute animal photoblogs out there, but this one is more concerned with motion, elegance, outdoor scenery, and frequent use of Old West-y sepia tones that highlight Charlie’s amazing fur texture.

Only in New York? Perhaps, but it’s happening. In May, a night club for pampered pooches is opening in the Financial District of Manhattan, enabling owners to drop off their dogs for ‘homemade meals, holistic mud spa thingimajiggers, and possibly even a disco dance club’. Did anyone mention recession?

Producer Peter Chin used a ‘combination of three-dimensional ultrasound scans, computer graphics and tiny cameras to capture the process from conception to birth’ of a number of animals including penguins, elephants, dolphins, dogs, and penguins. Yes, penguins. It was filmed for a National Geographic Documentary called Extraordinary Animals in the Womb.

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There’s no shame in being a spinster seeking solace from a meme blog, so for all you lonely gals (and guys) out there, Cute Boys with Cats offers to dull the pain of those lonely, lonely nights.

Dogs have finally graduated from unwilling fashion victims. You know the ones: strolling the streets with their pink booties, rhinestone collars and ever-popular powder blue t shirts. Now they can stand as distinguished animals, joining the linguistic world and representing a font type. Eurostyle is my favorite. Woof!

Since I’ve never thought of Kiki Smith as a photographer, I was especially curious about her new book entitled Photographs, published by Prestel. Although the book is part survey, part artists book, the images are still quite enchanting and beautiful in their own right.

The book as a whole is most interesting as it provides an insight into her artistic process, and more specifically, where she draws inspiration. Photos of baby animals, sculptures and organic images of nature are most prevalent. Smith currently has an exhibition, Sojourn, at The Brooklyn Museum of Art that includes work in a variety of media, including photography. [Photos courtesy the artist and PaceWildenstein]

This stunning display of lighting took place under Tokyo’s Rainbow Bridge, with the majestic city skyline in the background and a massive water screen, some fifteen metres high and forty feet wide, acting as the stage for an array of water-themed projections. The show is performed four times after sunset in Tokyo.

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Maarten Wetsema is a Dutch photographer living in Arnhem, The Netherlands. Wetsema is represented by Van Kranendonk Gallery in The Hague, The Netherlands. He has had numerous international exhibitions, and his images have appeared at Photo Miami and Paris Photo.

Ever seen a collection of photos dedicated exclusively to people wearing cute animal costumes? I mean, really? Well, we have. And we like it.

Damn hipster dogs coming in here with their parents’ money, acting like they own the place, not respecting us real dogs who know what real culture and art are. We were here first and we knew about all those bands before they did.

Ah ha! The Catorialist takes a cheeky dig at the self-proclaimed fashion guru, The Sartorialist, whilst also propping the frisky, style-savvy felines of the world. Little wonder it’s been selected as one of Cat Fancy’s Top 100 Catstyle Influencers. This particular photo is captioned: ‘On The Street, Grunge Style, Milan’.

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The Crappy Taxidermy website shows a barrage of animals that have been rather unfortunately stuffed, in the strictest sense of the word.

In Catalina Esatrada’s world, happy, smiling animals bounce around swirling vines which wrap themselves hypnotically around stray pilons. This was an illustration that she created for the Zune player.

While I am as impressed as anyone with an artist’s ability to render accurate and lifelike human figures, I’m more often compelled aesthetically by looser and more stylized images such as Camilla Engman’s. The wide-set eyes, bulbous bodies, and skewed proportions of the people and animals in Engman’s paintings lend them a certain expressiveness and melancholy.

The work of Spanish artist Noelia Requena is perfectly charming in a raw and spontaneous way. Colors and textures are layered on top of one another, seemingly on the slightest whim. The result being a collection of wonderfully captivating vignettes.

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There’s a sense of beautiful unease about Celine Clanet’s photo essay, Máze, the icy environment creating a gentle juxtaposition against the subtle warmth of the colors. Of the series, she says: ‘I lived for several months in Máze, up to the north of the Arctic Circle, in Norway. There, I met these quiet people, melancholic, captivating, very proud of their Sami village and territory, proud of these landscapes. They are constantly gazing at it with binoculars which they never separate from, even at home. I have captured these Sami people, along with houses and reindeers that should not be here today as they are flooded with waters from a dam project that the Norwegian government planned in early 70s, but fortunately aborted. This series is all about capturing the perfect moment, when time doesn’t exist anymore and night is gone, at which point they immerse themselves in tasks such as fishing through an ice hole in Suolojarvi Lake, or riding the snowscooter across the tundra; talking, or laying down, doing nothing, saying nothing. Just being’.

FFFFOUND! is a fun website that allows you to bookmark your favorite images from the Internet and share them with fellow users, sort of like a del.icio.us specifically for pictures. The site is still in private beta and not currently supported on Mac, but as its collection of images expands, it’s likely to become much more widely available.

Redwood artist Ken Keirns has a thing for monkeys. That much is obvious enough. His site is crawling with them, in his toys, illustrations, and paintings. By his own admission, he ‘likes painting women and monkeys, with a sense of humor’. And so he does. Very, very well.