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http://www.explodingdog.com

Explodingdog.com: Not What You Think
By Christa Starr

My first visit to www.explodingdog.com was about a year ago, when a friend told me to check it out. He wouldn’t tell me what the site was about, and I was a bit worried by the title. My friends seem to gravitate towards sites that feature gruesome police photos or MorgueCams, and they all know I don’t really like dogs, so...

Luckily, Sam Brown’s site has nothing to do with graphic footage of combusting canines. The idea is simple - send Sam a title for a picture, and he’ll draw it for you. Sometimes they look like what you’d think - like the robots carrying the "Salad of the Future" on the right. Others are more sarcastic, like "Hold On, I love you" below.

Some seem to have almost no relation to the title. But regardless of the spin, they’re all interesting, humorous, and bizarre. Sam Brown has been posting his warped imagery since January of 2000, and he doesn’t show signs of stopping. The site has no corporate sponsorship, no ads, no flashy animations. Brown does offer T-shirts based on his main characters, but that’s the site’s only bow towards commerce.

Most web sites promise "interactivity," a big catch-all word meaning that the site has some back end programming to interpret what you’re doing and try to respond. But Exploding Dog offers a different type of interactivity - a chance to communicate with another person, and to have that communication produce something interesting. And it also shows you the results of other interactions that have occurred on the site. Every image Brown makes is archived on the site. He even provides a search engine so you can look for all images with the word "love" in the title and see what his twisted imagination has done to it.

The site only offers one thing. If you send in a picture title, Sam Brown will interpret it and maybe even draw it for you. Which makes it one of the most original sites I’ve ever seen. I highly recommend giving it a try. It’s not what you’d expect - and that’s a very good thing.