Imprisoned Paradise

Imprisoned Paradise from National Trust on Vimeo.

On The B Train Part II

Taken en route home from an evening on the sauce. Quite like
the sense of composition and contrast Hipstamatic brings.
Usually always at least a 7 out of 10.

Living Room With A View

VW Variant

 

Stumbled across this lovely VW Variant in London yesterday. Even in the grey and rainy weather it looked magnificent. Inspired by the standout qualities of it on an otherwise mundane looking street I have decided to try and post other examples I find via my iPhone and on the fly to the blog.

Big British Castle

Sunny day from within the heart of Television Centre.

Optical Camouflage via XBOX Kinect

Whilst checking out IGN.com on the latest gaming reviews for my 360 I stumbled across some very cool Kinect hack videos. This one features Predator style camouflage! Whats not to like right?!

The future of gaming looks very bright indeed.

Retro Computer Game Art

So it's a Tuesday night and I'm doing everything I can to divert thoughts away from the daily grind currently being experienced over at the Big British Castle (it's a long and very mundane story, suffice to say I have some good jobs on at the moment but also a few rubbish ones); anyways, I decided to revisit my geek riddled youth and wasted days in front of television, tape player, 48k Sinclair Spectrum and what I perceived at the time to be state of the art cutting edge game play.

Obviously you can find pretty much anything online now so my train of thought turned sharply towards the game companies of the time and all the free stuff I used to get from them just by writing to them (letter of course), saying I was a fan of game X or game Y. Two weeks later I'd get a package in the post containing all sort of lovely poster art for new or existing games to put on my bedroom wall. A company called Ocean Software used to be one of the better companies to do this, as were US Gold.

My search for such poster art drew a blank, even on the mighty Google however I did stumble across a site called Bear Graphics and in particular this homage to an Atari 2600 cartridge box art (complete with hand written 'Instructions Missing' note found on all second hand packaging). This iteration though features the relatively modern movie title 'Cloverfield'.

Kaneda's Akira Ride

Found this on Deviant Art by an artist called Diablo2003 and it's his interpretation of one of the all time great vehicles ever animated.

"You ever do a sketch that you plan on doing as a doodle and it ends up taking on it's own personality and causing you to spend WAY more time on it than you planned? This is one of those times. I love Akira and decided to try and draw Kaneda's bike just for the hell of it. Next thing you know I'd draw Kenada as well and colored it complete with digitally painted background. Guess that'll teach me to draw something I'm really into.

I should note that I drew Kaneda in a different style than in the cartoon on purpose. I wanted to go a bit more realistic and the cartoon version was very...well...cartoony. I know he doesn't look exactly 'asian' but then again, neither does the cartoon version."

Beastie Boys • Fight For Your Right Revisted

Big fan of the Beasties. Big fan of the new album Hot Sauce Commitee Part Two. Big fan of this support 30 minute film. The short features the likes of Elijah Wood, Danny McBride, Seth Rogen, Susan Sarandon the film sees the rappers revisit their classic 1987 video for '(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)'.

The band's Adam Yauch wrote and directed the film, which acts as a sequel to the events in the original video. A number of other actors and musicians make cameos in it, including Will Ferrell, Jack Black, Steve Buscemi, Shannyn Sossamon, Kirsten Dunst, Ted Danson, Chloe Sevigny and Orlando Bloom, as well as the actual Beasties.

Collage Injection

Spotted this on Abduzeedo and being a lifelong collage fanatic thought I'd post to the blog. It's some wonderful work by an artist called Derek Gores who hails from the also wonderful NYC.

Very conveniently there is also a link to his portfolio here so go check out some more of his 'cut up and stuck' works of art if you get the chance.

Time to break out those old mags under the coffee table and start cutting.

Blackheath Station

Second of my on-platform iPhone shots for the blog. This time via Hipstamatic and featuring a warm sun circa 7:24am.

Boat Still on a House

Decided to try out my new Wacom Bamboo tablet and pen with my tsunami scene drawing. Tricky on my 13" Macbook Pro but better than I thought it would turn out. Need to seriously practice with the brush types and pressure flows though.

Boat on a House

Second drawing I've created based on the images coming out of northern Japan. This time a boat resting on top of a house from today's press. Plan to finish this as a half collage to add colour and the surrounding scene.

Japanese Tsunami

Woke up to the news this morning that 20 minutes before my alarm went off in London, on the other side of the world there occurred a massive earthquake off the Japanese eastern seaboard. When I was there in Tokyo August 2008 I witnessed first hand a short lived 6.8 and that was pretty scary, but this 8.8 is apparently the 6th or 7th most powerful in recorded history.

This has subsequently resulted in a rapidly moving tsunami, and being the technological country it is, for the past 12 hours the rest of the world has been witness to scenes of chaos and destruction as the water moves its way inland and the aftershocks continue.

I can honestly say it's some of the most devastating and helpless imagery I have ever seen. With world leaders pledging support and rescue assistance, the full impact isn't yet evident but it's not going to be good and I'm sure there is more eyewitness footage to come.

Amongst the video footage reported on here in the UK, one image that had most impact on me was the swirling seas just outside what I presume to be Sendai. Like some weird sci-fi event it almost seemed too setup; with it's contained, lone, trapped fishing boat slowly circling and trying to break free. I've created this piece based on that footage of the seawater vortex. Truly astounding scenes.

Hints of Roger Dean

One for the thirty somethings here and reminiscent of the great Roger Dean; introducing sci-fi illustrator Dan McPharlin. You can see more at his Flickrfolio which features new album art for various bands, created in that very recognisible 1960 and 70s Ace/Berkeley science fiction book covers style.

Extreme Light Painting

Found this on one of my regular creative trawls; this time on Abduzeedo. Extreme Light Painting photography by Janne Parviainen. It's a technique used a lot but there seems to be some additional lighting methods being used to get the final results. Check out Janne's Flickr page for more of the same.

Hey Mickey

Steamboat Willie Poster by Tom Whalan. 18" x 24" screenprint with metallic inks and limited to 200 signed copies.

Unfortunately for me [yet again] these were all sold out on the Mondo website within minutes of going up.

Highly recommend checking out Tom's site, Strong Stuff too.

Blackheath Station Sunrise

Taken last week on the iPhone. Spring and daylight most definitely on the way.

Alternative Pantone Colours

Thanks to Becky for sending this through to me. Clever Pantone moments in time piece.

Guy Allen • Motoring Illustrator

As a gift promised to myself back in early December, I've finally got around to buying myself a Guy Allen print.

Limited edition and one of 100, it's gorgeous in the flesh and I can't wait to find the perfect frame to house it's A3 sized dimensions.

Decided to go for the Octane Magazine character Felix, driving a safari rally in an Mk1 Ford Escort Mexico. Should make a fine addition to the home collection.

Sketchy Times

Trying to mess around in my sketchbook during the weekday evenings. The below was completed pretty fast, then photographed on the iPhone before emailing to my MacBook and adding colour/background via Photoshop.

Have been working on a series of similar style transistor radio illustrations too, so I'll try and upload those too soon.

Solid Steel Podcast's

My absolute favourite music podcasts are now available through SoundCloud. If you like eclectic music mixes you could do a hell of a lot worse than checking them out - stream or download below.

Highly recommended Ninja Tune audio bliss.

  Solid Steel Radio Shows by Ninja Tune & Big Dada

Porsche 917K, Shelby GT 350 & Corvair Monza SS

Lessons in vehicle rendering and layout from Steve Goodrich of GoodrichDesigns.

BMW M12 Concept

Some fantastic design and rendering going on here by Hoss Concepts.

BMW M1 Rally Car Concept

By an artist called Hussain1 on DeviantArt. There are some stunning vehicle concepts out there.

Will try and post a few of my favourites. This one is described as 'what a BMW M1 Group B Rally car could have looked like. This is the same kit off the Audi Quatrro Pikes Peak rally car.'