Video of one of the most genius DIY recreations I’ve seen in a long time, from Volpin Props in Atlanta. Who was also kind enough to share tips on how he achieved his final product. The detail in this is amazing, and he goes into everything from building circuitry to getting parts cast, chromed, and molded.

I thought I’d also share a link to Rebel 8, interjet home of Cali-Creative Mike Giant, and purveyor of fine and stylish goods. People bite this style like there is no tomorrow, but none compare. Giant is a technician.

And speaking of things California, a friend of mine is traveling to Long Beach in August and it got me to thinking. Having been born there (full disclosure, I didn’t actually grow up there, mostly spent summers there visiting family), I felt the need to share what little I know about spending quality time in the LBC.

• Fingerprints Records : A sweet record store… lots of hard to find music and local goodness… This area is called the Belmont Shores and is on the edge of Long Beach along the shoreline going South towards Seal Beach. A few little shops that are aight.. a little touristy other than Fingerprints.
• MOLAA : The Museum of Latin American Art is pretty dope, and there is an arts district that was just coming up last time I was around. On the edge of downtown Long Beach. A few Black barber shops, bodegas, Rasta shops and a couple of cool bookstores featuring local literature.
• Proper : This little section of East Broadway has a couple of boutique type shops on it and some independent coffee shops. Community garden too… within walking distance of downtown. Downtown Long Beach is a good place to park and walk around, lots of restaurants, a few small cafes, a movie theater. A little pricey, but there are some old shops with character tucked away on the side streets.
• Bixby Park, sometimes know as Cherry Park (but not actually Cherry Park): A good spot to chill, a family park with only the occasional sketchy characters. It is on the outskirts of this Gay-centric strip of bars and shops (Broadway and East 4th), which includes some cool antique stores and the East 4th skateshop that’s been around forever. People used to skate this park up like crazy (it used to have a huge stage on it), it’s been in some historic skate videos. Across the street is Ocean Boulevard and the beach, which is behind breakwaters. I met a someone recently that said that the beach has been cleaned up in recent years. Miles of walking along the shore here, and you can walk up to the Long Beach Museum of Art, which is alright sometimes depending what you’re into.
• VIP records: incubator to Snoop, Doctor Dre and many other LBC locals. Haven’t been there but they are still going strong after 31 years.

What’s missing on this list? Locals have got to know more about the city than me, and I know that LA has a lot to offer too… Holla at me,  or comment on this post, I’d love to learn more about the city I’m from!

Links:

• HOW TO GROW UP IN LONG BEACH – Nate Dogg Reminisces – Vice Magazine.
• East 4th Skateshop
• Volpin Props
• TVI Design
• LA Taco
• VIP Records

This illustration has been in the works for well over three months. I started out by wireframing everything in Illustrator CS3, then moved on to color and shading/highlighting after everything was looking just right. The drawing also incorporates a few parts that I built and rendered using Blender 3D, a little bit of an experiment on my part but one that worked out pretty well. The typewriter is an old Smith-Corona (produced in 1932), not my own, in need of a little TLC and a very pretty writing machine.

Being relatively new to Blender 3D (arguably the best in free, open-source 3D software), I wasn’t quite sure how it would suit my purposes. Thankfully the Blender 2.5 public beta has a snappy new GUI that makes working with Blender a LOT less convoluted. Everything I produced in Blender could be drawn in Adobe Illustrator, with actual reference close at hand, but how often do you get the chance to learn something from scratch? The Blender community provides great documentation, and every time I hit a wall I could pretty much count on there being a video tutorial to walk me through my issues. Thanks to BlendertutsNewbies.com in particular, Kernon Dillon is super good at relating modeling techniques and knows the software inside and out.

If you know me you know that 3D graphics are not a big deal to me, as a rule I’m less likely to enjoy a movie if it is over the top with CGI. That said, 3D is in its embryonic stage, and the merging of live action with 3D is far from seamless or believable in many cases. It is time consuming to produce, and resource-draining to run (Blender crashed at least a dozen times rendering small parts for Corona on my meager MacBook). BUT it is super handy when you are recreating materials using different kinds of lighting and deciding how they might best reflect light or cast a shadow. The software is getting better by leaps and bounds, and already you can see that big cheeses like Adobe are taking notice.

This illustration is on the market. Pricing is, as always, dependent on context. Different licensing = different pricing. Let me know if you have a special use case, I would be glad to accommodate. Enjoy!

A super well done short from tinyinventions.com featuring some superb Aftereffects work mixed with even awesomer stop-motion DIY animation. The talented Audrey Kawasaki shares some rare process pics. And KAWS latest in an article from WFDJ as well as a link to his recent show at the Adlrich in NYC. Plus, who doesn’t need a little print and color management primer from time to time…

• Tinyinventions.com  “Something Left, Something Taken”
• Audrey Kawasaki’s Creative Workspace via Livejournal
• On Medicom Toys and KAWS via World Famous Design Junkies
• Kaws at the Aldrich in the NYC
• A nice refresher on Print (not quite dead yet is it) via Ciara Panacchia and Design Instruct

Having established my stand of trees (not quite as thick a stand as I might have liked, but they fit the space well) I needed some sort of central focus… Cats are always fun, and then there is some sort of pretext needed, and what always ties in is people. And I love the idea of nature not being scary. So in the end we have a sort of semi-sultry domestic scene, a quick meal cooked after dark by the light of a small gas burner and a little moonlight.

French Paper is a cool company (and one of the oldest in the country) that manufactures different paper in the US using 100% Hydroelectric power… They have a really cool selection of patterned papers, and a diverse selection of other paper products for just about any kind of print job you could imagine.

The French Paper Sample Room is a curated Blog that features some super-awesome design and high-quality printing using French Paper paper. There is a fair bit of letterpress and silkscreen printing featured on the site, which is really awesome to see (anything creative AND hands on is good stuff if you ask me) Having lived in Kansas City and being able to see the awesome potential of letterpress printing (notably from the creative engine that is Hammerpress) it’s inspiring to see people from all over getting so creative.

I was up for the challenge, I love a well designed book cover, not to mention great illustration (though none was involved in this instance, and maybe there should have been… hmm). Now there has been, in the profession of Graphic Design, great disdain for contests and speculative work (i.e. work without a guarantee of compensation). And sadly I can no longer can fall back on student status as an excuse for taking part. The AIGA (Professional Association for Design) even has an official position on such work (namely, that it is a big huge no-no, and devalues all Design). But at this point in my  life, I take what I can get, so if my time can be spent designing something at least potentially ‘real’, then so be it.  Below is my entry…