Richard Swarbrick's Animated Footy

Richard Swarbrick gives a new dimension to the beautiful game with his wonderful broad stroke animations. A multi-media director based in London, Swarbrick has done animations for newspapers such as The Sun, commercials and films.

'Bale' chronicles Tottenham Hotspur's Gareth Bale as he flies across the field completing goal after goal against Inter-Milan. The creative process begins with chosen shots of live action footage. Then Swarbrick sets his own composed music as a backdrop and begins the painting process. Once completed the paintings are strung together using After Effects software to create focus changes and backgrounds.

See more of Richard's work on , including his series of animations of Wayne Rooney for The Sun here

Interesni Kazki: Street Art Surrealists

Ukranian artists AEC and WAONE aka Interesni Kazki are known for creating colorful surrealist wall art and canvas drawings across Europe on a pretty regular basis. Their most recent piece was completed on the side of a residence in Solice, Slovakia. It's very The Beatles' Yellow Submarine meets Salvador Dali.

See more after the jump.

Malika Favre for Wallpaper

The theme for Wallpaper magazine's July issue was sex. Malika Favre, graphic artist for London design studio Airside, created an striking 60's inspired pin-up alphabet with her signature Alphabunnies. Meow!

See Malika's alphabet by clicking "Read More".

Bobby Silverman's Asian Influence

Bobby Silverman is an artist-turned-designer, and now owner of Alsio Design based in New York City. Originally trained as a potter in Japan, he has seen a variety of working methods and career paths that brought him to where he is today.

Silverman says that the forms he throws are not directly referencing any particular pot or style in general, but that he is attracted to a certain look of proportion inspired by these traditional Asian vessels. Because of his early training in pottery in Japan, traces of that experience come into his throwing inherently; his forms may not fit into a particular style but techniques he learned lend themselves to having “Asian-like” forms in a general way. As for the coloration of the pieces, Silverman says, “Chinese ceramics is about the whole idea of their ability to create extremely beautiful surfaces and particularly how the rims of the pieces are white. These vessels are definitely a homage to Song Dynasty monochromes and the way they pull away from edge and create a beautiful white line along the rims of the pieces. It is ceramic phenomena for these details to happen.” He also adds that Asian ideas about beauty are evident in his overall belief about what a vessel should be: “The whole philosophy about what is not there is as important as what is there; the fact that it is minimal, clean, elegant and refined.”

Gorskii: Pioneer Photographer

Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii was a Russian photographer working in the early 20th century, producing images that were far advanced for his time. He started out as a chemist who quickly became devoted to advancing the technology of still and moving imaging techniques. Gorskii developed the medium of photography to incorporate color which was on the brink of discovery during the dawn of the century. 

Tsar Nicholas II supported Gorskii when he proposed a lengthy and comprehensive documentation of the Russian empire. He worked from 1909-1915 on this photo project and the color images from these highly organized images are what he is known for today. 

The Denver Post has archived a large bunch of his work on their photoblog. 

R.I.P. Gil Scott-Heron

†

Poet, recording artist and music pioneer Gil Scott-Heron died on Friday at the age of 62. His spoken word, oft accompanied by sparse rhythmic instrumentation, voiced the disillusionment of the post civil-rights era. His sharp, cool political commentary would heavily influence artists like Public Enemy, Mos Def, Tupac, and Common. While many consider Scott-Heron to be the godfather of hip-hop and rap he often denied the credit. Scott-Heron called himself a "bluesologist" drawing on the long tradition of black music and poetry in America, which included jazz, blues and poets of the Harlem Renaissance like Langston Hughes and others.

Gil Scott-Heron- The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

  

LaBoca Designs for Black Swan

To complement Darren Aronofsky's "dementedly entertaining" film the London based design studio, LaBoca has created a series of striking minimalist posters. LaBoca has worked with prominent clients ranging from artists like Muse and Nightmares on Wax to Wired Magazine and decided to team up with 20th Century Fox for this project. 

The Posters only make use of 3 colors and are reminiscent of Russian Constructivist propaganda of the early 19th century. They recall the eerie intensity of the film itself and add yet another dimension to the artistry that went into the making of Black Swan.

Space Invader: Coming to a Town Near You

Inspired by the 70's video game Space Invaders French street artist Invader creates pixellated creatures  (think pacman) and places them in plain view in cities across the globe. Then he publishes newsletters and maps about where to find the little guys.
This is the gaming nerd's street art...

The invaders can be found everywhere from Rotterdam to Mombasa to Katmandu. Invader even managed to place a few of his characters on the HOLLYWOOD sign

Seize Happywallmaker: Paris

More street art for your viewing pleasure. This time from the streets of France. I'm going to let a piece of his bio speak for itself. 


"Hello earthlings … They call me Seize aka Happywallmaker. I landed on the earth a long time ago travelling with a subatomic spaceship in the time line. I have a mission to fight against the destruction and distortion of the prism light. Pablo Picasso, Jean Dubuffet and Piet Mondrian, all three, with their work, I influenced and inspired them." 

Dentsu: Paint and Sound Sculpture

These "Paint and Sound Sculptures" are part of Japanese design and advertising studio Dentsu's campaign for the Cannon Pixma Ink and Printer. Dentsu teamed up with photographer Linden Gledhill to use high speed cameras to capture ink droplets bouncing up and down when vibrated by sound waves coming from a speaker. Yeah. Make sure to watch the video in full screen mode...

Porn. In Bas Relief.

Close your eyes. Imagine you're feeling braille ...then imagine that instead of braille you're feeling a naked man with arms splayed out like Leonardo's Vitruvian Man, but with the head of the Easter Bunny. That's porn for the blind...

Actually its one of the 'pictures' in Canadian photographer Lisa J. Murphy's book called "Tactile Mind". Murphy realized there was a void in the market for sensual tactile graphics for adults while volunteering at the Canadian National Institute for the Blind. The images are made from thera-form plastic, the same material that braille is made from.

Is It Valentine's Day?

No. But I'm feelin' the love anyway...!
Marian Bantjes is a Canadian graphic artist with a knack for deconstructing organic shapes and an eye for pattern. She's designed for Sak's, The NY Times, and GQ Italia to name a few. Her flair for intricately woven patterns and color combinations is refreshing like a cool breeze on a March afternoon...

The heart is from her Valentines 2011 project. The work below is from her 20x200 project.

Look lightly!

Visionary Architechture

Ukranian artist/architect Iakov Chernikhov saw the future coming...and it looked really f*#&ing cool.  His drawings and designs from the 1920s and 30s are still uber-futuristic. In practical application of his talent for design he worked on industrialization projects such as smelting factories and chemical plants in Leningrad and taught youth at various high-schools, city-schools, and institutes. 

Golden Boy: Luis Dourado

26 year old Portuguese artist Luis Dourado takes the landscape to a whole new level of cool...and also the portrait...and the collage...

Above is the title work from his "Into Space" collection, which juxtaposes images of famous folks with mindblowing Dolomite landscapes to produce rather unlikely portraiture

While his "Essays"portfolio makes you wonder why you didn't think to look at those old yellowed paperbacks pages in a more artistically significant way...

In a word: BAMF
Luis Dourado Offical Site

Designer DJ's

What happens when you give graphic designers some headphones and a license to spin? 

This... http://designers.mx/

I couldn't agree more with the motto: Beautifully Designed Mixes. It makes sense that a lot of them are pieces of art in themselves rather than just mere jumbles of jams. Not to mention the sick cover art... 

And some are just enlightening....The Raw Ingredients

Who knew MIA ripped that riff from a Clash song??

Dig it