The book’s contents delve into the brand’s history and association with numerous personalities from the world of art, architecture, design, photography and fashion. A cornerstone of creativity, the Louis Vuitton book features 400 pages filled stunning imagery and will be available in three languages, English, French and Italian. A special deluxe version will release on September 1st, 2009 at LouisVuitton.com and at Louis Vuitton stores and features artwork by Takashi Murakami. The book is priced at $130 USD.
Creating architects Combarelles Emmanuel and Dominique Marrec of Parisian architecture firm ECDM, Apartment "Valentine" is an original example of optimization of the surface area of housing.
It was no surprise when I learned the new spot for The Beatles: Rockband was directed by Pete Candeland of Passion Pictures, director of The Gorillaz music videos and done the past two Rock Band openers (1 & 2).
The illustrations and designs are gorgeous, the transitions are seamless and the piece builds momentum to the very end. Not only does the energy of the piece build, but so do the complexity of the animation techniques themselves. We start off in an illustrated, cut out world and wind up in a fully immersing Psyop-esque jam fest. By the end of the video I had to keep rewinding to catch all the references.
Produced deep in the forests of Sweden, "Cap" is the first piece of furniture from the Don't Feed The Swedes. The plastic stool is a tribute to prominent graffiti personalities and modeled after a standard spray can nozzle, but enlarged to a scale which also makes for a functional seat. It was thought up by Swedish design duo Don't Feed The Swedes, and will be released at the end of this summer through selected retailers and online partners. The clever piece of furniture will also be on show at Berlin International Design Festival.
Michael Werner Gallery on the Upper East Side is currently presenting artist Sigmar Polke’s:’Lens Paintings’. The exhibition features new works by Polke. Sigmar Polke’s career spans 40 years of radical innovation in painting. Each of the twenty six paintings on display is one of a kind. The conceptual frame work of these paintings is grounded in theories set forth by Johann Zahn in his 1685 book, ‘Telescope’. According to Zahn, every luminous object in the universe varies in appearance depending on the viewers position. This theme is reflected through the various interpretations of each of the images in this show.
Will Sweeney and Steve Scott have teamed up to co-direct this trippy new video for Birdy Nam Nam. Made entirely in Flash and After Effects in a little over a month with a completely open brief given to the Directors by the band, Parachute Ending is a stand-alone sci-fi short inspired by the likes of La Planète Sauvage (Fantastic Planet) and other vintage sci-fi references.
Microsoft unveiled the 3D motion sensing and facial/voice recognizing "controller" project named Natal.
Microsoft promised the moon in its demo video for their Project Natal, carrying the tagline that it would "make 'you' the controller" and that, as the controller is the current "barrier separating game players from everyone else," with Natal, "the only experience you need is life experience."
As above, Microsoft demoed racing games, fighting games, and simple sports games using full body spatial recognition that let you hold up virtual steering wheels, duck, weave and deliver punches, and kick goals using nothing more than their physical actions.
But the company also took that a step further, promising full facial recognition -- demonstrated by walking in front of your TV and having the Xbox 360 instantly log you in to your personal account -- and object scanning, like holding up your own skateboard and having it instantly placed in a game. Microsoft added that the system could function just as well in a multiplayer environment.
For real world use, apart from a ringing endorsement by none less than Steven Spielberg, Microsoft called up Fable producer Peter Molyneux to demonstrate Lionhead's project Milo -- a virtual friend that they promised could carry on fluid conversations with full voice and emotion recognition, and demoed sleight of hand tricks like drawing on a piece of paper, holding it up to the Natal sensor, and having Milo "receive" that same paper in the virtual world, with additional recognition of what you'd drawn.
Imagine stepping into an elevator and looking through a viewport that reveals your ascension to heaven or—if you’re on your way to the street—your descent to hell (appropriately enough).
The entire mural uses over 400 video sources, including samples from several films—something Brambilla is well-known for in his work. This particular project came with some special technical challenges, though. Crush explains:
We began with exploring the idea of using a game engine to house the project. Seemed easy, map footage onto planes in space, attach a PC to the elevator and we can move up and down in the game environment all day. Unfortunately, once we started to collage the clips together in the Flame we knew the game engine idea wouldn’t fly.
We approximated that we would have 250 looped HD clips in the environment and our Flame could barely handle it (in the end it was closer to 500 looping clips). We compromised by locking ourselves into the idea that we would create a huge vertical canvas that we would scan up and down on once the elevator was in motion. The final piece was approximately 1920 x 7500 pixels.
Read on for a Q&A with Marco Brambillla and detailed notes from Crush’s Sean Cochrane about the technical challenges behind this project.
Chul An Kwak is a young korean designer who aims to inject furniture with dynamic emotion, breaking from the static norms.
"With serpentine legs that resemble nothing so much as octopus tentacles, the ‘r.n.i.’ series of tables by Chul An Kwak is actually inspired by images of running horses. Sculpted from wood, these designs offer the same sort of flat surface you’d see in a conventional table but with legs that seem kinetic and alive."
Up and coming jewelry designer Tara Levitin's vintage-inspired collection, Leviticus Jewelry is an eccentric mix of old badges, trophy-like medals and precious stones strung on varying chain lengths for an old-time feeling with a modern twist.
The collection of earrings, necklaces, bracelets and cufflinks are available for purchase starting at about $15 for earrings and up to $140 for necklaces online, where you can also find a special series of one-of-a-kind editions.
Takashi Murakami signing 300 "Magical Princess" posters for the Vogue Nippon launch at the old Comme des Garçons Black store in Tokyo. In its place, and now open, the new Comme des Garçons x Vogue Nippon concept shop promises exclusive klabs with Chanel, Fendi and Murakami himself.
Currently on display at the Saatchi Gallery is “Abstract America: New Painting and Sculpture.” Saatchi presents the work of more than 30 artists, mostly from New York and Los Angeles many of which have never been previously shown in the United Kingdom. The exhibition highlights the ambition and breadth of new ideas being explored by American artists such as Francesco DiMattio and Gedi Sibony, Aaron Young and Agathe Snow from New York, Guerra de la Paz from Miami, and Mark Grotjahn and Sterling Ruby from Los Angeles.
In an unlikely partnership, haute couture meets haute ecriture as Lanvin and Swiss-based writing utensil company CARAN d’ACHE team up on a set of pencil crayons. The pencil crayons also come packaged in a special box featuring select artwork.
The figure will come in two color ways - silver/chrome and black/chrome. Matching the figure, two t-shirts will also be released. The figure will be priced at 1400 USD and the t-shirts will go for about 112 USD.
Buck is back again with another installment for their Mountain Dew campaign. This one brings us through a brief history of the product as we follow a Dew man journey through time. Although the concept has become a bit used and abused, Buck dusts it off with their own personal style.
Utilizing cel animation on top of live action and 3d models for reference, Buck brought in Brooklyn based animation house Augenblick Studios to help out with the extensive cel work that needed to be done.
Here is what Orion Tait, CD at Buck NYC had to say about the process:
Footage was used as an animation guide for the main character. Augenblick studios animated the main character, and our team did the rest (as a hybrid of 2d cel and 3d animation). For the character, we shot Thomas on a treadmill and constructed an edit. We then illustrated style-frames based on stills from that edit (which you can see up on the site).
The edit and style frames then went to Aaron and his team for cel animation. They are very traditional in their approach, which you can really see from their work on superjail. They used the footage as reference to layout key frames, and then started closing the gap with in-betweens, until they got to a fluid 30fps animation. This allowed them to nail the timing and loose look of the illustration and introduce the morphing animation, all while maintaining nice fluid, stylish animation that most rotoscoping lacks.
With every new project Buck releases, they establish themselves as the masters of the pop illustration domain as well as a studio with a knack for high quality production.
Each measures 43.6 x 54.3 x 13.3 and weighs around 100g. The watches charge via an included desk-stand, with a full battery good for up to five days. As well as audio and visual alerts, the AIBATO M can vibrate for a more discrete reminder.
According to Citizen, various Sharp and Softbank handsets will be supported by the watch; it’s unclear whether it will also work without the more complex camera control on other devices. No word on pricing, but the Citizen AIBATO M watches will go on sale in Japan on July 1st.
Damien Hirst has released a new print on his Other Criteria site. “Aurous Iodide” continues his tradition of using spots, but this time pops them on a bold gold background. The print is limited to 150.
Louis Vuitton’s newest venture in Japan is the opening of their LOUIS VUITTON /underground/ store located in the Seibu department store in Ikebukuro. LOUIS VUITTON /underground/ is a concept store and will only be running for a limited period of time. To celebrate the opening, Louis Vuitton invited American rapper Kool Keith for a performance last night.
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