Russ Mills

Amazing art by Russ Mills — intense, graceful, almost wondrous.

On his technique: “For my Graphic work I compile as much source material as possible in the form of textures, random marks and scribbles etc and scan it all, the primary image is drawn and also scanned. I then manipulate the constituent parts on the computer, I keep the amount of layers to a bare minimum so the results are as spontaneous as possible. I dont use any filters at all to keep the ‘digital’ nature of the image to a minimum.”

HALO In Real Life

from New Scientist

Or it could be a Star Wars stormtrooper.

Photojojo: Seatbelt Camera Straps

buy here

More wonderfully unnecessary things you can get for your camera without actually improving the way you shoot: camera straps recycled from seatbelts.

What better way to tote your precious camera cargo than with a retired lifesaving device? These handmade camera straps come straight from the benches of wreck yard automobiles!

It’s time you gave your camera the haltering strength it deserves, and the super funky style it’s been silently hoping for. Be the first person on your block to start wearing a seat belt around your neck!

Trust us, this is a good thing.

Each strappy runs a comfortable 2″ wide and has two sturdy slide buckles. The buckles’ rounded edges prevent scratches whilst giving you maximum adjustability. Fun, yet practical. Neat.

Choose from six colors: Burgundy, Teal, White, Red, Lime, and Silver

Now you have to look just as good behind your camera as the person you’re shooting. I doubt I’d ever pay for something like this, but at least this shows that some ingenuity can go a long way. And people might even end up giving you money for it.

More Ellis: Captain Swing

via Warren Ellis

Captain Swing and the Electrical Pirates of Cindery Island, with art by Raulo Caseres.

Warren Ellis’ SUPERGOD

via Warren Ellis

Ellis tempts us with forthcoming superheroes born out of science fiction concepts and make art and music:

And it’s one of the odder things I’ve written, I think. Someone made the mistake of asking me for another superhero-mode comic, and I suspect maybe since I returned to that subgenre something important in my brain developed moss on it or something. Here’s a piece of my notes on the book, for a sequence in issue #2:

China began designing their own superhuman soon after, but didn’t have the tech for Megareactor Buddha’s Spine until 1990. Nominally, PRC is atheist, but the old religions never went away, and a surprising number of Chinese state scientists still think in terms of qi. The superhuman Maitreya was a subject enveloped by scanning tunnelling microscopes wired into his visual cortex, forced to meditate upon his own atomic structure until he could perceive the quantum foam of every particle of his being birthing and annihilating under the uncertainty principle. His emergence into superhumanity was heralded by the impossible light of zero point energy accessed from the spaces between virtual particles. The Chinese filled a warehouse with political prisoners and told Maitreya to kill them, to demonstrate his power over spacetime and matter. He instead fashioned them into a vast musical instrument of entrancingly beautiful tone. Then configured all the assembled soldiers and scientists into a self-supporting worm-like structure and fired them into space with/through the musical instrument, where they journeyed as a biological probe of brains linked in parallel that reported information about the solar system back to Maitreya via quantum entanglement until the structure, starting to break up, was identified as comet Shoemaker-Levy and eventually smacked into the surface of Jupiter.

So if we were to write something about Singapore — a superhero graphic novel, no less — what could we write about? Genetic experiments and cloning vats in the bowels of Jurong Island? Underground bunkers filled with mind-control equipment? PSLE scores and answers are actually a secret code that installs subliminal messages into your brain, latching onto neuron pathways, ensuring civic behaviour such as do not chew gum or don’t complain so much?

Ah, the possibilities..

Superheroes: Batman vs Superman

Superman vs Batman – Part 1

Came across this set of cartoons by College Humor, which should be even more hilarious for the comic geeks. Parodying Nolan’s rendition of ol’ Bats and taking on the whole ‘Superman vs Batman – who’d win?’ thing on a whole new, albeit ridiculous, level.

“Ooooo. Wait. Quick quiz. You guys can or cannot breathe in outer space?”

“It’s time for Gotham.. to get the hero it needs. Not the hero it thinks it deserves, but the hero that it thinks that w-we think it needs to deserve.. because uh.. it is time to deserve a hero and think.. for Gotham. Rrraarrgghhhh!!!! … Dark knight.”

Batman Meets The Justice League – Part 2

More hilarity as the JLA comprising Wonder Woman, Flash and Hal Jordan’s Green Lantern show up in the sequel to the first clip.

“Your bat power is a.. rope?”

“Bullets. Wasn’t that what killed your parents? Well, my parents died because the planet blew up. Got to put that whole bullet thing into perspective, huh. Yeah.. hmmmm. Deep.”

“You and me, man, we’re done. Professionally.”

Batman & Joker Interrogation Scene Spoof

And here’s an old favourite.

“Are you speaking bat? Is that what bat sounds like? You are not speaking anything that a human being can understand!”

YouTube Champloo: Kutiman’s ThruYOU

Kutiman, alias of Israeli creative genius Ophir Kutiel, released the link to ThruYOU in March 2009 to twenty friends and in less than a week, garnered over a million hits to his mindblowing work. And all this done virally, all with zero marketing dollars spent.

From Scott Hill in WIRED:

The videos Kutiman used to create ThruYou are mostly low-budget recordings of amateur musicians playing at home or taking music lessons. Kutiman cut the performances together so that the musicians appear to be playing together in real time –- with truly astonishing results.

Kutiman compiles multiple video reels within a single frame, accentuating a particular lick, riff or vocal pattern being performed. Taken together, it’s beautiful, body-rocking music.

Just as sample-based hip-hop by innovators like De La Soul, The Bomb Squad and DJ Shadow changed the sound and style of pop culture back in the ’80s and ’90s, the work of Kutiman and other video remixers are doing the same for the YouTube age.

And what wonderful music it is.

Brian Moore On Love: The Luck Of Ginger Coffey

I’ve just reserved this book from the library (which is sitting in the repository as it’s out of print), so it’s making its way to a branch near me. You’ve got to love Singaporean efficiency for that, and its times like this that you are thankful for it.

The book came to my attention after seeing this image floating on FFFFOUND:

“Love isn’t an act, it’s a whole life. It’s staying with her now because she needs you; it’s knowing you and she will still care about each other when sex and daydreams, fights and futures—when all that’s on the shelf and done with. Love—why, I’ll tell you what love is: it’s you at seventy-five and her at seventy-one, each of you listening for the other’s step in the next room, each afraid that a sudden silence, a sudden cry, could mean a lifetime’s talk is over.”

Don’t you think that all it takes for you to buy a book, to get you dreaming, is just one paragraph of words, all ordinary in itself, but arranged in a way so beguiling and enthralling that it makes you want to write, to create, or simply just walk away from the experience feeling like something in you has changed, like how the colours around you take on some deeper, mysterious hue, or allow you to realise how much more beautiful the one person who matters the most to you, is when she smiles or takes your own hand in hers?

And, spring

And, spring: stationery from Korea that are way too cool for me. Add in film-esque photography, wooden tables and minimalist aesthetic by way of indie-inspirations and no-frills MUJI and you’ve got me craving this stuff. Clean-pressed grey shirts with short sleeves or sleeves rolled up, or wrinkly ones in neat, grid-like plaids, messenger bags, notebooks tucked into back pockets.. forget Parisian chic or polished oxfords strolling down the streets of Milan, give me unfinished concrete, roads with loose gravel, coffeeshops manned by wizened grandfathers who followed his father who followed his and sipping dark, rich coffee in cheap ceramic cups and saucers, anytime.

This post has been sitting in my drafts for the longest time and left by the wayside for reasons of, I don’t know, memory (forgotten) and the relentless passage of time (excuses).

Local cafe/shop casualpoet carries and, spring, while sojourners to Seoul can visit their store spring come, rain fall at the following address: 35-11 Tongui-dong Jongno-gu, Seoul, Korea (email: help@o-check.net; tel: 82-2-3210-1555/6 fax: 82-2-3210-1557). Take me with you.

spring come, rain fall by O-Check Design Graphics:

Stuck On You: Happytape’s Washi Tap

Tina Rice‘s Happytape! offers Japanese washi tape at prices you wouldn’t normally fork out for it, but thanks to the girlfriend I am increasingly more drawn to sticky strips of paper which should really be more functional than being so darn pretty.

I’d no idea what washi tape is, but some cursory searches on washi brought me this:

The strength of a piece of paper is often equated with its thickness. But in any paper strength comes from the length and quality of the fibre used in its making. In North America, fibre comes largely from trees. But in the manufacturing process to make pulp, the fibre is cut up into short lengths.

In washi, fibre comes from three plants whose inner bark produces naturally longer fibres than trees, and which is laboriously extracted by hand to maintain its length. The three plants are kozo, mitsumata and gampi..

..The degree of dedication, patience and physical energy that goes into making washi perhaps accounts for why it is only made in Japan.

The branches of the kozo, gampi or mitsumata bushes are trimmed, soaked, and the bark removed by hand. Then, the tough pliant inner bark is separated, cleaned, pounded and stretched. The addition of the pounded fibre to a liquid solution, combined with tororo-aoi (fermented hibicus root) produces a paste-like substance when it is mixed. The paste is tossed until evenly spread on a bamboo mesh screen (called a su) to form each sheet of paper. The sheets are piled up wet, and later laid out to dry on wood in the sun or indoors on a heated dryer.

People wonder at the prices some would be willing to pay for such tape, but hey, why carry designer bags when you could get a sensible one at a fraction of the price? ;) I’m surprised at myself, gawking at all this tape, but I guess I’m a bit of a paradox, seeing how I’m a dude and I love stationery, unapologetically so!