One of my favourite art collective working today is eBoy. They pioneered an entirely awesome, pixellated, throw-back style that’s influenced artists and designers around the world. These new ads for Sky TV are no exception. Super fun and filled with insider winks to film buffs, click on each one to see it full-sized and search out the cinematic references. Or, just check out how kick ass cool they are…

(Agency: Giovanni + DraftFCB São Paulo. Illustrator: Up Ilustração.)

Wow. Wow. Wow.

At only 22, artist and animator Andy Huang’s work has already been shown at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. Completed in 2005, “Doll Face” is the worthy recipient of several accolades, including being an Official Selection at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in France and at the Electronic Theater at Siggraph 2006 in Boston. Watching the short, it’s not hard to see why it’s received so much love…

Besides just the timeless and universal look at narcissism and the quest for beauty, the mix between animation and live action here is flawless. I can’t stop watching it. Andy’s now working for Root Films in LA, where you can check out his most recent work. I might also be partial to “Doll Face” because it’s got a similar vibe to one of my favourite music videos, Björk and Chris Cunningham’s freakishly good lesbo-robotic “All Is Full Of Love”:

“Doll Face” via CubeMe

These pictures make me want to barf… in the good way. The disturbed, electric-skinned, light-headed, border of nausea kind of way. I tried to file them away and forget, but they keep slinking their way back into my mind. In that hard to shake place right behind your eyes where views of car accidents and starving African babies and liposuction operations go. The kind where your conscious mind doesn’t want to be grossed out but the deeper reaches of your brain know that you’ve seen something important, and so you shouldn’t forget it, and so it won’t let you. When you close your eyes, you remember them even more furiously. These are images that challenge you to keep looking at them. In fact, they dare you to turn away…

“Lucyandbart” is a collaboration between artists Lucy McRae and Bart Hess. In it they imagine human bodies and faces physically altered with a shocking but artistic realism. Globules of foam, asymmetric spines… fascinating and repugnant simultaneously, the pictures become even more disturbing because they don’t hint at the emotional state of the subject. Each transformed human looks blankly back at you, neither horrified or surprised or excited about their change of form, but merely present and allowing it to be shown to you. I guess it’s that sort of lucid acceptance, clearly not hiding the kind of imperfections and oddities that society mostly trains us to be ashamed of, that make staring at these “mutants” even more unnerving.

There’s something so primal and immediate about seeing human bodies mutated. It calls into questions all of our ideals about beauty and they way we judge people based on their surfaces. This odd sort of artistic mingling - where the colours are beautiful, but the shapes are grotesque - is really jarring. Or maybe it’s the way they seem to know something about their aberrations that we don’t. Like we’ve yet to have any idea the kind of powers that lie inside their new bodies and hands and faces, and as long as we judge them we never will.

The greater question, are these mutations or evolutions? Are these people improved or impeded? And would we willingly put ourselves into their shoes or chose to remain the same… if we had a choice?

You can check out a great interview with Bart Hess at one of the world’s best modern art sites, We Make Money Not Art. Lucy McRae, amongst other projects, also has a beautiful video detailing her ‘Skin Probe Dress’, in conjunction with Philips Design Probe: wearable creations that “explore the space between the body and the near environment by conceiving dresses that blush and shiver”.

Via Trendhunter

I’d like to say that I have no idea what this ad is talking about. But then I’d be a liar. As well as a slut…

(Agency: BBDO NY.)

Dutch artist Henk Hofstra is at it again. You might remember his “Urban River” where he painted an entire city street aqua blue. This week he unveiled “Art-Eggcident”: several 30-metre wide fried eggs cracked open along the Zaailand - one of the Netherland’s largest open squares, in the northern city of Leeuwarden.

Wow. Northern Europe is a beacon of pure vanguard awesomeness. It never ceases to bring me joy that they are so open to the most random shit… and in public no less! I suggest we all move to the Netherlands immediately.

The largest eggs are totally flat, but the smaller ones have a three-dimensional “yolk” perfect for climbing on and taking pictures so you can show your friends that you sat on a gigantic egg yolk in the Netherlands

Via Wooster Collective

We all know there is nothing as expansive and pure and all-encompassing as the imaginations of children. Those little un-biased brains have nothing much to worry about (hopefully…) and so they just connect right away. Kids don’t edit or judge or over-think themselves. They’re awesome.

With “The Monster Engine”, New Jersey-based illustrator Dave Devries takes the drawings of children and re-envisions them as more realistic looking art. I can’t tell you how much I love how faithful he is to the original drawings. He doesn’t edit or try to improve them at all - he just faithfully transfers them with a more experienced artistic skill. Can you imagine being a little kid and then seeing your drawing come to life like this? It would blow my little kid mind.

Via Gerry Mak @ Lost At E Minor

Holy fuck.

(Agency: The Campaign Palace. Director: Glendyn Ivin. Production: Exit Films.)

Via The Denver Egotist

It’s really interesting to see how a company will market itself so differently to various countries. Obviously, there are social mores and cultural values that will affect how an ad will be received. Ads that run for ages to great acclaim in Scandinavia would make most conservative North Americans completely shit their pants.

For an example of a drastic shift in cross-Atlantic advertising, we need look no further than Schweppes. Following the subtle, visual brilliance of their gorgeous slow-mo North American spot “Burst” comes the fruit-laden psychadelic mind trip of France’s “Sensation”.

I’m not sure how something this colourfully awesome could be so weirdly bad. Drop a tab and let its technotronic waves of babealicious lust slowly wash over your genitals…

(Agency: FFL Paris. Director: Warren du Preez. Production: Stink.)

WTF? I’m all for ads that get artsy for no apparent reason, but this one just seems majorly hokey to me. Plus, I’m endlessly intrigued by how the French will use lesbionic powersex to sell pretty much anything. My favourite part is when the twins rub the bright yellow strawberry between their cheeks…

Oh, but they’re just getting stared. I guess there was some fear that perhaps the ad was too subtle and the sexy party vibe wouldn’t get across, so to really drive the point home they’ve also got a girl rubbing a carcinogenic raspberry on her lips. That’s right… rubbing berries on her lips. Have we run out of “9 1/2 Weeks” food sex clichés? All she’s missing is a pearl necklace and some clear heels.

These girls are SO HORNY! And that… makes me want soda pop? Like I said, I’m all for purely experiential ads, but I don’t get this one.

Plus, if you ever wanted to talk about subliminal imagery in advertising, I give you the following screenshot to peruse:

That’s right. It’s a vagina. It’s a big, French, Schweppes-loving vagina. And to prove it, it’s filled with three glowing Schweppes power-balls. That’s how you know this vagina loves Schweppes.

Don’t get me wrong, despite how incredibly terrible I think this ad is, the production value is totally awesome. The colours are crisp and vibrant - you can tell this is high quality shit. But there’s just something that’s so overtly sexually bizarrely weird about it. I think they might have been trying to achieve a throw-back 80s Robert Palmer “Simply Irresistible” feel of some kind, but it’s just not working for me.

Especially at the end when the embracing naked girls are swirled up into the vortex of a Schweppes bottle.  Like a genie. Waiting until a guy comes and rubs off again…

One of my fave blogs, and a definite bookmark if you haven’t already, is The Denver Egotist. They recently scored some time with legendary design icon and all-around genius Stefan Sagmeister. Being smartiepants, they twisted it into the unconventional kind of interview that a design-mind like Sagmeister would appreciate.

Check out the interview here.

Dutch designer and artist Anna ter Haar has a love of colour, the patience for creating something pain-stakingly different, and a drive to push the boundaries of design, film, and art.

Of her series of altered furniture “Buitenbeentje” (Dutch for “odd man out”) she says “this research is the result of my fascination for everything that differs the normal: the odd man out, the freaks.
Certain appearances that are so ugly and disgusting that they become interesting”. I’m not sure if it’s really weird then that I find these chairs awesomely beautiful.

Like a multi-coloured stalactite, she laboriously drips different hues of polyurethane resin around the rim of a hole she’s cut in a chair or table and removed the leg. As each dripping dries out it hardens, allowing the next layer to continue, until eventually the amputated leg is reformed by the rainbowed resin. The results are organic, beautiful, and completely unique to each work. The series was shown at the international design fair Salone del Mobile in Milan this April.

She’s also got a cool time-lapsed vid that gives us a peek into her process:

In her graduation film project, she collaborated with Cris Bartel on an interesting film, paint, collage, video mash-up called “A Matter of Appearance”.

In this great making of vid, you can check out how they did it; first creating the shifting imagery and art work, and then projecting it over their subjects while filming:

Via Design Milk