sean tubridy: toys on roids.

Save Polaroid co-founder Sean Tubridy delivers some solid proof on just why the old skool photosystem should stay around. Taking arresting and witty pics of some beloved retro toys with the equally beloved retro camera, “Toys On Roids” is both a play on words and a kick-ass photo series. So kick ass, in fact that luckily Tubridy has turned it into a book. I wants it. I wants it real bad.

The blank emotional slate of toys lends itself so well to reinterpretation by adults. We remember, intrinsically, the lives and voices and personalities we developed into these toys when we were kids. To see them photographed now, as adults in adult situations, it’s just as easy to transer our own meaning onto what they’re doing without losing the joy and nostaliga.

Or, to put it more simply, He-Man is really fucking awesome. If you’re into these, you’ll love Daniel and Geo Fuchs’ Toygiants.

Via Goliblogski

daniel + geo fuchs: toygiants.

Toys are much more than play things. Indelibly woven into our experiences and imagination, the images of our pop culture and lunchbox covers are carried with us forever. German team Daniel and Geo Fuchs study the forms and faces of iconic action heros and other figurines, approaching them not as toys but as people. Their portraits are shot in extreme close-up and then hugely enlarged in gallery, emulating a plain, realistic style usually reserved for more fleshy subjects. Magnified to such extremes, the curves and nuances in their faces, the weight of their bodies and experiences, become startlingly human.

An emotional air not always connected with the idea of “playing” shines through; they look forlorn, anguished, contemplative, vapid. They’re  surprisingly relatable. In fact, they look adult. Then the question becomes not just why are we able to see such a reflection of ourselves in these little plastic icons, but why, since they were created by our hands and moulded into our images of heroism and perfection, did we not see ourselves in them all along?

There are way more photos, including group shots, at the Toygiant site, and if you just can’t get enough then the entire series is also included in a slick-looking  Toygiants book.

Via Everyone Forever

eboy: “godfathers of pixel”.

I’m a huge fan of all throw-back art and design inspired by the dawn of the computer age. Anything that looks like it rolled off the multi-pronged wheels of a 1986 dot matrix printer… that’s my shit. Anything inspired by when “Apple” was called “Macintosh”… my shit too. But my fave nostalgia trick of all is pixelation.

You know what I mean: it’s 1989, you’re in the basement wired on Orange Crush and playing Super Mario. The real Super Mario… that’s the 8-bit Super Mario. The Super Mario where, if it didn’t load (which was often), all you needed to do was blow on the cartridge until you were blue. Often, a good 20-25 puffs were needed to really get that fucker clean. Then, just to be sure, pound that cartridge in as hard as you can. Yeah son.

My fave pixel artists are German collective EbOY. Artists Steffen Sauerteig, Svend Smital and Kai Vermehr create stuff so awesome I literally freak out a bit over every they do. It’s all just perfect: the eye-wincing colour, the boxiness, those perfect microscopically zig-zagged lines. I. Love. Them. Above, see their latest poster, “Buildings”, which as we speak is being lovingly rolled into a packing tube by efficient German packer-people and shipped to me and I can’t wait. I got it at their online store, and so should you.

I’d like to say I’m the only one that’s caught on; both to how rad EbOY is and to the whole pixellation deal, but I’m definitely just one of many. Besides having a design-cult following around the world, EbOY has worked for heavy-hitters like Adidas, Coca Cola, Nike, Lacoste, MTV, Rolling Stone, and Paul Smith, just to name a few. Clearly not a bad résumé they’ve got going on.

As if that isn’t enough, they also create a whole line of toys for kidrobot called Peecol. Don’t even get me started on those, that’s a whole other post. Their other stuff includes a series of posters of world-famous cities in all their pixellated glory (“Tokyo” features the city being ravaged by a gigantic pink robot called Tokio Robotto), gift wrap, tons of tee shirts, event installations, and a book of their work. It’s almost too much to take. Almost.

Plus, I love how awesome random yet purposefully inspired it all is. For an example of their brilliance, check out “Einstein’s Swiss Patent Office”, with some clear influences from nothing less than the greatest invention of all time… LEGO®.

If that’s not enough, then how about “Einstein’s Lab”, complete with Mastadon…