Misato Nagare

A while ago and recently

It was good to get an email recently from Egyptian designer – Mohammed A. Fahmy – plugging his website. He works out of Cairo across a number of mediums and has done some very interesting and creative work. Then there’s the cute and cuddly work of Bea (who calls herself Kumako), a Swedish illustrator who has been living in Tokyo for the past few years. Her blog is nicely written and her illustrations are a colourful mix of Genki style art with grittier pop anime. Also worth an extended visit is the White Ninja website – a short comic series that’s kinda like a Far Side for the attention deficient generation (and, yes, my hand is raised firmly in the air). Meanwhile, photographers should have a peek at online magazines F Stop, which features an impressive selection of black and white work, and Mooncruise, which showcases a handful of new photographers from around the world each issue whose work is displayed to a rotating soundtrack of atmospheric electronica music. [see also Eleanor Voterakis; Jenny Mortsell; Misato Nagare]

Fear of heights

Interview with young Melbourne artist, Eleanor Voterakis. ‘My drawings are quite stark and delicate – generally drawn with a 2B mechanical pencil [Pacer]. The drawn objects tend to be situated in a blank space, and I play around with form by leaving parts of objects unfinished or filled in as silhouettes. Something that has become a defining feature of my work is the image of the pile. Drawing piles of things appeals to me because there is something interesting about seeing an object in a group of other like objects — there are the formal elements of pattern and repetition, but I think there is also something poetic and maybe melancholy about these piles. I keep drawing piles as a way of finding out for myself what this poetic element is. I like Melbourne because it is not restricted by particular styles or trends, or defined by a narrow group of people. That makes it very dynamic, because I think creative people in Melbourne feel relatively free with the forms and styles they experiment with. There is a sense of fun. It’s inspiring for me because I believe creative people end up being truer to themselves and producing a higher quality of work if they are not continually trying to keep up’. [see also Jenny Mortsell]

Maths explains the origin of superhero characters

I love the colours and simple reasoning in this clever series by Scottish illustrator Matt Cowen, which uses basic maths equations to explain how certain pop culture icons came to be. Read more

Star Wars Uncut: a fully crowdsourced version of Episode IV

The project of creative technologist, Casey Pugh, this full length version of the George Lucas masterpiece was created from multiple 15 second segments recreated from the original movie and submitted by thousands of Star Wars fans, which were then spliced together by editor Aaron Valdez to form the final product. Genius, as both a commentary on contemporary pop culture trends (there are references to LEGO, stop motion, memes and the like) and on the power of tapping your audience for quality material.

Filmmaker creates LEGO stop motion to propose to girlfriend

Now, this is one for the ages: back in 2010, Atlanta film-maker Walter Thompson created a jaw-dropping LEGO stop motion to propose to Nealey Dozier, his girlfriend of four years. The video took 22 hours of shooting and some 2,600 pictures to splice together, a small sacrifice to pay for years of happiness together. Right? Right! Oh, and she said yes. Bonus.