Enjoy this animated homage to the pop culture phenomenon. The films are all hand-drawn cell animation with highlighters used for color.

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New York illustrator James Blagden’s work is so wonderfully trippy, I feel like I need to wear shades and a top hat when looking at them just to do them justice.

We checked in with the exciting new illustrator James Blagden last week and followed up with him to find out what music he works to. Given the day-glo intensity of his creations, it would have to be electro remixes, right? Or deep and dishy acid rock? Nope. ‘There Stands the Glass, Wondering, More and More, and I’ll Get By Somehow, all by country legend Webb Pierce’. Huh.

James Blagden is one of the most unique and original young illustrators out there. He is going to be big, big, BIG. And I’m so proud as I used to be his teacher! His website just got a makeover for 2009, so we checked in with him and asked him what else he’d been working on lately: ‘I’ve done some commercial work for Nike and Uniqlo and a recent editorial drawing for a Swiss magazine called Annabelle. I’ve got a couple of personal projects going as well. Hopefully I’ll stay focused long enough to finish them’.

While I feel I am not alone in breathing a sigh of relief over this season’s purging of fluoro, in retrospect there was a lot to be learned from the experience: don’t wear all fluoro, or don’t wear fluoro at all. And we slowly trudged back to black, which, despite what other colors may think, will always be the new black. But just when you thought you were safe from the neon, here’s a designer bringing it back, and doing it so well, neon seems nostalgic. David Saunders, a fine artist in a past life, has brought his impeccable eye for color to an industry still recovering from its excesses. And he pulls it off with aplomb. Placed in London’s exclusive, Dover Street Market, his kaleidoscope collection manages to go beyond the youthful addiction with standing out, and makes fluoro impossibly sophisticated. It’s an exciting collection from a methodical designer who has a keen grasp of humor. As he says, ‘the design process and the print process begin to collide. There is a wedding, we have cake, and then there is a bit of dance. But the courting is where things come together.’

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