The Art Of Enkana

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Cute, simple and colorful: The three ingredients present in the entire body of work of Enkana (Anneka Tran), an illustrator that has embraced the less is more approach to art and created some truly adorable, stylized work. After a few weeks of scouring through piles of concept art, her clean art comes off as a wonderful palate cleanser.

The UK based illustrator works side by side with the equally talented and whimsical Rob Laro (A major Team Fortress 2 item contributor) and they've been going at it on their promising indie game title called Odonata, which has been keeping them ridiculously busy.  Check out some more samples from the wonderful mind of Anneka Tran after the break!

RoboGal's Weekly Cute Mixtape

He just wanted his Red Ryder BB Gun... (Via)

Happy Almost-Kinda-Sorta Holidays!  We've been running around like crazy lately, and almost forgot about the upcoming season.  If you're not a fan, never fear: The Cute Mixtape is here to put a smile on your face!  At least a grin.  A smirk?  Something?!  Well, you'll have some mindless entertainment for a few minutes, so there's that.

More after the break!

Gotye - Board Face

Gotye has proven to be one of those artists that truly cares about the visual aspects of his music videos and adding a narrative, seeing that he's proven that he's got it down on the aural aspect. As of late it seems like he's been revisiting his older tracks and giving them the visual treatment (Check out Seven Hours With A Backseat Driver), with What Do You Want being from his 2003 debut album, Board Face. I really dug that he's tapped into a different animators and artists for just about every track to deliver a unique experience every time. This particular video was created by Aussie director Lucinda Schriber.

NYC Takes Fashion To The Future

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When we think of the future, the image that often comes to the mind revolves around one of the most famous films of all time, and the almighty, retrofuturistic car that made us ponder a future of flux capacitors and flying cars. Back To The Future is known for it's futuristic looking redesign of a car that was so ahead of it's time that it failed once, the DeLorean, which immortalized the vehicle into the collective nerd conciousness. So would you like to take a ride in one around Downtown NY?

Mike Lubrano converted DeLoreans into working taxis that look like Back to the Future time machines as part of a promotion for a fashion line called Nooka, and gave us all a nostalgic new look to a car design we all love so much. Check out some more shots of the decked out DeLorean cabs after the break!

Elliphant - Down On Life

Is a Swedish musical takeover imminent? Ellinor Olovsdooter of the Stockholm based Elliphant outfit traverses beautiful natural landscapes with her crew. Gritty, underground synth beats accentuate her vocals, which have a hazy quality reminiscent of Santigold. Yet another Swede artist to keep your eyes out for in early 2013, with an upcoming EP in January.

The Pulpy Art of Ralph Niese

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Liepzieg based artist Ralph Niese put a smile on my face with his ridiculously fun art, channeling decades of pulp comic books, low budget VHS tape covers, smutty novels, 80's toy boxart and more into a really playful, tongue in cheek style that doesn't take itself too seriously.

From an artists standpoint, it looks like Ralph decided to visually take himself back in time and emulate what it would be like to have been an illustrator working in the 60's, 70's and 80's, complete with garish colors, cheesy fonts and insane premises. Aside from having that style completely nailed down, he's also ridiculously prolific in his output with hundreds of pieces in his gallery. Check out a small selection of his vast gallery after the break!

DMX Gets Us Ready For The Holidays

Arguably the worst part about the holidays is the over-saturation of Christmas music. It's nice in some instances, but being held down and audibly raped in nearly every store you enter gets a little over cumbersome. DMX has taken it upon himself to cleanse the sins of Christmas music and provide one of, if not THE best rendition of Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer of all time. All I want for Christmas is an entire album sung by DMX.

Dave Rapoza And Lazerhawk Team Up For Skull And Shark

Dave Rapoza, aka that guy who creates all those amazingly gritty reimaginings of pop culture characters and freelance concept artist extraordinaire just released a teaser for his upcoming multimedia collab with Austin retrowave electro artist Lazerhawk. The teaser is specifically for a comic that Dave has been working on, which will be accompanied by a soundtrack and perhaps a motion comic down the line. Can't wait to see what comes out of this amazing collab! Stay tuned over at Dave Rapoza's website for more updates regarding the project.

Cyberpunk Platformer STEALER Needs to Happen

The Cyberpunk genre is one of the few things that I humbly believe will never become over-saturated. While there have been a handful of games that seem to understand the formula of Cyberpunk, there just haven't been enough. In October I brought up the game CYPHER, an expertly crafted Cyberpunk text adventure that did everything right for the genre. While the game definitely helped fill part of that Cyberpunk gap in my life, I'm still waiting for more. 

 

STEALER definitely has the potential to further satisfy my Cyberpunk hunger. While the game is only a concept, the visuals and musical choices for this trailer are flat out incredibly and truly get me excited for what could potentially come from this project. Hurry up and Kickstart this!

Kate Boy - Northern Lights

Swedish group Kate Boy are a relatively unknown, fresh group and they've come out swinging with their excellent debut music video for Northern lights, heavy on the optical illusions and hauntingly beautiful. Their sound really reminds me of a more consumer friendly version of The Knife (Also from Sweden) with their shared interest in playful, unsettling vintage synth pop. With this being their debut, I'm excited to see what else this group has up their sleeves. Keep your eyes on their Facebook page for more info about their upcoming January 22nd EP.

5 Hours Of Airport Landings In 30 Seconds

Timelapse lover Cy Kuckenback was inspired by a composite photograph of a full days worth of airplanes taking off , and set out to see if he could up the ante by creating a video composite version of the same concept. Captured over five hours, this awesome video features four and a half hours worth of airplanes landing at San Diego international airport.

Blind Spot

Steve is having a bad day.  While driving in rush hour traffic, he has a rather frustrating phone call with an airline to try to change his ticket.  You know, the things that pure rage is made of.  Well, at least annoyance.  Anyways, he does the thing that everyone does at some point or another when dealing with stress: Lose perspective.  It doesn't appear to be obvious (at least to me), but in the background there is either a terrorist attack or alien invasion.  Either way, sh*t is going down.

Flying Lotus - Tiny Tortures Ft. Elijah Wood

A one armed Elijah Wood broods about the strange psychic powers he possesses in this well directed, dark music video by David Lewandowsky, who was the lead graphics animator on 2011's Tron Legacy. I can't help but draw some comparisons to Akira here, with Elijah's assembling of a bio mechanical arm to help him replace what he lost, mixed with a little Enter The Void-esque drug trip visuals towards the end.

The comparisons aren't accidental, as the music video was inspired due to Lewandowski's experiences with a failed live action version of Akira (One of many) by Jaume Collet-Sera, and his exposure to the plight of Tetsuo. Check out the making of after the break.

Smack My B**ch Up - Cat Style

While I initially thought this was going to be yet another one of those GoPro on a cat videos with a strange choice of soundtrack, I was absolutely mistaken. This clever parody shows what truly happens when those cats venture out of home, and is actually based off of the actual 2007 Prodigy music video that MTV banned (NSFW) on the grounds of it being too offensive. Considering that the track was released in 1997 as part of their famous Fat Of The Land album, I find it nothing short of hilarious that the track finally got the music video it deserved fifteen years after the fact.

The Art Of Jake Wyatt

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We originally featured Jake Wyatt back in August for his work on his animated short called Metro, a wonderful piece of animation that showcased his distinct and understated narrative style. I recently found his portfolio and was also impressed to see that he also had an affinity for comic book style illustration, using overlays and patterns effectively to give his work a nice touch of texture. Check out more of the talented artists work after the break!

Crowd Control Time Lapse

With over 5,000 attendees, strict crowd control measures obviously have to be taken at Comiket, held twice a year in Tokyo.  And because we have a thing for time lapse videos, we couldn't pass up posting this awesome video, taken between 1:30am and 2:30pm, at 5 second intervals.  We enjoyed the super chill music as we watched the mega crowd corralled into an orderly fashion, looking more like ants than people.  It's a reminder of just how many people there are out there in this big world, and how insignificant we can be on a large scale.