The International Banana Museum Raises Some Eyebrows

From the post apocalyptic shores of California's once beautiful Salton Sea, a bizarre wasteland which we've covered a few times now comes this mini documentary about a fascinating character called Fred 'Banana Mon' Garbutt. Taking his love for the yellow fruit to the point of obsession, this mini slice of life documentary by Cool Hunting takes a look at the eccentric fellow and his insane collection of everything banana related. It never hurts to see people so enthusiastic about things they truly love, and this video does a wonderful job conveying that.

The Art Of Jae Liu Wubao

(Via)

Watercolors, acrylics, colored pencils and the occasional digital piece make up the repertoire of Jae Liu Wubao, a talented Chinese illustrator who has grown tremendously over the last few years. Inspired by the works of Tatsuyuki Tanaka (Akira, Cannabis Works) and Australian illustrator Ashley Wood, Jae has spent the last few years incorporating her inspirations into her work and making them her own, with her last year of work culminating in a more surreal, less anime inspired style.

Her works are definitely left open for interpretation, as the artist has always refrained from commenting on her inspirations for each of her pieces, perhaps intentionally. Check out more of her though provoking pieces after the break.

M83 - Wait

The final chapter of the M83 video trilogy comes to a close with the music video for wait, narrating the result of the superpowered children from the Midnight City (Part 1) and Reunion (Part 2) music videos putting an end to human life on earth. The Fleur & Manu directed collaboration touched on themes of oppression, rebellion and unity, and introspection respectively for each of the chapters, with 'Wait' being the most poignant and mellow in tone. The video ends on a cliffhanger with a mysterious child from space crashing onto earth, which makes me wonder if M83 will be passing the torch to a new creative collective for the next chapter.

Dessert Animals By Cos

(Via)

Taiwanese illustrator コス (COS) sent us this awesome series of hybrid concepts, combining two things she loves best: Cute animals and dessert. While I've never found shrimp to be cute myself, the addition of a flaky croissant crust definitely makes it a little more palatable. Check out close to a dozen more dessert-imals after the break!

Portal Prelude Is a Graphing Success

Calculators can be used for many things. The stereotype I have of American highschool math and science students comes down to bored video gamers as I've seen a large amount of games, ranging from Super Mario to Pokemon, emulated on equipment I would have killed for during that thursday morning Maths session. Though playing Pokemon Yellow whilst pretending to type in equations was always a dream of mine, I think this emulated tribute to Portal would be something I would kill for even now.

Portal Prelude, a Portal fan game by Builderboy2005, is being run on a TI-83 Plus and TI-84 Plus series of graphing calculators. The game, whilst simple, uses many familiar elements that has made the Valve franchise so popular so far. It's mind-blowing what fans can do when they really get bored on a Friday afternoon!

Skip Pitts

Skip Pitts from Loaded Pictures on Vimeo.

Loaded Pictures added some amazing animated design flair to a recorded bio for the Memphis soul ensemble, the Bo-Keys. The folks at Loaded were given raw footage to work with, and were amazed by the incredible stories that they heard about the bands experiences. This particular tribute was created for Charles Skip Pitts, a memorable member and blues guitarist who unfortunately passed away last May.

The Art Of Enkana

(Via)

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

(Via)

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

(Via)

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.