Easter Eggness Antics...

This weekend it was all about the eggs, hard-boiled ...and Magic Markers, not the chocolate type that make you fat. Cue a wonderful Egg-tastic pun. Knock yourself out, please.

Painted Egg #1 - 'Creme Egg'


Painted Egg #2 - 'Gone Fishing'



Painted Egg #3 - 'Dinosaur Egg'
(Laura's)



Painted Egg #4 - 'Camouflage'
(Laura's)



Painted Egg #5 - 'Humpty Bogart'
(Shucks')

Painted Eggs - 'The Collection'

(Pre-order yours now)



A little known game...

A friend of mine showed me some quirky little films for a game launch called Portal 2. It's a pretty big thing by all accounts, but what a nice way to promote a game. The first two videos are more gameplay orientated ads but watch the 'Aperture Investment Opportunity Series' for some guaranteed giggles'. Really nicely written and engaging throughout.


Portal 2 Co-op Intro



Portal 2 TV Spot



Aperture Investment Opportunity #1: "Panels"



Aperture Investment Opportunity #2: "Bot Trust"



Aperture Investment Opportunity #3: "Turrets"



Aperture Investment Opportunity #4: "Boots"



Valentine's Day Gift Buying



Portal was free...




Doodles...


End of the day doodles. Scribbling over one of our YCC business cards.





Organised...

I'm not the most organised person. My desk is offered littered with bits of paper, briefs and doodles (aka scamps). Also random pieces of cr*p. This is pretty much what my desktop is like, full of files, folders and bits of digital paper, so I re-drew it. Welcome to my desktop.


Believe it or not, it actually works, my desk is on average 96.85 times more tidy that is was before.



Yesterday's Doodles...

'Two Mugs'

'Crest'



Don't forget this...


More here


Seeing Double...

This is my good friend Rob...


I'm sure he won't mind too much, well, I don't suppose he'll notice, but as the keen eyed amongst you will notice, he has an uncanny resemblance to the meme of 2010: 'Double Rainbow Guy'. Although the comparison stops with the vague resemblance, this was his next photo in the album:


If you look closely, that's right folks, a faint flicker of a double rainbow. You couldn't make this up.



Dazed and still Dizzy...


Dazed & Confused Live weekend... On Saturday we rolled out for some fun times courtesy of Dazed and my now penniless pocket, that's right the event wasn't free. ...and 'we', being a youthful group of wannabe somethings out for some creative inspiration. The day was jam-packed full of screenings, talks, gigs and galleries. Out of the whole day two things really stood out for me, Aaron Koblin, the digital/artistic mastermind Creative Director of the Data Arts team at Google Creative Lab. Now that's a bit of a mouthful and of course, that's not all on his business card. 

Aaron's well known for his geek developer team - vs - artistic music video innovation such as: The Johnny Cash Project, Arcade Fire - Wilderness Downtown & Radiohead - House of Cards ...He also has some fantastic projects that you may not have heard of such as: The Sheep Market & Ten Thousand Cents.






The second was a talk by Magnus Larsson, which without selling him short talked about the future of our urban landscape and defining a new way of living through sand architecture, using microbacteria to speed up the process of turning sand into sandstone. Now, the thought of living in sand bunkers aside, one of the more interesting points for me was the fact that none of his ideas were patented. He made it clear that the concept of a Sand future has great aspirations but from what I could gather has no funding as of right now, and therefore Magnus just wants someone to fund him in his project. If you have a few million laying around I'm sure he'd be grateful.

That's what stood out for me, so I'll leave you with some nice photos, if you're looking for a more rounded write up you can find them here & here







I've just Flickr'ed the Bean...

I thought it was funny. it is, isn't it?

LATEST: I've sent them a message to see if they want to start a campaign of Flickr visitors' snap shots as a pseudo-online campaign/ promotion.




Young Team of the Year...

That's Wilma (of Luke & Wilf) & Fellow YCC'er.

On Friday, I managed to wangle the day off work to pop down to the Newspaper Society's, Young team of the Year competition over at The London Art House. The building itself is pretty 'cool' and by 'cool' I mean quirky, weird and as pretentious as it could possibly be. The array of antique, well crafted furniture is somewhat harsh when compared against the polystyrene quality ceiling tiles, which scream of those school days as a child, only to have been given a lick of paint to blend into rest of it.


The judging panel was quite impressive, and set the day in good stead with the likes of Shaun McIlrath (ECD of Iris), Phil Kitching (DCD of Iris) Paul Belford (ECD of Thisisrealart), Tiger Savage (ECD of Tiger'sEye), Joe De Souza (CD of Karmarama), Sam Ball (CD of Lean Mean Fighting Machine), Stef Jones (CD of Big Al's Creative Emporium) & Robert Ray (MD of The Newspaper Society).


As I currently work as a solo creative, I teamed up with a friend Ciara to give the brief a good crack. It's always fun working with someone new. The brief as it turned out, was a good one, localised publicity for Mars and to increase the number of people knocking a ball around.

Our solution was all about heralding the Mars 'misfits' the band of arm chair spectators and 'past-it' types who can never find the time, nor organise a rabble of friends to get down and play. And thus, Mar Mismatches were born.

Hopefully, I'll give you a glimpse of some fine scamps at some point. But unfortunately, a flooding at the Newspaper Society's office has meant all of the work has been destroyed - A likely story, I hear you say... I KID YOU NOT, this is the truth! An email from Mary Isokariari confirms this.

(Click to Enlarge)

As always, there were some lovely folk who I could finally put names to faces with and find out what fellow creatives are up to across the industry. A good turn out from the Young Creative Council with the usual bunch out for blood.


This was the after-brief venue... a seedy back room, which I believe doubles up as a lap dance club. Nice. Oo-er. Free bar though, can't complain too much, I guess. Hats off to Julia & Polo who go on to represent UK talent at The Best YET competition in Croatia for the second year running & Of course Dave Wigglesworth & his partner for a close runner up.





Clever or Stupid (Me or It)...

This is either the most stupidest thing in the world, but more than likely the cleverest.

Needless to say, it is now the proud owner of my own 20p piece and about a sum total of £2 from my friends.

It has been done - allegedly.

Of course, we pointed out the fact that the 'Magic Lime' is actually just a Lemon floating in a glass of water.




918 Cranes...

Lovely idea from Anomaly / Nathan @Rubbishcorp, which I've known about for a while, but only decided as of yesterday to get involved. They are as of my entry 82 cranes away from the big 1k. Give them a hand.
I went for Rose Stallard's illustration, but pick your favourite design and get folding, in true origami style. Now, I really do suck at Origami on the whole, and of course, as a man I tried many times to do it myself, before following the instructions provided. It's really easy once you get the hang of it (or give up and follow the instructions).


They say:

"A beautiful Japanese tradition tells that a wish may be granted in response to someone with the devotion to fold one thousand origami cranes. This project seeks to draw on that ancient healing and show that the emotional blow received can be responded to through the strength of solidarity and human compassion. 

Artists have created beautiful designs that can be made into origami cranes. A donation to the Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Relief Fund will allow you to download a design with instructions to guide you in making a crane. We are hoping many thousands of you will fold and then place your crane somewhere prominent so that it might inspire others to also focus their intent and devotion toward those in the grip of this tragedy."


More: onethousandcranesforjapan.com






LOVE this...

On Friday, Paul and I headed up to Lincoln to share some wisdom (or lack of) and talk about the Young Creative Council amongst other things... you can read up some more here 


I also noticed this poster outside the Third Year Studio space... and I absolutely love it! This is your life, live it how you want to live it.




Ain't One...




Best April Fools ever...

So, two weeks ago Paul & Dani, two friends (& Colleagues) at Inferno managed to win an iPad 2 on the Launch day by turning up at the Orange store dressed as an their favourite app (see below).


Of the 10 iPad 2's available only 14 people dressed as their favourite app. The odds were good. Now imagine another chance... The opportunity to win yet another 10 iPad 2's. The mischievous, yet ingenius plot to follow was by one George Hepburn (another colleague at Inferno).

The email went something like this:
Hi All,

Don’t know if anyone is interested in this...on my way to work today passed another Orange store offering to give away 10 more ipad2’s
Same deal as the one that Dani and Paul won, where you turn up dressed as an app.
Maybe you could even borrow their old costumes?
Anyway the Orange store in question is:
West One Shopping Centre, 

381-383 Oxford Street
London W1C 2JS
020 7408 0282
Be there at 12:00 noon This Friday. No Late arrivals will be allowed to enter.
If Dani and Paul’s experience I was anything to go by it’ll be like taking candy from a baby.
Good luck 
George


Now to the clever cloggs amongst you, this may have seem an obvious pranks but being put into action a full 2 days before the inevitable April 1st, no-one expected what was yet to come. The agency fell hook, line & sinker.

Ideas for apps swarmed through the agency, production began on an otherwise quiet Thursday afternoon. The chance to win a fully spec'd out iPad 2 was too much of a distraction to notice it was all a clever ploy for April Fools. Fortunately I unveiled the plot in the morning, a number of unfortunate souls made their was down to the utterly clueless Orange store, only to return empty handed.

Here are just a couple of the entries... there were plenty more believe me.

Noe's Attempt which took a grand total of 15 minutes to remake the skype logo in grandez scale...


Neda's rendition of the Scrabble App: she visited Hamley's department store, where the staff painted her green, she printed off customised letters spelling iPad... AND even bought a £30 scrabble board and cut out a face shape in order to create a mask like impression of the board. 


Yes, that's right folks, even yours truly, fell for it. Having remained a cynic, I didn't think I could waiver the opportunity for a second time... Google Maps was my attempt, so I created a 7 1/2 ft google map marker. I now plan to use this marker with a little project idea... so I will keep you posted on how that turns out...


That's me hidden behind it... The google marker with a couple of legs for good measure, not bad for an hour's work.


The culprit and his master plan. Mr. Hepburn. Thank you very much.

Now we could have stopped there, but we'd put the time so why not see if we could blag an iPad 2...
Here's a letter I forwarded to Orange both on Twitter & via email to their customer services....
Dear Sir/Madam, 
(I have now attached the picture - apologies for not sending them before).
I am writing to you with regards to your most recent promotion, of dressing up as your favourite app for the chance to win an iPad2 - at the Apple store on Friday 25th March 2011.
Unfortunately, I have been victim to the most heinous April Fools prank. I couldn't make the Friday event as I was called into an important meeting at work, so lost out on the chance to win anything.
One of my friends who highlighted a fellow colleague's win of the previous competition, has played a ingenius yet embarrassing prank on me for April Fools. I was given the impression that a second version of the competition was to take place, please see below.
"Don’t know if anyone is interested in this... on my way to work today passed another Orange store offering to give away 10 more ipad2’s
Same deal as the one that Dani and Paul won, where you turn up dressed as an app.
Maybe you could even borrow their old costumes?
Anyway the Orange store in question is:
West One Shopping Centre,
381-383 Oxford Street
London W1C 2JS
020 7408 0282

Be there at 12:00 noon This Friday. No Late arrivals will be allowed to enter.
Good luck
George" 
As you can see, I am totally gutted but wondered if there's anyway, I could gain a sympathy vote or if I could get another chance, or if you could re-run the competition. Please help me in my quest for an Ipad 2. 
Please find the attached fancy dress app I created (google maps), and for which I will inevitably receive continuous piss-taking for many weeks to come.
The only way I feel I can justify the remarks, would be to actually win one in return! I promise to shout from the street corners of your generosity, Failing that opportunity - I'm sure it will at least give you an increase in office moral. 
Yours Faithfully & Stupidly,
Mike Cuthell.
Now, this was a serious blag if I'd managed to pull it off and it didn't really amount to much, but it was worth a try... Watch this space for a future google maps project.





Watches made of paper...


I bought this little beauty from Suck-UK. Pronounced 'Suck' not 'Sook' as I was led to believe but that's by the by ...and I could always be wrong. Anyway, I've had it for about 3 weeks, and have simply been battling with the urge, as I often do with new books, by ruining it - even though that's what it was intended for.

This weekend was the one... I had a spare 5 mins, tore it open and put pen to paper, so to speak. I opted for the lightning bolt of zig-zags for my scribbles and I am actually pretty happy with the end result.

The only problem I found was that when I finally got the watch on my wrist the damn thing didn't seem to work. Typical. There's not much point in wearing a watch that doesn't work, even if it does look kinda nice (Suck-UK have now offered to send me a new one :D yay!)

It's definitely not made of 'paper-paper' more of a waxy-type paper, so Pantone Markers is what I'd recommend. And no, despite what the drawings on the packs may lead you to believe, you can't use a Biro.

See pics below for the process... and yes, I did use the infamous 'Copy Book' as a temporary desk.








Watermarks....

What do you say to a 2 year old, 40-a-day nicotine addict...


...a screen grab later... 


...Thanks Barcroft Media Ltd. Perhaps watermarks aren't always the best way of ensuring rights to content.