If you’re London-based there’s only one place to be this saturday – the opening of Boxpark, a shopping mall (centre, for us brits) made entirely out of shipping containers. FUCK YEAH. And what’s even better is that it’s slap bang in the middle of shoreditch, right under the station in fact. Brands like Nike, 55DSL, Levi’s and Evisu are running containers in the space and there’s a 20% discount the first weekend. But apart from that, it’s just a really cool idea. Check out the Boxpark site here.
If you’re not about this weekend though, our mates and super-collaborative brand 55DSL are launching their popup container TONIGHT! The space will be centred around their ‘Studio 55′ project, inviting anyone to collaborate with them. We will be there and you should totes go too, especially if you like metal containers full of people and sweet tees. Just Sayin’.
Just got back from this event at the Wilmo in Clerkenwell: an eclectic selection of talks hosted by interactive experience agency Specialmoves. They included Katy Beale from Culture Hack, who helped start Coding for Kids, a group that is looking at ways to introduce programming into the education system which I think is hugely important if we want our kids to innovate in the future. Ben Richards from Jotta talked about the intersection between art and digital, showing off this epic water projection from Latitude Festival 2010, a whole year before Jordan Melo:
Ciaran Park from Specialmoves got technical on responsive web design, made the interesting point that designers are constrained in their thinking from the moment they set the page dimensions in Potatoshop. Then furniture designer Gareth Neal gave an epic talk about some fairly inept experimentation with CAD software that resulted in some serendipitously stunning designs, like this table with segments machined out to reveal the sexy curve of the legs:
His combination of computer design and hand finishing gives his machine-made work an individual lo-fi quality. The individual charm of bodging continued with Jane Unpronounceable-surname from Sugru, with her inspiring tale of the invention of the ‘next blu-tack’. Then there were some ‘young gun talks’: James from Hyper Island confirmed our views that it may be the best course ever, Mike from YCC told it how it is and our boy Jonny said a swear.
As the first of a series of regular events, ShellsuitZombie brings you a film screening from the largest short film network in the world, Future Shorts.
The creators of Secret Cinema, Future Shorts are world renowned for supporting short film and the lineup for this festival is no exception. A haul including Oscars, Baftas, Sundance and Annecy Festival awards just goes to show that the films you will see are amongst the best in the world.
Filmed on an old decommissioned military submarine with 35mm cameras, Deeper Than Yesterday tells the story of a Russian crew who suffer a rather savage form of cabin fever. Directed by Ariel Kleiman, a graduate of the VCA at the University of Melbourne, recently said “The more uncomfortable I feel making a film the better it will be.” Jurors have compared the film to “The Lower Depths,” Maxim Gorky’s best-known play – very Russian with long period of isolation and madness.
Winner of International Short Filmmaking Award at Sundance.
A boy learns to play the piano in this rather dark but occasionally humorous mediation on the anxieties and fears of a modern civilized society. Created as a lo-fi animation, The External World is a surreal seventeen-minute collection of vignettes which borrows themes from pop culture, cinema and videogames – classic and contemporary. Some have heralded this short as “a unique reconstruction of the universe” while O’Reilly recently noted in an interview, “I like creating experimental films that have an emotional function.”
A detailed and humorous account of a failed bank robbery: A single take where roughly 100 people meticulously recreate an actual event that took place in Stockholm in June 2006. Directed by Ruben Östlund, these events were witnessed first hand along with his producer Erik Hemmendorff while on the way to the Swedish Film Insititute. The film questions the reality of how, really, robberies happen, and what they might or, should, look like. “Making ‘Incident by a Bank’ is a way to correct the false images of robberies we see almost daily in action movies made in Hollywood,” says Östlund.
The Eagleman Stag is a unique 9-minute stop-motion animated film that depicts a man’s haunting obsession with the passage of time and his unorthodox relationship with a beetle. Directed by Michael Please, the production was a highly ambition final year film produced while studying at the RCA – it is based on a story he previously wrote entitled “The Life and Time of Peter Eagleman.” Orchestral music was integral to this film and composed in tandem with the animation process.
Winner of Best Short Animation at BAFTA, and Special Jury Prize at SXSW.
Matheny, who wrote, directed and starred in this 19-minute inventive comedy about love-inducing darts won the Oscar for Best Live Action Short in 2011. A recent film student graduate at New York University, God of Love was produced as his thesis film project while enrolled at NYU’s MFA program. At the Oscars, he was hailed as delivering one of the best acceptance speeches of the evening and thanked his mother for her contribution to the movie.
Oscar Winner in 2011 for Best Live Action Short Film.
Inspired by the Argentinian instrumental tango piece entitled “Lluvia de Estrellas” (Star Rain), Luminaris tells the story of a man living in a world controlled by time by light. Each day inhabitants of this fictional world awake and are pulled, as if by some otherworldly force, to their jobs by sunlight. Combining pixilation and stop motion techniques; the surrealist short pairs styles reminiscent of art deco with black cinema. Zaramella explains, “Originally, I approached the project as a puppet animation story, but doing some pixilation tests in the gardens of Fontevraud, just for fun, the seed of the present short was born: the idea of sunlight as a magnetic force.”
Winner of the Audience and Fipresci Award at Annecy 2011 International Animation Festival
The best thing is, the whole thing will be introduced by one of the Future Shorts team. Plus you can go to the bar and still see the screen! Yeah boi.
A couple of weeks ago we held a zine workshop with Alex Zamora from FEVERZINE - have a watch of this video to see what we got up to. We’ll be putting up photos of some of the zines shortly (the video barely scratches the surface of the body of work produced), but until then be content with pausing the HD footage and salivating/giggling over it.
We absolutely loved this workshop, there’s nothing better than getting people to stretch their creative muscles in new ways and producing a magazine in 3 hours is definitely a good way to do it.
Some insanely detailed stitching from Peter Crawley has gone into this Wallpaper logo, accumulating a staggering 70 hours of needle-time for the metre-squared piece which involved 12,000 hand-pierced holes and 250m of cotton. It was exhibited as part of the Wallpaper exhibition at Brioni House in Milan.
ShellsuitZombie’s favourite magazine subscription service, Stack, has been going from strength to strength since we first reported it (I’m sure in no small part down to both issues of SSZ being delivered in their lovely brown envelopes…ahem) and have now started holding magazine related events.
After 2 successful ‘Printout!’ events they are now hosting a 48 hour magazine making session at the Southbank Centre on the 12th to the 14th of August and anyone can get involved. ShellsuitZombie will be there (stapling and photocopying and making tea I would imagine) and so will many others if past events are anything to go by, so make sure you sign up.
Finally (a week later than planned) we can announce what’s coming up at ShellsuitZombie’s stand for D&AD New Blood 2011. And what a lineup we have for you…
At 4pm come and find us in T3 to take part in our digital workshop with top 5 digital agency Collective London. Working on a real brief from one of their current clients, Innocent, you will be able to quiz both the creative director of Collective as well as bods from Innocent and sup on a delicious free smoothie while you bash out your ideas. The best of these will be rewarded with features on the innocent channels and a ‘career surgery’ with Collective, in which you will get a free meal and a bit of quality time with some of the best in the business working out how best to get you to that next step and giving you the contacts to do so. This is a seriously incredible prize and should not be missed.
Saturday 2nd July: Zine Workshop with Alex Zamora of @Feverzine
At 12pm The king of zines, Alex Zamora, is leading us in a workshop in which you will be able to concept, produce, print and bind a limited run of your very own zine. We’ve even got our hands on a photocopier for all your edgy montage needs. The best zines will feature on both ShellsuitZombie and Feverzine and you will get a bonus portfolio piece for that extra edge. Bring stuff along to put in it or just create on the day, it’s up to you. Ultimate self-expression!
Sunday 3rd July: SSZ Magazine issue 2 launch and SPECIAL CHALLENGE (with free beers)
On sunday afternoon (4ish) we will be informally celebrating the launch of the second issue of our magazine with a little party. Come and join us for music, a free ice-cold beer and to take part in our party games including musical chairs, sleeping lions and a secret challenge which could win you a shitload of prizes.
Fresh from last years incredible Cadbury’s brief, ad agency Brave are coming along to set another challenge for any budding creative teams and designers out there. Get your heads in gear, if it’s anything like last year you’ll be thinking seriously big.
Not only that…
But throughout we will be running our face-offs, pitching universities against each other to discover who really is the most creative. Last year it was Bolton and we have last years winning team amongst the judges for this years contest. Win the kudos your university deserves (as well as a healthy heap of prizes and a bit of publicity too). REPREZENT.
Drawing Wall
Finally we will also be running a drawing wall with 2010 New Blood exhibitors and illustration collective Hidden Dingbat. They will be documenting the goings on and inviting guests to contribute to our huge mural. Expect line, colour and a lot of pens…
Check out a short and shit video of what we got up to last year. Expect more of the same…
Candid advice and stylish visuals from ex-Falmouth designer Gus Cook, which go some way towards explaining how he landed a couple of placements, then a job with the design legends jkr. Well worth a read for all you sleep-deprived undergrads, high on spray-mount, guillotining your custom business cards and preparing your firm handshakes for degree shows and New Blood. Best of luck (and see you there)!
A week ago we bopped up to Leeds to run a workshop as part of the uber-hipster Diesel Island campaign (which you can check out here) – our brief was just to do something ‘ShellsuitZombie’ up there, but instead we decided to do something completely over-ambitious and as far as we were aware at the time of their publicity going to print nigh on impossible to pull off.
Isn’t it great, this whole revolution of streaming cloud-based media, taking on the world of TV head on. Why even as I type I’m watching Stewart Lee whining with a guitar in a program that aired a week ago, all through the magic of the internet. So we thought, what with the Diesel island being an island, why can’t it’s inhabitants do some sort of pirate broadcast. The world will finally see, live, what we few can do. And so the idea was born.
A month later, a monday night at 6pm (an hour before the workshop started) and we couldn’t get our £9,000 rented camera working. We had yet to fully sort out our lights, props, costumes, script, sound or cast and we were due to go live in three and a half hours. Yet this was all part of the plan. Our workshop members would eventually form cast, crew, set dressers, props guys, cameramen and boom operators, a feat that they ended up handling admirably despite there being cool beers for free at the end of the room. Somehow we managed to put on a half hour show involving three musical numbers, a bizarre quiz, several sketches (including a disturbing rendition of Tom Hanks and Wilson enjoying each others’ company) and an island QVC flogging bananas, cocktail umbrellas and ‘half a bottle ‘o beer’. It may have been raw, but it definitely happened and some people definitely watched it. Job done.
Here are some photos by James Mitchell – for more check his flickr.
Thanks to everyone who came and those who tuned in. Never again (until next time).
We’ve been all over the country this month – at one point nipping up to Leeds where we presented a whole pile of waffle to students from the three universities at an event called ‘don’t be an idiom‘, a curious mix of caravans, haybails, wax eyeballs and other often experimental pieces of design and illustration. It was great to meet so many of the guys up there and the moment we got everyone dancing to a song of our own composition (garageband, boom) in the middle of our lecture was both bizarre and exhilarating in equal measure.
We are constantly being excited by the creativity and comradeship of the northern bunch – it sometimes seems like everyone knows everyone, regardless of which college they’re at. As a thank you to them (and you) here’s the song we all danced to. Bangin’.
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This is racking up some serious hits on youtube at the moment, and for good reason. Not only is it heavy as, but the video is one of the most mesmerising and un ‘bitches and bling’ hip-hop videos I’ve ever seen. I love the way Tyler fades in and out of his lyrics and focus all at the same time, feels fucking raw.
You know what makes this even better? Tyler has been promoting his upcoming album GOBLIN with the above image (the GOBLIN album cover, also against the hip-hop grain) on sites that have been refusing to post his music – without them even knowing. The page this ad led to, previously a static image, has been updated to show the head exploding to reveal the name and launch date of the album. What a lad.
As you may be able to tell, I’ve pretty much been watching it on loop all day. Please full-screen and turn the bass up, it’ll blow your mind.
GOBLIN is out (at least in the states, I assume worldwide) on the 10th of May.
If you’re into fixed you may already have come across the blog Fixed and What, a beautiful journal of everything fixed from ShellsuitZombie contributor and all-round Stokey lad Andy C. Or you may not, in which case now is the time to pay attention. Whether you ride fixed or even cycle at all the blog is brilliant, but now they’re launching a periodical too. fuck!
To mix things up even more, the launch will involve a game of bingo with the overall winner getting a 14 Bike Co ESB in a F&W colourway (that’s a serious bit of kit) with loads of other prizes up for grabs for slightly shitter bingo players. We fully plan on winning the ESB (nightly bingo practice motherfuckers), but hey, you might get a t-shirt.
So, get yo ass over to the site, buy a bingo card and turn up at Look Mum no Hands on the 7th of April to take part in an event that will surely be off the chain.
Danny MacAskill‘s rise from Edinburgh bike mechanic to the golden boy of the trials circuit over the last year or two has been extraordinary but the film MacAskill Conquers looks like more than just a cycling video. Suck it London fixie freaks*.
Howdy, so we’ve been keeping a slight radio silence over the last week or two, but don’t think we’ve been resting on our laurels, oh no. In fact we went … up north. I know. Like, further than Watford even. In a mad few days with D&AD we visited Newcastle and Leeds, holding portfolio crits, workshops and the odd lecture (like above yeah?).
We met some cracking students from unis spanning the breadth and length of the North (and bits of Scotland), even learning what an interactive media course gets up to (there’s some mind-boggling work coming out of Northumbria this year) and witnessing a guy spit his gum on another person’s iPad (mid Angry Birds), pick it up, pop it back in his gob and wander off down the train. Waste not want not.
We’ll follow this post with a couple of the students we met whose work shone, but rest assured the state of design education in the North is very much alive and kicking (and it’s WELL CHEAP!).
Last week, after a memorable trip up north, we held our London VS event. The industry team made a resurgence, however the overall victory still went to the Grads, winning 109-102 with standout performances especially in the drawing competitions. We managed to once again give away lots of prizes for such bizarre reasons as pegging, drawing vegetable-based superheroes, dance-offs, getting Stephen Seagal to endorse Aldi by doing in-store butchery and playing an R-rated game of Richard and Judy’s Midday Money. Cracking music from Dave Rudnick, flowing beers, foam shapes and yet more hand-drawn willies allowed everyone to get acquainted fully. Super.
