We like Beardyman here at SSZ Towers, in fact I once drunkenly asked for his autograph literally right when he was having an argument with his girlfriend (He remained polite - A gentleman first, beatboxer second) but frankly the sight of six* of his disembodied heads whining and spinning due to some star-trek science shit made me want to cry. Nevertheless big props to the aforementioned science, this video is really clever.

re. Beardyman - youtube him, you won’t regret it.

(via Fubiz and Muirfeed)

*EDIT: I have become aware that there are in fact seven. SHUT UP YEAH.

I just came across this video for a Lexus concept car. I’m not really a car nut, and don’t even like this car. Although I do like a lot of classic and top end models, particularly the ones I’ve no chance of ever owning. But it’s the design process that really fascinates me, it’s the same for anything, cars, buildings, gadgets etc. Seeing how it begins with the early ideas/sketches/modeling, it always gets me excited. Especially when they are brought to life with some great motion graphics.

Having listened to/watched this for the eighth time today, I felt the desire to share.

Please if at all possible watch in HD full screen with your PC speakers turned to 11 and enjoy my nomination for track of 2009.

My god that drop.

In ‘98, aged just 14, aspiring cartoonist Amir Avni wrote to his then hero and creator of the brilliant (if nightmare-inducing) Ren and Stimpy, John Kricfalusi. Above is one page of the extraordinary reply he got from the great animator, the rest of which can be read here. So inspirational was it that Amir, currently in his fourth year of studying animation, is rather good himself.

Skills like these should never die or become irrelevant in a digital age so it’s encouraging that there are still those willing to devote themselves to them. And if it means our children grow up watching beautifully rendered masochistic pets break each other, so be it.

Spotted this parkour video on voice of youf, threebillion.com, it’s by Singaporese graphic design student saggyarmpit and it took 4 weeks to plan and create.  She doesn’t even think it’s that good!  I think it’s great that in this era of CGI where any reality seems possible, people are still creating dynamic, engaging lofi work by hand.

Watching this showreel from Stargate Studios it feels like the power of special effects has reached a point where anything is possible.  But it’s not just explosions and spaceships, they seem to be enhancing everything!  Surely it’s cheaper to have Ugly Betty walking into a real bus shelter?

Edit 19/12/09: the video seems to have stopped working, so check out the site for their work on shows such as Heroes, Ugly Betty and Knight Rider.

Edit 08/1/10: it’s back. See below

Stargate Studios Virtual Backlot Demo from Stargate Studios on Vimeo.

And something a bit more ‘down with the kids’ - a great video and a great tune from Yeasayer. Check out them and all their pals on Neon Gold records, the guys that knew about such bands as Passion Pit when we were just twinkles in our respective Milkmens eyes.

The URL for this site is ‘http://jblyth.com/blog.html‘, the implication of course being that it leads to a blog. It sort of is, but pared down to one element - piccies. Piccies of boobs and bikes, design and illustration, arty/wanky photos and a few more boobs (the clue was in the title). It’s refreshing though to not have to wade through a pile of some guy yapping - no, the irony is not lost on me - to get to the eye-candy (by which of course I mean nice photos, not boobs…)

It is the work of Justin Blythe (Designer, Art Director etc of some renown as well as owner of the domain, duh.) He doesn’t link to it though, so shhh, mums the word (that means keep it a secret, yanks). Or don’t, whatever.

Now this is what we like - Laura and Mark, a graduate creative team from Brum, were asked by ad agency Wunderman to do something during their 2 week placement that would get them known in the company. Wunderman liked it so much the team are still there and we get to enjoy some pearls of wisdom to boot. Bravo.

Martin deserved a shout for this video months ago - and really we should have been the ones to do it first as it was a joint decision between us at ShellsuitZombie and Adrian Shaugnessy to award him Best in New Blood for it in July. However, as often happens, it got lost in the mist of time so here it is now.

Yes it’s 14 minutes long, but yes, it is also interesting and rocks an epic beat. Worth a watch.

00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000ok then.

Visit Ben’s site here for much more work (Lovely print stuff, not just headache-inducing nightmaregifs.)

Remember the good old days, getting home from school and eagerly starting up the old pc, enduring the grunts and clicks of your 56k dial-up modem so you could spend 3 hours watching the progress bar on Napster slowly fill as you downloaded the latest piece of crap from the charts? It’s funny to think that, with the industry having come so far since then, the infamous original illegal p2p engine is still chugging away (though admittedly a reformed character - think ‘marky mark’).

However, as we all know it’s a different game now, a young man’s game, with such whippersnappers as iTunes, Nokia, last.fm and the aforementioned Spotify reaping the spoils. So what to do?

Napster (with the aid of Modernista) have avoided the bubbly ‘web 2.0′ style of their young rivals, instead choosing not to forget their roots with a campaign of what looks like grainy 70’s psychadelica mixed with some funny nostalgic copy. aimed straight at the now 16-30 generation who grew up on their slow download speeds, intermittent cutouts, high probability of the end file being porn and sweet victory when it was wasn’t.

As Mother did for Pot Noodle, (IMO) this demonstrates a degree of brand-awareness that is often lacking in the advertising world. For this, both Napster and Modernista should be applauded.*

Here is the link to all the idents that accompany this print campaign. They remind me slightly of the ‘Dharma Initiative’ from Lost.

*It’s ok, you can do it in your mind.

This is the response to the D&AD HP invent brief by two Kinston grads Tom and Matt, who took 6 weeks and 8 printers to make it (using HD video sped up 9000%). If you don’t love it you’re an idiot (subjectivity shmubjectiviy). By the way Kingston also deserve nuff tings for having an AWESOME New Blood stand…bastards.

Eat, pick nose, check facebook, put on a song, refresh facebook, tweet…start work…
4 hours (and no saves) later
crash. shit.




These adverts always cheer me up when that happens (as it just did). Enjoy.

Our roundup of the ShellsuitZombie experience at New Blood is finally here. Offering a mixture of chat, live briefs, loud music, ‘itsa-bitsa’ style artwork creation and general stick-it-anywhere-we-aren’t-precious tomfoolery (oh-err) we managed to attract graduates and industry in their hundreds to our messy corner of the Kensington Olympia (helped by D&AD generously allowing us free air-time on the tannoy - apologies to anyone we disturbed). We collected cards, friends and email addresses in scenes akin to Bruce Bogtrotter and Augustus Gloop at a chocolate convention, met loads of you, got your opinions on us and the industry and had a hell of a lot of fun at the same time. There are some photos here, to see them all visit our Flickr and Facebook pages.

ShellsuitZombie Face-Offs

We held two official SSZ Faceoffs, the first was a two-way between Falmouth University and Staffs University advertising courses. In an atmosphere more ‘intense’ than a music festival (in tents…doesn’t matter) during which we had to hold back both teams from physical blows, the brief was set - come up with a 30 second advert for Lucozade. While the relative merits of the adverts are still being discussed by creative directors worldwide, on the day Staffs were declared victorious by public vote for their ‘joe bloggs beats Usain Bolt’ concept.

The second face-off was a four-way between Duncan of Jordanstone, Lincoln, DMU and the eventual Victors Nottingham Trent, all of whom were given half an hour to rebrand D&AD. For the judging not only did we have Matt Dent, recent (and youngest ever) black pencil winner for his coinage redesign, but a curiously phallic clap-ometer which induced giggles (from us at least).

The ShellsuitZombie Picnic

Our biggest event consisted of a free-for-all overnight brief to devise a campaign for a household cleaner - utilising any form of media necessary. As you can see we had nearly a hundred people taking part in 25 submissions - of which two teams were chosen for placements at BCL - a fantastic integrated agency responsible for Dove Natural Beauty and the current Lucozade Energy campaign. Reports on how they got on will follow. Thank you to everyone that did some work for this, the standard was very high.

Pecha Kucha

To top it all off, on wednesday they let us do a Pecha-Kucha, God knows why. Here is one of our slides, all of which were created in Microsoft Paint. Again, to see the rest have a look on our Flickr page. If anyone has pics of us doing it please let us know, we have none.

So Basically

We had an awesome time, we hope you enjoyed it too. Anyone who posted us your card, email address etc and hasn’t heard anything back, bear with us, you’ll be the first to know when we announce future events, and we will feature as many of you as we can over the next couple of months.

Thanks to:

Morph are a great digital agency from Shoreditch, London, who kindly sponsored the stand and print - Coming soon, a filmed interview and article with Anthony. Eyes Peeled.

Brave - Representing BCL who offered support and time, delivering a brilliant brief and giving opportunities to nearly a hundred grads through our stand at the event.