Okimi

Get on your 3D glasses because the works of Kimiaki Yaegashi will irritate your eyes if you look at them for too long. The color illustrations worked much better for me with my Red/Blue glasses than the originals, and they're a little less if you don't happen to own a pair of 3D glasses (but with all movies being released in 3D now, why don't you have some? I have at least 3 pairs hanging around, and they've gotten me through some dull days).

There wasn't much I could find out about Okimi that was written in English, so I'm just going to add a lot more images. They were a lot of fun for me, and they will be for you too. I will admit that the images are a little plain and repetitive. Visit http://okimi.com/ and you'll see what I mean. Hopefully there will be newer works which contain a little more depth and are a bit more lively in the future because I feel like the 3D is just used as a gimmick which distracts from a lack of ideas. I'm glad that 3D is gaining popularity, and I hope to see some more interesting pieces from Okimi in the future.

McBess!!!

Dear McBess,

Thank you for providing me with such super cool desktop backgrounds. I especially enjoy your new color illustration that has been decorating my laptop for quite some time now:

McBess is actually a Frenchman by the name of Matthieu Bessudo whose hi-res illustrations are easily found on the internet. His work is nostalgic and so detailed that you could look at any one of his illustrations for hours at a time without finding everything he has laid out in them.

It does seem a shame though, that his illustrations are just flat 2D pieces, but then I found this:

It's the video he did for the band he's in, The Dead Pirates. The music's alright, but the animation is neat (the 3D style comes off as cheesy, but it's done well).

http://mcbess.com/

(He even has his phone number on there. You can commission an illustration if you're a wealthy patron of the arts.)

Your Meat is Mine

Yann Black is a cool French Canadian tattoo artist who seems to tattoo whatever he feels like on people, and they love it. I've always thought that there should be more tattoo artists as such instead of just a bunch of run down 30 year olds obligingly tattooing tweety birds on some fat ass. Most of the time, Yann Black's work incorporates a previous bad tattoo to create something new, that one could actually live with. Though his work might be viewed as simple, poor sketches, it is sincere, original, and super cute (in my opinion). I could definitely have one of these on me for the rest of my life.

Website is: http://yourmeatismine.com/

Some tasty cupcakes

Jan Svankmajer's Alice

When I went to a movie theatre the other day, I saw a preview of Tim Burton's remake of Alice in Wonderland (it's all wrong; Tim Burton's getting too old to make good movies anymore), I was reminded of another version of Alice in Wonderland that I had watched on the Netflix Watch Instantly section. Made in 1988 by the true master of special effect, the Czech animator Jan Svankmajer, this Alice was grotesque and phantasmagoric, but overall an interesting and more accurate interpretation of the story. The only actor in the movie being Alice and the rest of the characters fleshed out through stop motion animation, this film is a very isolated experience. The animation is so lengthy, I have to wonder how long it took to film this. I don't think this is a children's movie because it's far too eerie though never outright, in your face frightening. I'm not sure if I recommend this film, I enjoyed parts of it just because I love stop motion and the story of Alice in Wonderland, but the English dub and the narration is unnecessary and irritating, and the movie runs a little long. If you have nothing to do for a long time, and you have Netflix, you should check it out; it's probably a hundred times better than the Tim Burton crap that's going to come out.