If you reject Transformers for a tad too much of violence, how about some good ol’ fashion wooden pieces that transforms – in the process teaching two languages bundled with a pictogram to boot! These Kokuyo Toypography pieces can be assembled in 3 configurations: English, Pictogram or Japanese Kanji.
Quite a clever manipulation of simple wooden blocks, and are definitely strong on the educational front too, don’t you think?
Many more examples here.
Transformer’s of course all the rage now – everything’s getting all hyped up with these shape-shifting robots – I had fond memories of them too, watching these cartoon episodes religiously when I was growing up. There’s always something enchanting about the mechanisms as cars transform into humanoid robots – it’s as if there’s some magic that liberates an inanimate, stale object into enchantment through transformation.
Pingmag had an interview with the man behind the transformation of major characters like BumbleBee and Mirage in the Transformers movie – Australian Alex Kubalsky:
Basically, I’m an inventor and a character designer and my input is bringing everything into 3D reality and adding cool character dimensions like feature weapons and funny things to it: I do the part lists, draw the blueprints and then draw a 10 or 12 frame short animation to show how the toy would transform. I do this based off Hasbro concepts as well as my own characters and concepts that are okayed by Hasbro. They are a great team to work with.
I’ve always wondered how the Transformers toys are designed – how could the designer visualize every single hinge and part that needs to be rotated here, twisted there and snap-folded in, etc., while maintaining the overall animation and cosmetic integrity. Here’s Alex’s answer to whether 3D softwares were used:
No, I draw everything on millimetre paper, including every part. It is all in my head!
Amazing!
Haha, amusing, and actually pretty cool watching these hardcore fans making themselves Transformers! (I sense I’m pretty obsessed with Transformers these few days … )
This, my friends, is the most ingenious use of old telephones and cords. I certainly was tricked.
Heh, I thought this was pretty creative of McDonalds to take a classic image and making a bun pun with a Big Mac…
The name Yann-Arthus Bertrand may strike a familiar chord – he’s perhaps most well known for his “Earth from above” series, where he’d take stunning images of the Earth from a helicopter. It turns out he’s not just a one-dimensional aerial photographer.
I just discovered one of his other ventures, 7 Billion others , which is an equally inspiring set of interviews: about 6000 people from 65 different countries were interviewed on topics common to all humanity – god, happiness, parents, experiences, family, etc, bringing a sense of commonality amidst diversity. As Yann-Arthus describes the motivation for this project:
The idea came to me while we were taking the shots for “Earth from Above”, in Mali, one day when the helicopter was out of action. The pilot had gone and I was waiting for him in a little village where I started to have a discussion with someone. I stayed there the whole day. In the evening, by the fireside, that man I’d been talking to told me his entire life, his desires, his wishes, his ambitions – they could be summed up in four words – “to feed my family”. In spite of the poverty, the drought, I still thought I understood the whole situation. But in fact I didn’t have a clue until that man put it to me, just like that, looking me straight in the eye, not complaining, not asking me for anything. That meeting changed me, it changed the whole way I see the world.
From shooting hundreds of meters above ground, he’s zoomed right to the human, face-to-face videography – the portraitures are close-up and tightly framed, capturing every bit of emotion that makes it much more touching and intimate.
And as these fellow Earth-inhabitants look straight on, honestly and earnestly sharing their personal feelings, dreams, aspirations and worries, we can’t help but be inspired, to relook inside ourselves, and into our own lives.
Would you like to have such a chameleon suit?
The Wired series of photograph struck me quite a bit. It’s a whole series of photos by acclaimed photographer Edward Burtynsky, who went about documenting China’s rapid growth through industrialization and manufacturing, capturing the human side of the production processes that statistics tend to conceal.
“these images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear. We are drawn by desire, a chance at good living, yet we are consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success. Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction. For me, these images function as reflecting pools of our times.”
China as a rising global power has been perennial news – globalization talks inevitably talked about how China is a massive power and the world’s factories, about outsourcing, cheap manufacturing, etc. We’d even rattle off some statistics to prove our points. And for a long while, it seemed like we’re all familiar with the issues, and we might feel that we can debate and discuss on it like a pro.
It’s amazing how humans are stripped off their human qualities through uniformity – in these pictures, a very clear message is sent: “individual expressions are not tolerated. You are part of the industrial complex, engaged only to carry out a specific task”. This makes it a lot more manageable and controllable – quantifying and prescribing the very last bit of process, details, appearance and behavior that are allowed. Like sheeps in a flock, conformity and obedience is the rule of the day. Mass-produced goods made by legions of identical-looking workers (who looks like they were themselves mass-produced to the exact same specifications).
But these brilliant photographs also reminded me that, beneath all that statistics and projections, there are humans, very real humans whose lives are affected and affecting all these. When you talk about China and growth and globalization, it’s easy to lose sight of the reality and the physical world. These photos help to restore, or at least hint at, the sense of perspectives from the ground.
There aren’t too many details from the Times newspaper article, but I’m loving this make-over of the satellite dish to give a bright dash of fun and joy to an otherwise drab urban flat. By Dutch artist Peter doeswijk.
Incidentally, the hooks you see are for lifting heavy furniture up into houses through the balconies, as the stairwells are too narrow to fit them.
[Edit (Thanks Martien): “The artist’s name is Peter Doeswijk. The drawings were actually made by children. In this specific part of Amsterdam live a lot of foreigners. They use the satellite dishes to receive the broadcasts from their country of origin. Doeswijk printed the drawings on stickers which he put on the dishes. The stickers will stay on for a couple of months. The project gained a lot of positive response and publicity and the artist is considering making a business out of it.“]
Here’s a cool post of people taking classical paintings and converting them into color tones:
The world has seen thousands of artists and millions of great pieces of art, but we chose just a handful of pieces of art from some of greatest masters of painting to show a little of how they were inspired by color… or perhaps, how they inspire us with color.
