All Posts in illustration

December 17, 2012 - Comments Off on Merry Mistletoe

Merry Mistletoe

Hanukkah may now be over but there's still Christmas to look forward to! So hide the menorah and break out the Christmas tree---see I grew up with both holidays. While such a practice can lead to some strange gift-giving situations, the joy of celebration and family was never diminished by this time-share arrangement. We all celebrate these special events differently. Such traditions are comforting in their familiarity, so much so in fact that not following them often leads to an unsatisfying holiday experience. And while tradition may be known for stifling change, it also provides the basis for much of our thought and action. It is one of those fundamental common threads that allow us to relate with one another, helping our creations to be understood by others. In other words, the very foundations of inspiration.

This past week our very own Dave took some time to create this lovely sweater pattern for the Mechanism's holiday season. Enjoy.

This past week our very own Dave took some time to create this lovely sweater pattern for the Mechanism's holiday season. Enjoy.

All artists are intimately familiar with tradition. One of the most common tools available to any creative is to take the traditional and subvert, reuse, and remix it. This is often the procedure I try and follow in creating this very blog. Art movements from the Medieval to the Pop, Christ to Campbell, have loved exploring traditional themes and symbols. There are few places that have seen conflicts of tradition greater than those of Latin America where ancient and complex native cultures came into violent conflict with the alien influences of Europe. Chilean artist INTI integrates many of his region's traditional patterns and themes into his massive graffiti pieces.

"SACROSUDAKA" Acrilico.INTI WhiteWallBeirut 2012

The Christmas tradition is quite unique, at least in America, in that almost everyone is familiar with it even if they don't celebrate the holiday itself. Not only have huge corporations been built around Noel, but strange and fun observances such as Secret Santa and now apparently Christmas GIFs have grown from it as well. One though has always baffled me: the Advent Calendar. The joy of counting down to that magical day with sub-par chocolates stored in a calendar shaped container baffles me. However I can most definitely get behind this slick reinterpretation of the ritual by Shape Design Studio in Manchester. In this beautiful site, the crummy candies are substituted for scrumptious morsels of design. The only thing that baffles me is the strange order of the dates.

Shape Christmas

Finally, while you might want these guys on your team if there ever truly was a war on Christmas, the video holiday card below by Jacques Khouri is simply too charming to skip. His New Year's resolution is to be more colorful, what's yours?

The Sketching Mechanism is a series of weekly posts, published on Mondays, containing the artistic musings of Mobile Designer/Developer Ben Chirlin from our Monday morning meeting at the NY Creative Bunker as well as his inspiring artistic finds of the week.

October 22, 2012 - Comments Off on Mantle Mount

Mantle Mount

I guarantee you saw one of these today. In fact, I bet you used one too. Unless you've locked yourself away and refuse to go out (as I spent my Friday night) you touched a door today. If you haven't, go get outside! The fall weather's lovely. We use these portals every day. They are a key part of how we structure our lives. A door can represent so much. Even it's position, open or closed, says something intimate. So open the door of your mind and let in the inspiration.

I illustrated the protagonist from one of my favorite games, Psychonauts. Raz used psychic doors to enter into people's subconscious.

Cities are the mecca of doors. Every block, every wall and even many sidewalks contain doors. Large rolling behemoths hide swinging glass panes. Beaten slabs of metal hang upon rusted hinges next to revolving works of modern electronics. One of my most striking memories from my visit to Barçelona is the striking change the old downtown area exhibits every night. With the setting of the sun, the numerous shops nestled in the city's winding alleys hide their myriad window displays. The lowered steel shutters that replace them turn the pavement into a open air gallery of beautiful street art. Beware though, the sudden change can easily get you lost. The Doors Project overlays such a transformation wherever it wishes. These projected doors of light shimmer upon whichever surface artist Hwee Chong chooses. There is something magical in the idea, like when Wiley Coyote painted a tunnel on a cliff only to have it come to life.

Many describe the internet as a set of tubes. This layman's description is not only false but also overlooks the way most people actually relate to the internet. Each webpage is like a room, each link a door. Some rooms, like Google, serve as vast hallways while others may be quaint little dead ends that hold something of splendid beauty. When we click through the space of the web, we are in fact traversing a vast digital house. Now, new technologies make each traversal an informative process that slowly changes the floor plan as we go. This website for Alzheimer Day may not have many doors but the portal effect on scroll is magnificent. As you go down the page you descend through a series of widening circles in a novel fashion.

Finally, enjoy this animation. It is simply fantastic. The quality and style are superbly unique. The number of portals within is overwhelming as it verges on recursion. One of the most palpable associations with doors is the mysteries they may hide. So really, what I want to know is what's outside this character's front door?

The Sketching Mechanism is a series of weekly posts, published on Mondays, containing the artistic musings of Mobile Designer/Developer Ben Chirlin from our Monday morning meeting at the NY Creative Bunker as well as his inspiring artistic finds of the week.

June 18, 2012 - Comments Off on Maniacal Motors

Maniacal Motors

Life is defined by movement. I remember being struck by how beautifully a molecule and solar system mimic each other in their respective orbital ballets. Yet whether fast or slow, large or small, movement, or lack thereof, can be incredibly inspiring. A large part of many artistic works is attempting to successfully capture a feeling of speed or lethargy which goes to show: movement is inspiring.

Racecar

Still mediums have always been the most interesting to me due to their static limitations. The successful illusion of motion within a single frame is astounding. Even such effects in moving mediums can be difficult to properly capture and impart.  Yet somehow Kyle Thompson not only accomplishes this trick but further twists it to a beautiful and surreal extreme.

Websites in motion are the new thing apparently if you look at any recent design-centric site (see last week's website for example). The magic of HTML5 animation and video have made cross browser, flash-free, motion graphics on sites a stunning reality. The homepage for Impero based in London and Sydney is a striking example of this hot trend. Complimented by a stellar design, the site's bright colors undoubtedly leave a lasting memory in this visitor's mind.

But it's not just the web that is seeing captivating technological advances when it comes to motion. The rise of digital film and the subsequent falling cost of the equipment involved has helped fuel one of the most popular genres of web clip: slow motion. Granted, such cameras are still thousands of dollars, yet there's something infinitely interesting about seeing the invisible world of speedy things that's constantly happening all around us. The production company Marmalade lives for this world and leverages our fascination with it to create unique brand images for some big corporate players. The following behind the scenes and demo-reel  video shows off the level of talent involved in producing such work which looks so perfect I have, up to now, assumed it was computer generated.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKC6j7pW6T0

The Sketching Mechanism is a series of weekly posts, published on Mondays, containing the artistic musings of Mobile Designer/Developer Ben Chirlin during our Monday morning meeting at the NY Creative Bunker as well as his inspiring artistic finds of the week.

Published by: benchirlin in The Design Mechanism
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May 7, 2012 - Comments Off on Marvel to Mesopotamia

Marvel to Mesopotamia

In honor of the Avengers coming out this past weekend, I thought it was time we celebrate the inspirational power of the super-human, so idolized and adored by pop culture. Superheroes are nothing new. In fact one could say they're some of the oldest detritus of human culture. The idea of an übermensch can be seen going back to one of the most ancient of epics: Gilgamesh. His power? Super strength. His weakness? Friends. Gilgamesh (not the most stunning of reads I must confess) could easily be spun as a modern paperback lark where Gilagmesh and his sidekick Enkidu go on a series of harrowing adventures. When we read these stories of super powered men and women, whether now in modern metropolises or cities of old, they teach us valuable lessons showing how even heroes can falter. Mechman

But another part of the magic of superheroes is that they just don't seem to die. I don't mean the characters themselves but what they stand for. As with Gilgamesh, it's easy to draw comparisons from many of our favorite modern heroes to their ancient counterparts (Superman and Hercules, Flash and Ares, etc). This fact hints at the underlying truth that these fictional heroes strike at something core to our cultural identity as human beings and it's artists like Kris Anka who help enable this perpetual cycle of mythology.

Avengers FilmHellboy Colablo

I've never been a huge capes and cowls fan. Instead I often reach for the more independent or atypical graphic novel. A large part of that is I find the stories, and more so the art, of those classic Marvel/DC series to be somewhat trite. But Anka breathes a fresh modern style into his tributes while maintaining their characters' essence making me yearn to read...though he doesn't seem to have done any actual books, just fan art. Yet his animation skills leave little question as to his ability.

Of course part of what makes superheroes so interesting is simply the fact that they are indeed super, or in the words of one German philosopher: über. Über Content seems to understand this power as embodied in their striking website. Fellow Youtube junkies may recognize team member Charlie Todd as founder of Improv Everywhere here in our very own NYC.

Uber Content

Beyond the crisp tight design of the site, Über Content does its umlaut proud with some wonderful hover states and some amazing screen adaptability which, at a glance, looks like a customized Get Skeleton layout (the new hotness around the office). I especially like how the site keeps the team member images at the top in an even grid with filler blue circles when necessary.

Yet for all the truly amazing heroes, there are also the ones that just can't quite live up to the name. Most heroes overcome this adversity to become truly super, something about great power, great responsibility yadda yadda etc etc. However, as this cute French short shows, sometimes even such happy endings might not be all their cracked up to be.

The Sketching Mechanism is a series of weekly posts, published on Mondays, containing the artistic musings of Mobile Designer/Developer Ben Chirlin during our Monday morning meeting at the NY Creative Bunker as well as his inspiring artistic finds of the week.

Published by: benchirlin in The Sketching Mechanism
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