GelaSkins | What's the Skinny?

BLU my mind, Again...

Once again BLU has killed it with his latest stop-motion video. This particular wall animation took several months to paint, shoot and edit and leaves no doubt in my mind that this guy is a frickin genius.

The second best table you've ever seen...

Ok, so admittedly we get a little excited around here about furniture, but this table is certified bad ass. I'm talkin'  BAAAAD ASS! It's a giant f**king NES controller, that's mostly a table, but it's also mostly a f**king GIANT controller that works.

THAT WORKS!

I wish I had a giant living room and a giant TV to play it on. Then again I'd probably have a giant girlfriend nagging to stop playing my giant gaming system...Giantly.

the 45RPM CD

Ok, this has to be one of the coolest (novel) technology mash-ups I've seen in a while (steampunk is starting to bore me a little). Some guys named Aleks Kolkowski has used his record cutter to cut grooves in a CD so that it can be played like a piece of vinyl.

Yeah...I know - awesome, right?

I wonder if you can scratch with that little guy?

Via dailydiy

a little of this, a little of that...

We released some great new skins this week - this time 3 images from So Cal artist Jen Lobo. Jen, a one time student of GelaSkins own Bob Dob, has an amazing talent for anthropomorphizing the creatures she paints, but you don't need me to tell you that, just look at them!

In other artist related news, I found a cool interview with one of our Bay Area artists, surrealist MARS-1. You can read the interview here.

I'm sure you know by now if you read this blog that Radiohead are the preferred choice for praise in the music column and well, some things never change. Oxford's finest hit the road this week to start their arduous journey of melting faces and rocking souls on their first of a two part North American tour that is divided by a European section in July. I've vigorously scoured the globe You Tube to bring you the best that bootleg videos have to offer from the recent West Palm Beach and Tampa shows. Can't wait to see these glorious bastards at the Molson Amphitheater later this summer.

"Short back and sides, and a glass of Pinot please!"

All you Growth fans in the Bay Area should be happy to hear that Lawrence Yang with be heading up a solo show of his very own opening on May 16th. the jam will be going down at "MR." which according to the poster is a barbershop and wine bar. Crazy! Finally, a place I can get loaded annnnnnnnnd get a trim - although maybe they should provide some kind of fast food lidded cup so the hair doesn't get in your wine. Yeah, now that's classy!

With $3 Red Stripes and vino, there's no good excuse I can think of to miss this - unless of course you're here in Canada celebrating Queen Victoria's birthday for the long weekend, then you're paying an obscene amount for gas, but hey, who isn't these days.

Mr. Yang was kind enough to send over some sneak peeks at what we'll be seeing at the upcoming show... check it!

Nice Cans...revealed!

As predicted the Cans Festival went off this weekend like gangbusters as what will undoubtedly go down the greatest collection of stenciled street art ever assembled. While the great Banksy got a lion's share of the press, there are some incredible pieces by the rest of the field of artists, not to mention all the awesome art as part of the 'free for all' - where anyone form the public could come and paint as well. Romanyg's flickr site has a pant load wicked pictures you can find here for the known artists and here for the rest.

Banksy...

Bandit...

DOLK...

Ron English...

Fark FK and SNUB...

Blek Le Rat...

Nice Cans!

The Cans festival is set to kick off this weekend in London and promises to be a whole metric ass-tonne of awesome. This is being marketed as a street party of stencil art and has a cast of 'partyers' that are pretty impressive. Everyone from Blek le Rat to 3D and Banksy will be taking part in the festivities, but there are a few rules of engagement...

1. It's a stencil only event - no freehand lettering or characters
2. No going over other artists
3. Apparently the have a lot of security, and they will direct you to your painting area


We'll have the pics up for you early next week, so check back!

Canned goodness *UPDATED*

So much great stuff going on in the world today, where to begin...

Steven Daily, the southern Californian  artist, dropped a line this week saying thanks to all those that supported Gag Me With A Toon and he was so inspired by all the love you folks threw out their way, that he just waltzed right out and threw down some wicked graf. He was kind enough to send a few shots along to show all of you.

 

The Bay area's MARS-1 has a great new print being offered  up by the Jonathan LeVine Gallery called Aerodynamics for Psychonauts. This baby is limited to 50 and can be purchased for $350 directly from the gallery.

Shepard Fairey has released a new poster in support of the new movie BOMB IT featuring the GIANT himself along with a slew of others on the history of global graffiti and street art. Pretty sweet if you ask me, but I'm a little pissed they haven't announced a Toronto screening date.

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

* UPDATE -  Stay tuned in the coming weeks for an announcement for the Toronto screening of BOMB IT :) 

In the meantime, check out the trailer...

 

Annnnd our man behind the Bookshelf, Colin Thompson, is up for an award Down Under. The Children's Book Council of Australia  has put Colin's book Dust on a short list for Best Picture Book Of the Year. Well done Colin and good luck!

Free skin Feeevaah!

Alright kiddiewinkles, it's Friday (Hoooray!) and on Friday's 'round these parts we're going to get things jumping a little bit by giving you what you want. That's right, we're giving away some skins on this here blog and it's veeeeeerrrrry easy to win. Here's what you gotta do - email the correct answers to the questions below to this address(contact at gelaskins dot com) and the first 3 people to email in win their choice of skin. Please include your name, address (no P.O. Boxes please!) AND Telephone number (very important!)

Alright, here we go...

1. Which company makes amazing wallpaper whose patterns warps around your fixtures and frames?

2. Which kind of mammal did the worlds tallest man save?

3. Which table is the coolest table in your house?

*Hint- The answers to all these questions can be found in posts on the blog - you jus' gotta dig a little.

In artist news, Juxtapoz, low brow art mag extrordinaire has a great little interview with Amy Sol. Greg 'Craola' Simkins has designed a great new figure for street stylistas Upper Playground  based on their mascot/logo.  This little guy is called the Orange Argyle Walrus - makes me want to trick some little oysters... Speaking of Alice in Wonderland, I came across some awesome illustrations by Ralph Steadman of Lewis Carroll's magnum opus.

Well, hope you have a good weekend - see you next week!

It's another day to get a little bit of feel good.

Jamie Lidell IS the man (and also known as JIM according to his impeding release) and has released the second video from his sophomore release next week. Well, maybe sophomore isn't the most correct term in this case. For someone that's been releasing minimal techno albums for the better part of a decade, definitely not, but in his current incarnation as a funk machine churning out sexy tunes to get down to, fo' sho!

As we've come to expect from mr. Lidell at this point, his melodies are saccharine, his beats tight and funkay, and his "No way I'm this white or English" soul vocal stylings are just f***ing killer - no two ways about it.

Peep these two awesome cuts: Another Day and A Little Bit of Feel Good. What I love about these videos  is that he's decided to go a very Stanley Kubrick-esque route with video content, which has very little correlation with the lyrics or even sytle of music - awesome!  Who knew a horse could give him a little bit of feel good?

Ketner Does the 'Springs...

Our main man from the Chicagoland area, Jeremiah Ketner, had a solo show open this past weekend in the delightful dessert oasis known as Palm Springs, California. The M Modern gallery is playing host to "Another Tomorrow" over the next few weeks so please be sure to head on over if you're in the Palm Springs area.  In the meantime, Jeremiah was kind enough to send over some great pics of the work he's exhibiting - stunning as always!

In other news, both Alex Noriega and Jaime Zollars among others are taking part in a show called Menace and Charm: the Nostagia of Childhood starting this Saturday the 26th at Black Maria Gallery.

Make sure you check to see What the Skinny is on Friday as I'll be giving away some of our new PSP and DS Lite skins!

Let the Gaming Begin!

It's a big day around ol'  GSHQ as we've just unleashed the latest skins on the masses. I know what you're thinking, "WHY GelaSkins, WHY? Aren't you satisfied with just being super awesome already? Why can't you just leave well enough alone?"

Well I suppose we could, but we do have a yearly awesome quota to fill and well, releasing bunk skins would leave us a little short.

But seriously folks, all kidding aside, we do appreciate all the feedback, comments and requests we've received to date that have helped us develop this product and we just want to let you know that we know that you know we're awesome.

Kapish?

Bill's idea?

Good lord.

I thought I'd seen enough ridiculous for one day...and then there was this.

This was supposed to be an internal video for Microsoft Vista's SP1 and boy howdy, is it awesome. It's really straddling that hairy line between being "so bad, it's goddamn incredible!" and "Jesus, this is shittiest thing I've ever witnessed, someone carve out my eyes....PLEASE!"

I'll let you decide.

Body Technology Interface is more annoying than anything. Ever.

I'm not sure, but this might be the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen. It screams, "HIT ME HARD AND OFTEN"

I'm completely flummoxed on how anybody thought this was a good idea, but I really want to know how the brainstorming session went down. I can only imagine it went something like this...

"Hmmm, you know what Gertrude, I really wish I had a garment that would make people want to strike me."

"Good thinking Penelope! Maybe we could knit something that you could use with your computer to pass it off as functional, but at the same time instill loathing in all those around us. Everyone loves a hand knitted garment!

"YEAH! KNITTED! We'll be the toast of the town!"

"Hey...this can of aerosol is empty..."

"I know, we've been huffing it all afternoon, duh."

Here Is What Is

You would be hard pressed to escape the far reaching influence of Daniel Lanois. The man has been producing peerless records for the biggest artists in music for over 20 years, writing and recording his own critically acclaimed work all the while keeping his artistic ego in check. The man is responsible for five U2 albums (and not all the shitty ones either, I'm talking Unforgettable Fire, Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby.... yeah that's right!), Peter Gabriel So and Us, a couple Bob Dylan albums, Luscious Jackson, Emmylou Harris, etc.

Yeah.   

Here Is What Is comes as a companion album to his recent foray into the world of cinema with a film by the same name about the making of an album, a subject Daniel is intimate with to say the least.  The record swings to and fro from Lanois'  weeping lap steel guitar (his personal favorite instrument), to the weaving piano lines of Garth Hudson (formerly of The Band) to the impossible touch and feel of Brian Blade's drums, with surprising ease.

This record doesn't quite capture a time and place like Belladonna did, nor does it have all the flowing soul and energy of Shine but what it does exude is raw (albeit well produced) emotion and more than any other of his records allows you to experience what it's like (or what I can only imagine) in Dan's world. I was very lucky to have witnessed two shows Dan staged at The Great Hall (Queen and Ossington) back in September in conjunction with the release of his film at the Toronto International Film Festival and looking back on them, it was a  perfect representation of what this album brings to the table now, an amalgamation of his intimacy as artist and producer shown in emotion and honest, down-to-earth soulfulness.

I'd highly recommend this album to anyone that likes music.

MP3:  Where Will I Be?

MP3: Duo Glide

Gag Me With a Toon!

This past week Gag Me With a Toon opened up at Meltdown Gallery in Los Angeles and by all accounts went off splendidly. The show, curated by GelaSkins artist Steven Daily, is an homage to saturday mornings in the 1980's. That is to say its 20 artists representations and interpretations of some of their favorite 7am heroes like Thundercats, He-Man, Transformers, the Smurfs, etc. Man, those were the days eh? A time where your biggest concern was how big of a bowl do you thought Mom would let you eat your puffed wheat Sugar Crisp out of.

Steven was kind enough to send me some pictures of the show which I'm now going to share with all of you -  aren't I nice? There's a NSFW pic in here so be careful...

Above are just some of the works from Jon Schnepp, Roman Dirge, Nathan Cabrera, Greg 'Craola' Simkins, Chris Devious Gliebe, Matt Danner, Alex Pardee, Tomi Monstre, Kyle Ng, Jeff McMillian, Reginio Gonzales, Matt Bone, Gea*, Adam Hathorn, Jim Koch, Joe Benitez, Jonathan Wayshak, Steven Daily , Rygar, Gill, Jim Mahfood [Food One], Mike Kelley, Les Schettkoe and SPRFKR. Check it out now at the Meltdown Gallery...

 

 

Word to your Mother....board

There's so much bad ass being dropped around here, I'm surprised Jack Bauer and Chuck Norris haven't called to get in on the action. Check out this new Derek Prospero "Motherboard" skin that was released today.

 

Can you hear that? That's the sound of "Motherboard" calculating how awesome it is and rescheduling it's calendar to kick some more ass later this week.

Sounds like there might be some ruffled feathers in Shepard Fairey's camp over some image plagiarism. animalnewyork.com is reporting that a 26 year old artist claims to have been served cease and desist papers based on his parody of the once underground, now famous OBEY logo. As you can see the logo sports a very sharp SARS mask (I'm sure it would be a big hit here in Toronto!) but apparently has warranted action from Mr Fairey's solicitors, so says Baxter Orr, the gentleman behind the "tribute".  Orr cites Shep as a big influence in his career and says he's simply "Parodying the guy that parodies everything".  I hope this is just a hoax, as some are calling it, it would seem very silly to me to have something like this go down over someone parodying another artist's logo.

What do you think? Leave your thoughts in the comments area...

Singapore Sling

So a little while ago we agreed to curate a children's art competition for iShop in Singapore in hopes of stirring the creative juices in kids all across the tiny island. There were two categories for the competition, divided into age groups: Primary School and Secondary School. The winners from both categories will take home an iPod Classic, a Wacom tablet and 5 custom-made GelaSkins bearing their art -  pretty sweet if you ask me! I'd kill to get my work on a GelaSkin! I'm kidding, I wouldn't really kill someone.

Anyway, after 72 hours of grueling deliberation, many RedBulls and a greasy pizza or eight, myself and the panel of adjudicators have come to the Kurt Russell (that's an Executive Decision to the lay folk). So without further ado here are the winners...

In the Primary category:

1st Place: Lim Hong Jun (5R) - This artist has great potential and shows a good understanding of a specific animation style and has confidence in their abilities.

2nd Place: Regina Pang - We liked the central character and the font chosen for this piece - well placed.

3rd Prize: Nur Haziqah - Excellent use of colour in this work. Keep it up!

In the Secondary category:

1st Place: Byran MSHS - This piece stood out for a few reasons; the understanding of movement of the human form, decent grasp of perspective and overall composition. An excellent effort!

2nd Place: An Octopus reaching for the Sky by Jane Marsha - The impressionistic nature, a good palate of colours used and the texture in this work is what really draws the observer in.

3rd Place: ZHSS Loke Jun Jie - We really enjoyed the whole range of characters and plethora of emotions they're portraying in this one. It's a very colourful and fun piece -  Good job!

Good luck to you, artists of the FUTURE!

iTunes beats Wal-Mart, announces candidacy for President

I can almost hear Steve "I'm the King" Jobs cackling manically after the recent news that iTunes store is now the the number one music retailer in the US. The online digital music store surpassed the behemoth Wal-Mart in overall music sales for the months of February and March. It seems that people are still buying more CD's on a whole, but iTunes is raking in the larger slice of cheese apparently. It's nice to see Wal-Mart dethroned, but I'm sure they'll make up for the loss in sales by squashing some smaller foreign country or cutting into their employees health care plan. YAY!

This is how Steve laughs.

Jamie Lidell is Jim. Not to mention frickin' hilarious! He's posted part one of a three part video series leading up to his album release with some Hollywood hijinks. "Jim" is slated for release on April 24th and promises to be some bad bad funk. Yeah, like 80's BAD, you know, head spins and 'fresh' Adidas. This man can do no wrong in my eyes...

Have you ever wondered what if Rick James became the HULK? Wonder no more...via Laughing Squid

"Stop whistling man, you're out of tune!"

In what has become a weekly ritual, we dropped two VERY awesome pieces into our already sick line up (no, I don't mind saying so myself) by Washington state artist Brian Despain.  The two works, "The Stranger"  and "The Exchange"  are only 2 examples of his realistic portrayals of creatures and robots personified. Check out his site here  for more visual treats.

The one that is Obey  recently squared off against WK Interact  in a paint/stencil/awesome-off. These two street art heavyweights videotaped the art battle for prosperity, and thanks to the miracle of the modern intertron we're able to watch these goliath's settle the score from the comforts our cardboard box office.

Stella im Hultberg  has just released a new set of prints with sexy sexy results. I kinda feel a little guilty looking at her stuff at work, except that it's my job, so my shame is negated. Hooray!