IKEA small spaces



I was looking for some stuff in IKEA and I found this video on their site. What can I say about the Swedish company that hasn't been said before. Can we consider its catalogue, as the most read architecture magazine in the world? I think so.

The Art Of Osamu Tezuka + JUMPING


I'm back in my hometown and I can finally take a look at the last Amazon order I received almost one month ago. The Art of Osamu Tezuka is a gorgeous book by Helen McCarthy that tells the story of Osamu Tezuka, a Japanese manga and animation artist known as "the god of manga" and considered  by many as the Walt Disney of Japan.  Tezuka marked a turning point in Japanese manga and anime culture as Katsuhiro Otomo forewords in the book:
It is important to understand that Osamu Tezuka is not the founder of Japanese animation.
There were animators in Japan before him, as well as those working at the same time. Tezuka's work, however, revolutionized the industry by transferring recognized cinematic forms of expression from the silver screen to both his manga and his anime in order to make his stories more appealing to his (initially young) audience. In Tezuka's anime especially, camera conceits such as close-ups, pan/tilt, and so forth contributed to the creation of a realistic feel to his animated features, though initially they caused all sorts of production problems. He also played with varied lighting to enhance mood. 
By Tezuka's time, manga and anime had ceased to be the throwaway items they had been before the war, and it is Tezuka's greatest success that he recognized the need to inject wider perspectives and social awareness into his work. This was important after the war, when Disney animation was contributing to the anti -Japanization of Japanese popular culture, and U.S. -supported reconstruction dominated Japan. Today, much of the manga and anime business stands far removed from the fragile system into which Tezuka breathed life, and from some perspectives, imagination seems to have largely given over to the sort of routine against which Tezuka railed. However, there still remain strands of the Master's imagination woven throughout the islands of Japan, and I have faith that even today many of his professional descendents remain true to the standards by which he built an industry. 
It is no exaggeration to say that it is largely due to the genius of Tezuka, in those formative years of the country's reconstruction, that Japanese animation and manga have developed into a form largely without comparison in the world. Influenced by the innovations of Disney but guided by his own emotional compass, Tezuka did not demand absolute rigidity of his staff, but he allowed them to explore their own creative processes and unique styles. These were animators who would later go on to create an entire industry, impassioned by their beloved teacher. 
Katsuhiro Otomo is the creator of AKIRA, the seminal manga and movie

In its more than 272 pages McCarthy depicts Tezuka's life and work with pictures of all its creative processes, from sketches to drawings, from animation films to memorabilia. A great retrospective work that comes with a DVD as an extra with  a 45 minutes long NHK documentary never before released in English, titled The Secret of Creation, in which we got immersed in Tezuka's daily life following him to his remote studio (where not even editors are allowed), to his family house and inside his Mushi Production company where all his animation productions come to life. 

For the ones that are not familiar with Osamu Tezuka, to understand his influence it's recommended to visit the website kimbawlion.com or take a look at the images that are collected here on the left. Even the images speak for themselves, what we see here is an early work of Tezuka, the manga Jungle Emperor (ジャングル大帝 Jungle Taite) also known as Kimba The White Lion that was created back in the fifties and serialized in Japan in Manga Shōnen magazine and later  became the first color animated television series created in the country. 

On the other hand we see, The Lion King is a Walt Disney production from 1994 and how it clearly 'takes inspiration' from Tezuka's piece. The Lion King is still to this day the highest grossing animation film made with traditional 2D animation and it seats in the fifth position in the overall animation ranking, behind 3D animation titles by Pixar.





JUMPING by Osamu Tezuka


Jumping (1984) is one of those art house films that were produced at Mushi Pro. I first saw this piece in the Spanish La2 channel, TV documentary program "la noche Tematica" special issue about Japanese manga and anime, back in 1998. This film together with other shorts is available on DVD.


The Art Of Osamu Tezuka

Helen McCarthy (Author), Osamu Tezuka (Illustrator), Katsuhiro Otomo (Foreword)
Hardcover: 272 pages
Publisher: Abrams ComicArts; Har/DVD edition (October 1, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0810982498

Buy it on Amazon:
US / ES / JP


Tezuka Osamu Short films on DVD

Director: Tezuka Osamu
Language: Japanese
Run Time: 151 minutes
Buy them on Amazon
US / ES / JP

Dragon Tattoo trailer






The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo trailer is here! David Fincher's  feel bad movie of the year is coming out on December 12 and the marketing campaign has already started! Few months ago the teaser hit the web and this time is the turn of an almost 4 minutes long trailer. Kellehouse is also involved with Fincher this time in the promotional poster art, keeping on with the nice work done for The Social Network.


Jim Henson 75th birthday



September 24, 2011 marks Jim Hensons 75th birthday and Google has honoured him with a beautiful doodle. I have always enjoyed the creations of Jim Hensons Company so much, I remembered specially the Fraggle Rock and later on the Muppets Tonight. I'm still discovering the original Muppets Show and many more of Jim's original creations. Of course Sesame Street was an afternoon after-class classic in Spain too when we were children.

Rick Springfield's THE BEAT OF THE LIVE DRUM directed by David Fincher


Today I found a DVD of a 1985 Rick Springfield concert directed by David Fincher. It's always nice to see the first works of such talented directors. I'm waiting for the day in which David Fincher joins Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry, Chris Cunningham and others in the Directors Label series of DVD that showcase the early works of this directors.


Rick Springfield - The Beat of the Live Drum
Directed by David Fincher
Language: English
Studio: Image Entertainment
DVD Release Date: July 2, 2002
Run Time: 71 minutes

Available on Amazon:
US / ES / JP

Defense first



As NBA lockout goes on, the official website is empty of contet related to actual players but full of videos from the past. Take a look at this one, a tribute to Dennis Rodman , who just was elected to NBA Hall of Fame last August.

The Tree Of Life





Terrence Malick's last movie is finaly in Spain. I went to see it last night. It's a  kind of movie that after watching it seems that you haven't seen a movie, that you have been there in Malick's mind for more than two hours, looking at what he sees. I still digesting it.

The Evolution of Video Game Controllers


Great poster from Pop Chart Lab that showcases the evolution of game controllers. Click here for full size picture.

Jonathan Brand's 1:1 papercraft Mustang


Via Make Blog I see that artist Jonathan Brand is building a 1:1 scale papercraft of 1969 Mustang. That reminds me that my Howl's Moving Castle papercraft is still unfinished...

AMAZON.ES















AMAZON Spain is here!

"let's be thankful we have commerce, buy more, buy more now and be happy."
-THX1138 by George Lucas

The welcome letter from Jeff Bezos:


The Simpsons Bolognium



I found this Simpsons clip hilarious and I decided to edit it in Spanish from Spain and Mexico and in original English to compare the jokes.

2011 NIKE MAG


It seems that Back To The Future is going strong this days. Last month Gabarino stores commercial  broke in the internet and now Michael J. Fox Foundation an Nike joined forces to bring back the shoe that Michael himself used in the second part of the beloved trilogy. 

Beginning on September 8, 2001, 1500 pairs of the 2011 NIKE MAG shoes will be auctioned on ebay. An auction benefiting the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research. Check out the official back4thefuture site and if you have a couple of bucks go straight  to ebay.

Sadly as you can see in the trailer, the 2011 NIKE MAGs won't have powerlaces. We will have to wait until 2015 for the release of the most anticipated shoe ever. What is almost for sure is that something is boiling in the Nike Innovation Kitchen. Above the the patent filled last May by Tinker Hatfield and other designers at Nike. Visit freshnessmag.com for more.

Moritz Waldemeyer



I just discovered a website were I found this video of Moritz Waldemeyer explaining his work among other great guys. We did a workshop with him and Yvonne Laurysen few years ago organized by teachers in GEP from architecture school. I remember it as a big crazy disaster workshop. Three surrealist days were technology and improvisation merged resulting in this.
Moritz Waldemeyer (b.1974) is a British/German designer and engineer. He trained as an engineer at King's College London and completed his Masters degree in 2001. Since then, he has collaborated with many of the world’s top architects and fashion designers including Ron Arad, Zaha Hadid and Hussein Chalayan. His work is a fusion of technology, art, fashion and design.
source: wikipedia

Shuffling BLOG


I'm teacher assistant this year in Architecture School so I will be teaming with Atxu Amann, Marta Maiz, Mariasun Salgado, Gonzalo Pardo, Liana Grigoriadou in the DAI 1; Drawing-One class of first year students in Madrid Architecture School. This years course is called Shuffing and we are gonna spent the last 15min trying to learn to shuffle with LMFAO. The Blog that will cover the works of  the students from September to December is this: shuffling-dai1.blogspot.com

NASA the Sagan series



Yesterday someone posted this great video on facebook. What make me think of using the NASAs "A" for the logo of the blog that I'm designing.

Coke CM Oasis



The NASA video remembered me a Coke commercial. Maybe it's because both deal with human nature kind of problems. I going to add a tag about this in this blog: Human nature. I'm sure there are gonna be many entries related to that topic. We are humans after all.

Arduino Nano

I just bought an Arduino Nano board. We are looking forward to making cool stuff with it.


"Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It's intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments."http://arduino.cc/