Olympic mascots become self-ware and go on a killing spree around London!

Wenlock - Olympic mascot

Ha ha, only kidding they do look like they were sent back from the future by Skynet though ;)

So finally the London 2012 Olympic Mascots by have been revealed. As you would expect from the 2012 committee, they are not really what we expected! Far from cute & cuddly they are cold & hard, more like a Henry Moore sculpture than a kids toy.

Designed by London agency iris, I read that they only cost “a few thousand pounds”, I think they probably cost a bit more than that! Probably just trying to play it down after the £400,000 logo fiasco.

Mandeville - Olympic mascot

I feel for it’s designer though, whatever you create you’re going to get people ripping the shit out of it (myself included, sorry..) It’s an impossible brief, design by committee jobs always are.. I actually like it quite a lot, everything from the neck down looks awesome, great proportions, clean lines, sweet as in my book. Problem is though, why oh why that eye Olympic Committee?

You can tell by the descriptions on iris’ design boards, that the eye was supposed to be a camera lens, but at some point they decided to stick a cartoon eye on there which looks totally at odds to the rest of the angular design. Pixar have already shown with characters like WALL•E, or even their original anglepoise lamp short, that with the limitations of something ‘less human’, you can get a lot more unique character out of it. Feels like it was almost good, but they fucked it up at the last hurdle..

I actually took part in the original pitch too!

My olympic mascot pitch

Only fair to put my own work up for comparison/criticism. My idea was unsurprisingly the sock monster route. Rather than selling preformed shiny toys to the kiddies, I wanted to make ‘kits’ which were essentially a pair of long sport socks with instructions of how to make your own mascot from scratch! Thought it would be nice thing to do in school as a crafty lesson, give them chance to be creative and add a bit personal flair to their own mascot. The agency I was working for poo poo’d it because it wasn’t ‘commercially viable’, said the committee would never go for it as they needed to pay for the Olympics through some mass-produced piece of Chinese plastic..

Charlie Brooker on Microsoft’s new campaign

Charlie Brooker on Microsoft's new campaign

Charlie Brooker is on form with this article about Microsoft’s new campaign and his disliking of Mac evangelists. You can see the ad he’s on about here »

“It’s so terrible, it induces an entirely new emotion: a blend of vertigo, disgust, anger and embarrassment which I like to call “shitasmia”. It not only creates this emotion: it defines it. It’s the most shitasmic cultural artefact in history.”

So many brilliant quotes:

“Everyone knows Windows is awful. Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it’s there, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

The Beatles – Rockband

The Beatles - Rockband

You’ve got to see this awesome cinematic teaser for the new Rockband game, Beatles edition. It’s starts off pretty good, nice 2D animation, well stylised. Then the boys parachute down, like the Lemmings, into a proper bonkers psychedelic wonderland, I loved it.

Directed by Pete Candeland of Passion Pictures, the guy who did the Gorillaz videos with Jamie Hewlett.

It’s a shame the actual game isn’t stylised the same..

Via: yewknee.

Abelha Cachaça

Abelha Cachaça

There’s nothing better than a free drink and on Saturday I had plenty :) Courtesy of my friends Ant & Hal, who are launching a new brand of Cachaça in the UK – Abelha. For those who don’t know, Cachaça is a sugar cane based spirit (a little bit like rum, but not rum) from Brasil. It’s the main ingredient of the world famous Caipirinha cocktail. I’m so jealous, wish I had my own brand of booze.

It was a fancy dress do and we took the Brazilian theme to it’s logical conclusion by going in pubeless naked suits… Check out the photos of the event here »

The Brazilian crew in our naked outfits

Check out the stop motion how to make a caipirinha cocktail animation Hal made:

Design your own Tequila bottle

This was of those rare times where I saw an online ad and really felt the need to click it. Come on, design your own tequila bottle and have it put into production, who wouldn’t want to take part it that? Well maybe I’m a bit biased with my recent Margarita addiction. Wait a minute, just seen that it’s not a competition… you have to pay them to print your design on a bottle, $225 no less! Not sure if I really want to design my own tequila bottle quite as much any more…

Return to Tastebuddyland

Tastebuddyland

The campaign site for Robinsons SquashReturn to Tastebuddyland caught my eye while looking through B-Reel’s portfolio of work. Love the uber-rich photograhy mixed with the colourful illustrations. The characters were designed by Aardman Animations, but not quite as nice as Adrian Johnson’s original work on the campaign, although they have kept his type treatment which was a good move. I admit, probably more suited to the young age of the target audience though.