Maxim Zhestkov is a 22 year old director and designer from Ulyanovsk, Russia. He loves the universe, infinity, black and white, space and long walks on the beach. Very impressive 3d experiments and some pretty cool toys coming out from Kaching Brands…

And for you 3d tech geeks out there, from what I can gather from his Flickr comments, he is using 3DS Max with V-ray and some Next Limit RealFlow magic to make these. Very impressive use of all three packages…

The Cintiq 20WSX arrived at my doorstep last week and I have had an enjoyable weekend giving Wacom’s latest screen tablet a run for its money. The 20WSX is the widescreen middle child of the Cintiq family, not as big and 4:3 as its big brother 21UX and yet much more applicable than its little 12WX kid brother. It was just launched in December 2007 along with the 12WX, so it is a brand new product. With its 1680 x 1080 resolution, 1024 levels of pressure sensitivity and fully 180 degree rotational surface, we are talking the magic stuff of illustrator dreams here.

Hit the jump for my full review & pics. (more…)

Vinylpulse’s Proto Monday shows off Nathan Jurevicius’ new toy for Munky King, and was based on a short he did with MTV. Comes with a removable crown, bendy tail and his very own floating cloud. Vinylpulse write that he will come in three editions; Earth Monkey (600 pcs), Fire Monkey (150 pcs) and SDCC ‘08 Exclusive Metal Monkey (150 pcs). It looks truly amazing, hop on over to VinylPulse to see more pics. 

 Original Fake is a shop / brand collaboration between graffiti artist legend Kaws and Medicom Toy in which his double-x eyed character art is the main theme. Their site doesn’t seem to feature most of the products, so head over to Commonwealth to get a decent overview of what you can get your scrawny designer ass into. Provided you can cough up the dough that is… $65 t-shirts? Remind me to become a legend.

Check out Kaws’ blog too for interesting stuff from his life and studio.  

So you thought the Ultrasquid was some ignoramus that does not read… Wrong!

Our first book in this series is Scott McCloud’s “Understanding Comics - The Invisible Art” . You would think that it is merely a book for people interested in drawing their own comics, however it is so much more than that.  In fact, it is actually a historical and almost philosophical overview of comics in general. He dissects the subject’s nature down to its core functions, and explains how and why it works so well as a narrative medium. This could sound like dry material, but Scott McClouds ingenius method of telling the story via cartoon form and his excellent way of portraying his message makes it a delightful read. 

The squid had a great time reading this one, it threw all of its tentacles high in the air after it finished reading it, so I think it is safe to say it is highly recommended read both for comic writers and enthusiasts. 

Fightstar just released their new single, Floods and along with it comes a pretty impressive video where London is sent sinking underneath giant waves. While London is a great place most of the time, I can easily understand how images of thousands of liters of water swallowing it up whole could seem like a nice thought once in a while. At first I thought they’d robbed a bank to afford the cgi, but apparently it is from the $30 million blockbuster Flood.

See it in QT High here 
YouTube after the jump …

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 Once in a while there comes a time when you get a bit bored with seeing the same stuff redone in motion graphics, and then a video like Pierre Michel’s ”Fire” comes along and blows your mind entirely away. This is mostly due to its sheer simplicity, but ok, I’ll be honest, it’s probably because fire is awesome.Fire is available in HD too…

North Kingdom do it again..

While most of the Coke Zero campaign has been an embarrassing attempt at joking around with men’s main interests ( explosions, explosions, explosions and oh yeah; hot women), they have finally got it right with this exciting web game that features awesome 3d, excellent videos and a great narrative sense. Some of the games were a bit meh and confusing, but the pretty ladies make up for it I guess. I didn’t understand half of it as the first version is in German, but apparently we’re only days away from an English version… In the meantime, have a look at how it was made.