Classic silly Symphony produced by the Walt Disney Studio and a slightly different MGM feature with them Three Little Pigs.

‘Spot on’, slang for well done, perfect, or right on. It describes the following ‘Back for More‘ by Jazzy Jeff & Ayah more or less, a must download if you love some summer vibes once in a while.

Remember Jazzy Jeff from back in the days? Oh, and I get the irony of it all … summertime, yeah right.

Gotta catch 'em all.

PES is back with a new short video called “The Deep.” PES has been an OOTB favorite for a while now and a must see. Enjoy.

I finally folded and went for a PS3. After years of SNES I finally got a piece of modern technology fitted right under my TV.

Right now where hammering through GT5, but will pretty soon be needing some much needed diversification when it comes to the games department, so all tips are welcome.

You can find me under AndrewVassallo on the playstation network btw. Holla!

So a documentary on Wikileaks was released by Sweden’s public service television SVT. This one-hour documentary takes us through the history of WikiLeaks. Besides this the Swedes also followed Editor-in-Chief Julian Assange for several months starting from the past summer. It gives us a great firsthand report on the inside story: Where is the secretive organization heading? Who is Assange: champion of freedom, spy or rapist? What are his objectives? What are the consequences for the internet? Stuff to ponder upon once you’ve seen the report above.

through StupidDope

I’ve written about this in the past. Its an old fascination of mine: WWII and other animated propaganda from the 1940s onwards. Bored with the regular assignments at University and willing to do discover something unknown or at least have a good time while spending hours behind your typewriter doing research I even wrote a paper on the matter.

The following are a couple of those WWII and cold war propaganda films released by well-known studios. Household names which often are associated with fluffy clouds and gumdrop smiles. Kids stuff and nothing what you’d expect.  The “hidden messages” in them, the way the music plays an essential part, … is really interesting to analyse. I have spent hours looking at such animations and its surprising to see some well-known characters do their part for Uncle Sam.

Besides that its a discovery (for many), reading up on the matter, when you realise the big studios where able to survive the war by taking on these assignments.

Japoteurs, by Technicolor short films based upon the DC Comics character of Superman.

Hitler’s Children Education For Death, a Walt Disney production.

Even the Russians loved their cartoons.

Want to see more of this stuff, just run a search in YouTube on banned cartoons or cartoon propaganda and discover the dark side of animation throughout the 1940s to 60s.

Got any favorites of your own, please share

Couple of weeks left till FACTS, the biggest comics, sci fi & anime festival of the Benelux. Never been there before, but curious to go and have a look Have a feeling it will be straight out of space!

through NerdCore

Now for the people who do not know, Radiolab is where science meets culture and information. Each episode is an investigation, a patchwork of people, sounds, stories and experiences centered around One Big Idea and you can download their podcasts through itunes for instance. Worth having a listen just as their latest episode on Words, which have the power to shape the way we think and feel. You can tune in to the Words episode here. Out

Don't forget us over on facebook if you'd like to stay out!

As promised, part 2 offf what we saw the passed days in Paris. You can read all about the first day overhere.

Friday – Big beamers keep on beaming

An experienced person is just someone that’s made a lot of mistakes. Hoss is very experienced. This is your opportunity to listen to Hoss do his first ever ‘acoustic set’ ? An intimate sharing of lessons learned, punctuated by the odd bit of work, including his latest collaboration with Rob Chiu, and a very simple explanation of how to be profitable on Apple’s App Store. . That’s what the description stated and I regret that we only caught Hoss Gifford‘s presentation halfway true.

Pity as his Things I have learned was really interesting. Not a shocking keynote but a collection of insights & stories that anyone who’s good in what he does should already have experienced but it was nice as I considered it a little fresh-up course.

“Don’t do anything for free and do not give discounts to new clients as you will never taste the same afterwards” is the one that stuck to me the most. An ongoing discussion I have had with a couple of people lately and his comparison was great. “Its like going to the supermarket, buying 6 yoghurts for the price of 4 and afterwards not finding the same deal.” A wise & bold statement. One to ponder upon amongst others!

Hilarious was also the fact he made an iphone app which has paid his lunch every day. An app that gives you the time, more or less

“Unicorns farting glitter metal band names”

He was soon followed by Tara Mcpherson. I bet you have seen work by her already! A great artist besides being a hot girl with tats (something you do not see a lot on stage at #offf) I am all for more girl designers, … taking the stage next time around

Tara is an artist based out of New York City. Creating art about people and their odd ways, her characters seem to exude an idealized innocence with a glimpse of hard earned wisdom in their eyes. She exhibits her paintings and serigraphs in fine art galleries all over the world. Named the crown princess of poster art by ELLE Magazine, she has created numerous gig posters for rock bands such as Beck, Modest Mouse, and Melvins. Her array of art also includes creating toys with companies like Kidrobot, Dark Horse, and Toy2R, painted comics and covers for DC Vertigo, advertising and editorial illustrations for companies such as Wyden+Kennedy and Spin Magazine, and teaching a class at Parsons in NYC. A lot of stuff you can know her from and worth a look at

The program states that Firstborn came after her? Can not really remember from the top of my head what they showed us, so I will just refer to their website

Knife Party I do remember vividly. It was the point were a little voice inside my head yelled “finally” as our visual appetite had grown more hungry. ‘Coalition of the Willing‘ is an animated film about an online war against global warming in a post-Copenhagen world. It was written by Tim Rayner, who is the brains behind the campaign in this digital struggle against global warming following the failed summit. Bare in mind that the following animation is a collaboration between lots and lots of people who ech took upon themselves a part of the film.

Universal Everything continued to nurture our longing for great stuff. These are the guys who did the international MTV rebrand which means that all you guys have seen their stuff passby. I will let the following clip speak for itself but google them!

MTV / International Rebrand Overview from Universal Everything on Vimeo.

They also did some short reveal films for AOL’s relaunch for instance. These got used in web video, mobile, digital campaigns and outdoor LED displays. Nice stuff to say the least

You can find more stuff on their Vimeo which is worth going through.

Goodby & Silverstein are the big boys who took the stage. They are the agency who brought us the awesome HP ads with Jigga, Gwen Stefani, Jerry Seinfeld, … But they also did this campaign/viral for Häagen-Dazs in order to draw attention on their bee program. Hilarious Homebees

Then something totally different followed: SoSo Limited. These guys take word clouds to a master level as they are specialised in interactive installation and audiovisual performance. They create immersive works that play on the immediacy of live media by creating word art by the analysis of what is said. I can not describe it all that well bt the following clips will emlighten you I guess. The first one for instance is a four minute edit remixing the ministerial debates from the UK.

Sosolimited – Prime Numerics (Taster) from FutureEverything on Vimeo.

Prime Numerics (3 of 10) from Sosolimited on Vimeo.

We ended our Friday at the Wooster Collective meet-up near de Quai de Jemappe by the way. Great to meet Marc & Sara amongst others IRL. We we’re amongst great company to say the least

Saturday – The return

We had to skip the festival Saturday. Other stuff called. Pity as I heard it was the best day. Crowd seemed enthusiastic and some of the previous organisational problems belonged to the past.

That being said, it is a great festival with a good vibe, but we have some liner notes for the band

• communicate better, it is clear that this is not the organisations cup of tea
• queues ain’t good, if you say you can pick up passes earlier stick to it (we travelled a day earlier to the venue for nothing!)
• good WiFi = a must have
• more sanitary provisions
• venues? how about signposting these or at least getting your organization to know where what is
• check peoples tickets, we met a couple of people who got in for free where we paid full price #sad

Btw, its 2010 and we’re in a post-digital time as you all know. Organising means to get all digital communication streamlined can be great. Tell people what tags to use for their pictures, … and give them the tools at the venue in order to share their experiences.

Do not want to end negative though as I had a great time and will recommend the conference to anyone who’s interested in this kind of stuff. Maybe we should finish with the end titles for the sponsors. Yet another great piece of work! See you next year so Out.

Oh yeah, one more thing. Thanks to On Point & Eckelwood for the company and great talks/laughs thoughout the days.

You can still check part one of our report overhere.

Captain’s log, Saturday 26th June. Returning from Offf 2010 in Paris. Thalys is on time. Mission accomplished.

Wednesday – Check-in for a day in the Sun

Travelled a day earlier to Paris as I had some spots & shops I had been meaning to visit for a while. This meant an early wake-up call in order to catch the Thalys. The call of sneaker, book, … stores & great street art was loud. I could smell it in the air

Arriving in Paris we first headed to our shelter: Hidden Hotel. One of the people behind this concept lodging was so kind to invite us for a stay in their great little hotel while in Paris. Its located in the heart of Paris, a small side street, just 800m or so from the Arc de Triomphe. I can only recommend a stay as its something I had never seen before. I recon I might right a more indepth review on it one of these days

Once we dropped of our lugage and put on some better clothing (hot as hell in Paris passed days) we were offf for some sightseeing and urban discoveries. You can find some pictures overhere and yes, I took way to little pics this time

Thursday – Queuing for beginners

Two hours! Deux heures! Dos whatever! Yes, the amount of time we spent queuing in the shade/sun that Thursday morning. Boring as hell by the way and the reason we missed the opening note But no worries as we were in!

In order to kick offf in style I suggest you have a look at the great opening credits. It gives you an overview of who we saw come by.

OFFF Paris 2010 Titles from OFFF on Vimeo.

Media Temple Animation from (HKI)™ HelloHikimori™ on Vimeo.

HELLOHIKIMORI was the first to really kick off the cool stuff for us. Warming up I guess as we had to get into the right set of mind for the next few days.

I was also looking forward to seeing the guys from H5, mentioned their Oscar winning Logorama before, but heard they chickened out I think they might just have got stuck in Cannes with the train strike which was going on or something else. Too bad they couldn’t continue. Early lunch so!

Craig Ward drew our attention right from the start after a long break in the sun. I was intrigued by his bizarre and beautiful typeface experiments. Check out his site Words Are Pictures to see and learn more, including some really impressive letterpress illustrations.

In his presentation, Craig demonstrated his continuing education in typography while tracing his evolution from designer to typographer to story teller. Fancy words to state he does cool stuff with lettering

Dixon Baxi followed in what I call a promo talk. Hey lets show another showreel and then will show another one. Followed by ooohs & aaahs! Or not. Mainly different idents they did for some television stations, … But nice work to say the least and great entertainment.

DixonBaxi | Five ‘Food Chain’ from DixonBaxi on Vimeo.

DixonBaxi | Five USA ‘Eye Contact’ from DixonBaxi on Vimeo.

We Walk from Christopher Hewitt on Vimeo.

The guys did end with We Walk, which is a short film that stumbles into the journey of a young girl desperate to leave the city in search of isolation and in turn, sleep. Shot in LA and Palm Springs, the film is based on a new poem by Writer, Brett Darling.

Later on we got to see Marc & Sara from Wooster Collective take the stage. Great talk for a fascinated crowd. A crowd that does not follow their blog/site as I had seen everyting they showed us previously I bet they got a new following after this.

They followed what I like to call one prick & 3 French guys (Neville Brody, the British graphic designer together with the people from Bazooka). Some old school fellas who were going to set us young kids straight. They taught they could shock us with ‘pornoghraphic images’ … #fail & out of luck guys. You all get the figurative ball sack as you sucked monkey balls.

Just headed on out from there so. Enough is enough

Stay tuned though as tomorrow morning part II with some stuff that’s really worth a view & read. My sincere apologies if its all a bit chaotic but there really is too much stuff to share Out.

Ok, you saw the post title and taught ‘what the f***?!‘. Guess the stats will peak with this post. I’ve been meaning to share this feature, which goes deep into the porn industries strategies and recent changes/shifts, for a while. Its vanguard correspondent Christof Putzel who takes us on a behind the scenes look at the adult entertainment industry, examining its history and impact on the ever-changing face of new media.

From the impact piracy has, to the way porn is promoted through affiliated marketing. It all has its place in this documentary. Hell, they even have their own seminars/summits, where people discuss iPhone porn apps and stuff. I had never stood still to the fact that porn hit twitter for instance. Or how about the fact they are also building communities. Now let me sit back and see my stats go mad. Out.

(through the purveyor of cool)