Red Neck Harry Potter
YouTuber DemonFlyingFox is an AI artist who creates videos that bring pop culture figures to zenith of their narrative purposes.
Oh what AI has wrought.
Cool Japanese Stationary
You haven’t lived until you’ve gone to a stationary shop in Japan. They have the most amazing products, pens, papers, calligraphy, notebooks, binders, pencil cases, sharpeners, and gadgets.
JetPens has a Youtube channel that goes over a lot of amazing products available on Jetpens.com
TeamLabs
I’ve written about Teamlab’s amazing work before. Here’s one of their new creations – a light sculpture.
A singing horse
Mariam Marks does some amazing videos with face paint. Here’s one of her doing a song from the movie Spirt, Stallion of the Cimarron.
Utopia Must Fall
PixelJam has done a fantastic job re-inventing the old vector graphics game style in a new and creative way with their upcoming Utopia Must Fall (Steam). Add to that some stellar soundtrack, fun gameplay, and deep progression path; and it’s kind of what retro arcade reboots should be.
Even better, you can play it online for free.
Anime Studios
Anime has grown in popularity. Just like the US that has many animation houses (ex: Disney, Hanna Barbera, Cartoon Network, Warner Bros, etc), there are many Japanese studios and many are known for their particular styles and genres.
Arikendo’s video is informative because it gives you a great overview of all the major studios. There is information about the founder, leaders, styles they are known for, business models, and other tidbits such as working conditions at these studios. I found some studios and series I wouldn’t have even known about.
Some tidbits: the story of a WIT worker that claimed working 391 hours in one month (over 13 hour days, 7 days a week for a whole month). KyoAni that treats it’s employees really well and has high profits from selectively producing titles from their annual Kyoani awards. Or the sad story of a worker at A-1 Pictures that died after working around 600 hours a month (20 hours a day, 7 days a week).
David Attenborough Narrating your life – or your cat’s adventures
Replicate built a GPT-4 powered vision + ElevenLabs python script so you can star in your own Planet Earth episode narrated by David Attenborough. (Code: https://github.com/cbh123/narrator)
AI Raspberry Pi Cat Detection constantly monitors your feline friend and immediately sends you an email the moment it makes mischief. You can also configure the AI narrator to keep you posted on your cat’s activities
MelGeek MojoPad Numpad
MelGeek has created this beautiful numpad that reminds me of some of the cool, clean designs coming from Teenage Engineering.
It looks like it would pairs with their Mojo68 and Mojo84 mechanical keyboards really well.
I’m glad we’re still seeing some beautiful industrial design going on. While Apple has done a good job elevating computing devices, I think we have a TON of room yet to go. I think some of the older pc’s from the 50’s and 60’s were things of beauty we still haven’t reached.
You Can Succeed, Too!
Did you know Japan made 50’s style musicals? I was recently introduced to Kimi Mo Shusse Ga Dekiru – 君も出世ができる – or it’s English title: ‘You Can Succeed, Too!’. It follows the adventures of some aspiring young professionals trying to make it in the business world that’s split between tradition and modernity. Even though the movie is 60 years old, if you’ve ever worked in corporate world you’ll recognize each of the characters: the over-zealous corporate climber, the guy just trying to do the right thing, the aging boss, and the up and coming VP trying to apply the latest corporate techniques learned abroad.
It has some absolutely AMAZING set and costume designs, the music is composed by a famous avant-garde composer and famous jazz performers to the lyrics of a renown Japanese poet Shuntaro Tanikawa. The story is even more fun if you understand the traditions embedded in Japanese corporate culture.
The whole thing is astounding, super-catchy, and fun. I’m shocked it hasn’t gotten more recognition elsewhere.
You can watch it here on Rarefilm and at the Internet Archive. I only wish it were available on DVD/Bluray somewhere.
I found out about this gem from the guys over at Important Cinema Club podcast when they broadcast on Twitch (and then were promptly banned for a copyright strike)
Fifth Element – 1950’s style
Abandoned Films is back with another trippy, AI-generated movie trailer. This time, they took the 1997 sci-fi classic The Fifth Element and applied a 1950’s big-screen aesthetic.
While definitely not perfect, these AI generated trailers are amazing ways to generate and explore artistic concepts.