MRTHOMASWHITEHEAD

SATURNO

admin — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 10:59:43 +0000

Production stills from a short 16mm piece I made in 2 days with Cesca Dvorak and Phil Thompson.

Next SAY YES PARTY- With Stevie Kotey!

admin — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:56:50 +0000

More details, pics of halloween and a live mix from Dissident’s Andy Blake here!

SAY YES HALLOWEEN PROMO

admin — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:05:41 +0000

This is kind of daft, and i’ve banged on about this night elsewhere, but people seem to be liking it so here it is…

RAC Website

admin — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 08:55:32 +0000

Full credit to Rupert Dixon at Chemistry for leading the art direction and design process of this one, but I have spent a considerable amount of this year up in Norwich working up layouts and tying down the style guides and so am glad to see it up.
Lovely place Norwich. Great record shops

RAC WEBSITE

SAY YES HALLOWEEN PARTY

admin — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:28:11 +0000

A poster I did for the big Say Yes Halloween Party! Click through to see the daft promo video…

Orko Readymade

admin — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 08:35:34 +0000

Original Cel from He Man and Yellow pressing of “Phantasm”

“Kick” Banners

admin — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:57:55 +0000

Produced at Chemistry the challenge was making the movements of the silhouetted figures register so we could randomise their response to the ball. The keying and editing/ crossfading was done in FCP, and then outputted to flash.

Islamic paradox

admin — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:37:45 +0000

Had to redraw this artifact I saw in the giftshop of the fantastic Islamic Arts Museum in Kuala Lumpa, later contemplating it on a beach with no computer. I still for the life of me can’t work it out, no matter how I look at it. Each diagonal row and column has ten upturned faces, and yet the total number of faces is 99.

SAVAGE BEACH MIX 1

admin — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 19:55:54 +0000

A mix prepared with my friend Alex Torrance. Well not a mix in the sense of a “seamless passage of sound” so much as a mix as “statement of intent for future edits” or even “a load of Tina, Genesis and ZZ Top mixed with some Balearic disco on a Sunday afternoon”. read more and download here

Because you can’t Put Ears on Everything

admin — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 18:10:27 +0000

Kanye West’s enthusiasm for the design of high end toys has rather overshadowed his predecessor Pharrell William’s almost Warholian zeal for the brightly coloured, cartoonish and iconic. Predating Kanye’s Takashi Murakami collaborations, Pharrell’s work with Nigo for his Bathing Ape imprint pushed the mainstram rap world’s patronage of brightly coloured, blocky cartoon animas. Pharrell went on to bring Western cartoons Eastward, releasing a Spongebob Squarepants “Bapesta” trainer

“What I love about SpongeBob,” Pharrell says, “is that he’s basically a six-year-old.”

Pharell may well indeed feel some affinity with character’s childish exuberence, but it is a canny association nonetheless. He is not alone in the world of commercial fashion in his appreciation. i-D magazine has used its space for a full bleed Kaws adaptation of the character and since made him a kind of joint coverstar with Lily Allen. In incrementally higher fashion circles, the designer Marc Jacobs went so far as to have the yellow chap tattooed on his arm- justifying it by saying:

“I just think the colors of that particular cartoon are really beautiful and really sophisticated and interesting,”

Aside from the colour, a few degrees paler than Simpson, Spongebob Squarepants as Design Icon has one massive, massive advantage over his cartoon friends. He is, by definition, square, and thus fits the dimensions of all sorts of modular spaces onscreen, and more profitably, off*. Added to this, this lack of defining outline means that he fits the shape of almost any other space, with a flexibility of scale. As the leading image shows, even as the yellow space around his features grows, he never takes on the creepy “small features” look.
Bart Simpson is yellow, and instantly recognisable. You could, in fact, argue that Spongebob is a (d?)evolution of the Simpson brat. But without his zigzag buzzcut and precociously furrowed brow, he loses nearly all of his character. Take Mickey’s trademark ears off, and you have a face indistinct from any other cartoon characters of his era. Whilst the ears have been a powerful marketing identifer for cheap, fun trinkets and souveniers, in terms of their application to desirable consumer products- clothes, trainers etc, their vestigiality becomes a nuisance.

Fossils of sponges exist from 580 million years ago. They clearly have a simplicity and malleability which is difficult to supersede.

*You could even argue that in the era of greenwash, the fact that his products tesselate neatly is a plus in transportation and packaging terms