Brandon Inada's Blog

Check out this fun, Space Invaders-inspired tee by artist Neil Gregory:

A Simple Plan

The T-shirt’s available at Threadless.com; the wall decal is on sale at blik!  (Check out my post here for more on blik.)

Stumbled upon these laughing, frog-like origami creatures by Joseph Wu:

Joseph Wu's Origami Warai

A professional origami artist who hails from Vancouver, Wu calls these amazingly expressive, adorable, little figures Warai, which means “laughter” in Japanese.

Here are a few of my favorites:

A Red Warai Waving Happily

A Green Warai With Open Arms

A Very Happy Blue Warai

More Of These Happy Fellows

Awesome!

To see more of these cute little creatures on Flickr (as well as some of his newer creations and experiments), click here.

Visit Joseph Wu’s official site to see more of his amazing work.

Stumbled onto this interesting, manga/anime-inspired Super Mario Bros. piece by artist Saejin Oh while researching my previous post:

A preview of the entire "Super F-ed Up Bros. World 1-1" piece.

It seems that the original Super Mario Bros. World 1-1 continues to be a source of inspiration for artists everywhere (in this case, South Korea).

Just to warn you, the entire piece is a bit graphic in terms of it’s depictions of highly stylized, over the top violence; to view the entire piece, violent bits and all, click here to go to the artist’s page on deviantART.

(I love the way he incorporates the title screen and card and the cool Starman effect midway through.)

You can check out more of his stuff at his work blog here.

Here we have a really cool piece of video game-related embroidery by Elsa Olsson who hails from Sweden:

World 1-1 Embroidery

That’s right – the entire first level of the original 8-bit Super Mario Bros., Goombas, Power Up Mushrooms, and all!

Embroidered Goombas

World 1-1 - A Work In Progress

The project, begun in September of 2008, is still a work in progress; once completed (Elsa hopes to finish the project by spring of this year), the entire piece will measure 244 by 16 inches – a little over 20 feet long!

Super Mario Bros. World 1-1 Cross Stitch

Cross Stitch Pattern For World 1-1

Earlier this year, Elsa posted a short video clip of herself (and her kitty Klara) showing the current status of the project:

Check out her blog at http://supermariobrosworld1-1.blogspot.com for more about the project!

(The site is in Swedish; I used Google Translate to read her earlier posts…)

Artist Travis Pitts came up with this fun T-Shirt design (“We’ve Got Some Work To Do Now”) featuring Velma Dinkley of Scooby-Doo fame and the titular Great Dane chewing on what appears to be some vanquished monster’s (Frankenstein’s Monster?) hand:

I love the older, battle-hardened, post-apocalyptic version of Velma shown above.

The Mystery Machine (now Misery Machine, apparently) has been refitted with side-mounted chainsaws for hacking away at undead armies.

(Wonder what the giant wooden stake up top is for?)

Also, Shaggy, Fred, and Daphne are no more it seems.

What a great concept!

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Here’s what the artist himself had to say about the design:

Sticking with my favorite theme of heroic girls … and injecting realism or plausibilty [sic] to silly pop culture icons …, I knew I wanted to make a certain teen detective [and] her canine companion into the sole survivors of a Monsterpocalypse for the threadless loves Horror contest.

Everyone knows that it’s always the timid, quiet, second-string female character that gets the dramatic arc and has the wits and skill to survive most horror movies. I struggled for days trying to come up with a semi-realistic interpretation of this toughened, nerdy survivor-type gal- until I remembered I was dating one, and asked her to model for it.

Fun stuff!

Click here to buy the shirt over at Threadless.com and to check out more of the artist’s designs!