Its time we did a massive overhaul to our website as it's been going for seven years now! We have now moved everything over to www.espvisuals.co.uk where everything has resumed as normal. Please update your bookmarks!
"Pingtime is a table tennis concept that captivates the players in an augmented reality world, where surfaces bend and fluorescent balls send ripples of electricity.
Developed by Sergiu Doroftei, Bogdan Susma, Ion Cotenescu, and Silviu Badea for Rokolectiv, an arts and electronic music festival that takes place every spring in Bucharest, Romania, the table features a surface that visually reacts to the match in real-time. As the players become more immersed in the game, Pingtime examines whether computer animations are challenging their reaction speed."
So what do you do when you are finishing off the first edit of
your book and your editor rings you up wanting to know the title of the book you’re
working on and you have yet to name it? A) You tell your editor the truth: Dude
I 'm not even finished writing the damn thing. I'll get back to you in a week
or three. B) Say the first thing that pops into your head because you're a week
over due handing the first draft in and you don't want to piss your editor off
further.
Durarara!! started out in 2004 as a light
novel by Ryohgo Narita (he is also responsible for creating gems like
Baccano! and Bow Wow! Two Dog Night) there are currently 12 volumes out and it
is ongoing. In 2009 Durarara!! was adapted into manga and is illustrated
by Akiyo Satorigi. Finally in 2010 it
was adapted into anime, it ran for 26 episodes: well 24 episodes and 2 OAV to
be precise.
Durarara!! is set in Tokyo in the
district of Ikebukaro or Bukuro for short. Mikado Ryugamine longs to spice
up his dull life in the country and decides to go to high school in the urban jungle
that is Ikebukuro. There he meets up with his elementary school friend
Masaomi Kida;who has been living in Bukuro for the past 4 years.
On their way to Mikado's flat Masaomi
tells Mikado about the people he should never piss off while in Bukuro.
1) Shizuo Heiwajima: to an outsider he is an
ultra-violent man with super human strength. In reality he is a nice guy with a
big heart who gets pissed off easily and has rage control issues. 2)
Izaya Orihara: he looks like a harmless NEET but he is a mischievous ass, who is
deadly with a knife and gets bored easily.
Oh and he loves to piss Shizuo off.
He is the type of person that loves to bring situations and people to
boiling point and watch things boil over from the side lines, just for kicks. 3) The
Dollars, a mysterious gang. 4) The Black Rider, a headless biker chick. Inevitably Mikado's life gets tangled up in
each of these people’s lives pretty much from the start.
With every character in Durarara!!
looks can be deceiving and they all have a secret side that they don't
show to others and secrets they are keeping to themselves for one
reason or another.
This is one of those anime that just works
and I would put it the same league as Samuri Champloo and Cowboy Bebop.
This is another anime that has a main plot line running thought it, but
it is loose. Instead of feeling like
you’re watching events proceed in order towards an ending, Durarara!! takes you
on a kick ass pub crawl though the crazy city of Bukro with your even crazier
friends (you know the ones I'm talking about) in tow. You just know you
are going to end up with your head shaved and a wild tattoo on your rear
when you wake up in the morning, but it will be one of the best nights you have
ever had. I love this anime. For a super otaku like me I totally
flipped out when they started referencing other anime and they even had a life
size cardboard cut out of Holo from Spice and Wolf. This is one have me pissing myself with
laughter the whole way though. I even
have the opening song as my ring tone.
Tip though: I did try to watch this in Japanese
but the talking was crazy fast so I had a hard time understanding it and an
even harder time with the subtitles. If
you want to enjoy this anime to its fullest I would recommend watching it in
your native language.
Because I am a nerdlit I thought I would add a little trivia... I
love the play on words in Japanese language. I also love the meaning of Japanese names and the way a name is said and the kanji used to write it can make it
mean something complete different. When you watch Durarara!! you will
note how everyone comments on how oddMikado Ryugamine'sname is. The short version is it
sounds like a name from feudal Japan. If you want the long version follow the
link on his name. Shizuo Heiwajima name means: serene
man or peaceful island. Izaya's name is the combo of Isaiah from the
bible and the Japanese meaning for: the one who looks over the crowd, which is
very fitting. Then there is the exit signs in the subway,“around the station are theSeibu and Tōbudepartment stores.Seibu, written with the characters for "West"
and "Musashi (province)"
西武, is on the east end of the station and Tōbu, written with the characters for "East"
and "Musashi" 東武, is on the west end” (wikipedia.org). If you want to know more insights to the
other names and quirky things then fallow these links:without-spoilers andwith-spoilers.
So by now I'm sure everyone has made their mind up as to which console they'll be getting (cough PS4), but just in case you haven't, here are 2 brilliant videos by VideoGamerTV to help you choose.
Very limited home edition: Mini versions of RONZO's giant car park fossil 'Skater Saurus' are now available to buy.
Fossil relief/sculpture cast out of concrete. Hand made in East London.
Edition of 25. Signed by the artist. Size 40cm x 40cm x (ca 1.5cm depth)
Price £100
"At the end of March I had the opportunity to speak at Visual Arabia in Dubia in front of both Western & Middle Eastern Designers. This event was rare chance to be able to visit the Middle East as well as take the opportunity to be inspired by the design culture and of course the Arabic Calligraphy that was around the city.
Since I love typography and seeing what forms can create viable and usable text, I started a exploration in using some core structures from Arabic Calligraphy and mixed with them with a Western progressive style. These pieces are what occured during my study these past few days. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed making them."
Jakarta-based sculptor Ichwan Noor produced this giant sculpture of a 1953 Volkswagen Beetle that, combined with polyester and aluminum, has been morphed into a perfect sphere for Art Basel, Hong Kong.
"360º photography is the focus of Montreal-based independent photographer, Eric Pare. His first 24x360 light-painting experiment was limited in scope and led him to develop that project into his most recent endeavour, Light Spin. LightSpin works using a stop motion photography effect that requires 24 rigged cameras that shot up to 500,000 frames that was later edited down to 2000 frames in order to capture the 360 degree effect.
The LightSpin effects can even be accessed by other savvy photographers via the open sourced software."
[VIA]
This video had me laughing as I don't have an Instagram account and therefore made me happy that I could watch this smugly knowing that I havent committed any of these heinous Instagram stereotypes... brilliant parody!
Thanks to Jorge Nieto for the headsup...
A Certain Magical Index: first
started out as a light novel written by Kazuma Kamachi
and illustrated by Kiyotaka Haimura in 2004 and ran for 22 volumes.
In 2008 it was finally adapted into an anime, directed by HiroshiNishikiori and ran for 24 episodes. Luckily things did not end there, because
there was a second season that ran for another 24 episodes. Season 1 and 2 covered the first 6 volumes of
the novels. There was also a 24 episode
spin off created in 2009 adapted from the manga entitled: A Certain Scientific Railgun and this also ran for a second season, but I will be sticking with the
original anime for this review. Only because I haven’t watched the spin offs
yet. Yeah I know it’s hard to believe: a
super otaku with a life but I am one of those rare breeds and although I spend
way too much time watching anime and reading manga I have been diligently
writing books (self promo sorry had to do it)… but enough of that back to the anime.
This anime takes place in Academy City. This city is dedicated
to science and advancing superhuman students called ESPers. Because science is the driving force in the city the majority of its citizens
believe there is no such thing as magic.
But with everything there is always a flip side and in this anime it is
magic; which is controlled be the church. The main character is Toma Kamijo, and on the surface he is
your average slacker high school student with barely any ESP abilities.Looks can be deceiving, because Toma has a
power, stronger than anyone posses in Academy city, in his right hand called Imagine
Breaker. It has the power to cancel out
any supernatural power both ESP and magic.Unfortunately his right hand also cancels out all of his luck so he is the unluckiest
guy on the planet.
As his luck (or lack thereof) would have it Index Labrorum
Prohbitorum or Index literally drops into his life.Index is a nun who is from a secret magical
branch of the Church of England and she has the contents of 130,000 forbidden
magical books stored in her head.This has
made Index a target for other rouge magicians who want the power these books
contain. Toma decides he has to protect Index and this is where this wacky anime
begins. There are a lot of funny scenes and the plot line that runs
throughout this series is good but it is one of those take it or leave it anime.I would recommend this one if you have
nothing else to watch and just want something funny to watch. Even though this anime has a lot of action and it is funny, I just felt it was lacking something and in the end it is not
one of those that made you want to shout about it.
What happens when you apply modern editing to film footage from the 1900's? By correcting the frame rate, stabilising the motion and enhancing the images to HD, suddenly the past doesn't look so old.
This great concept piece by Julia Kononenko is a wooden three-dimension basin representing the streets of central part of London. The London map choice being a tribute to the fact that it was England where first industrial products had appeared back in the XVIII century.
Such a good idea! Walking through rain without getting wet. The Rain Room installation which was at The Barbican was one of their best pieces recently...
"Pedros Matos’ first LA exhibition ‘Building Castles Made of Sand’ opens on 17th May at Martha Otero Gallery.
The exhibition will feature a new series of oil paintings on canvas and azulejo panels – a traditional Portuguese medium of hand-painted, tin-glazed ceramic tile work. It runs until June 15th and is definitely worth checking out to see his unique style of work made up of layering and the huge variety of textures and mediums he works with. "
