Today is Mickey Mouse's 80's birthday!

Plane Crazy (1928)

Steamboat Willie (1928)

He's sure changed quite a bit over the years, from a wreckless plane-flying letch to a guy who got a tune by wrenching animal tails and hitting them with sticks to the wonderfully appealing Freddie Moore design in Fantasia's Sorcerer's Apprentice to homogenised theme park bobble-head.

Fantasia: Sorcerer's Apprentice (1940)

Mickey Mouse Club Intro (1955)

What better way to celebrate than by digging up a bunch of old links:

A Biological Homage to Mickey Mouse: "He has assumed an ever more childlike appearance as the ratty character of Steamboat Willie became the cute and inoffensive host to a magic kingdom. By 1940, the former tweaker of pig's nipples gets a kick in the ass for insubordination (as the sorcerer's Apprentice in Fantasia). By 1953, last cartoon, he has gone fishing and cannot even subdue a squirting clam."

How Mickey Mouse Lost His Way

Photos: Around the World in 80 Mickeys

The Runaway Brain: The last Mickey Mouse short, I believe, made in 1995.

BBC Radio 4 Today Programme: Mickey Mouse Turns 80.

Photos: Mickey Mouse Through the Years

And some obligatory affiliate links: Walt Disney Treasures Mickey In Living Colour, Mickey In Living Colour Vol. 2, Mickey Mouse in Black and White, Mickey Mouse in Black and White Vol. 2.

Design geeks! Check out this wonderful Pantone Rubik's Cube concept by Italian industrial designer Ignacio Pilotto.

I also particularly like his Race Clock and ice bucket that turns into a watering can once the ice has melted!

Ward Jenkins, animator, contributor to Drawn! and curator of the wonderful Ward-O-Matic blog current has a wonderful looking solo show at the Grassy Knoll Gallery in Portland, Oregon inspired by graffiti and 80's hip hop. This is a little too far for me to travel so I'm grateful that so many photos are available online.

Original artwork can also be purchased directly from the gallery website.

I was, apparently, born in the same town and went to the same school as Illustrator Quentin Blake, most famous for his wonderfully apparently effortless illustrations for the books of Roald Dahl; although obviously not at the same time... what with him being 43 years my senior. Anyway, I managed to spot an interview him on BBC Breakfast News before I left for work this morning where he was talking about a proposed museum for illustration in London.

They're currently trying to raise the ]]> Wed, 05 Nov 2008 15:31:17 -0800 http://virb.com/antikewl/posts/text/912148 http://virb.com/antikewl/posts/text/857320

The National Archives have released a transcript that was to be read by the BBC every two hours in the wake of a nuclear attack in the Cold War between 1973 and 1975.

This is the Wartime Broadcasting Service. This country has been attacked with nuclear weapons. Communications have been severely disrupted, and the number of casualties and the extent of the damage are not yet known. We shall bring you further information as soon as possible. Meanwhile, stay tuned to this wavelength, stay calm and stay in your own homes.

Hah! Blogging! Remember that? Er, where was I...?

Recently (and by "recently" I mean "over a year ago") Pixelation ran a little contest on their forum to see who could create Game Boy-inspired screenshots of more recent video games. The entries are fantastic -- some of my favourites, World of Warcraft, Bioshock, Sam & Max and American McGee's Alice, are above.

Go take a look if you haven't seen them already... and if you have it was probably so long ago now that you've forgotten about it and should go have another look anyway!

Mari Kasurinen didn't think My Little Pony was anywhere near interesting enough... so she's modded them into movie characters like the Alien, Predator, Darth Vader and Batman. They're also available to purchase, should your My Little Pony collection be feeling a little too cutesy. (via Boing Boing)

The new teaser trailer/test footage for the forthcoming TR2N movie starring Jeff Bridges was shown at the San Diego Comic Con the other day. It hasn't officially been released to the wider public yet but it looks like someone's managed to videotape it and stick it online. I'm only slightly wetting my pants with excitement. (via The Disney Blog)

UPDATE The video I posted earlier has been pulled from Vimeo. I've changed it to the same video on Youtube.

This is one of the most surreal and entertaining things I have seen in a long time! It's, apparently, a Thai commercial for Sylvania Light Bulbs featuring a bunch of incredibly odd ghosts.

There's no point me explaining it, just watch! (thanks Harsh!)

The Rock-afire Explosion were an animatronic band comprised of anthropomorphic animals that played in Showbiz Pizza Place restaurants in the USA through the 1980s. After closing down many of these setups found their way to enthusiasts. Here's one such setup, performing MGMT's Electric Feel.

Perhaps even more obscurely, a documentary is currently being produced about car-salesman Chris Thrash, a guy who recently purchased the rights to Rock-afire Explosion with an aim to resurrect them and the Showbiz Pizza Place. (via Penny Arcade)

Some of the folks that I work with at NixonMcInnes have been working on this rather fun widget for Oxfam, who are appearing at various festivals through the summer, to find out what gets your knickers in a twist most: poverty, climate change, apathy, injustice or doom merchants.

Feel free to grab it and stick it on your own site, myspace page or whatever else it is you kids are using nowadays.

What would have Guitar Hero been like if it were released in the early 80s? I'd imagine something very much like this! I particularly like the grating (but familiar) "game over" sound. (thanks Dave!)

'Warcraft' Sequel Lets Gamers Play A Character Playing 'Warcraft'

While firing up World of Warcraft today for the first time in months (funnily enough to use as a chat client to see if a friend was around, not to play!) I noticed that Blizzard had announced Diablo III.

An intro trailer and all the usual bits and bobs over their site but, most interestingly, a pretty hefty introductory video to the gameplay. Rather lovely it looks too, introducing the Barbarian and Witch Doctor character classes (there'll be three more, in both male and female flavours) it looks rather WoW-inspired -- no bad thing -- with lots of lovely touches like destructible scenery which can used to the player's advantage.

And, oh yes, walls of zombies! I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this one.

Ok, yeah, this kind of happened a few months ago now (brace yourselves, you're going to hear that a lot over the next few weeks!) but it's still worth mentioning. Previously only available to paying subscribers, comic artist James Kochalka has made the archives of his wonderful daily comic journal, American Elf, free to access. That's nine and a half years worth of sketchbook life!

They're also available as a series of books, I have a copy of the first one which compiles the first five years and it's a lovely big tome. The second volume, which collects 2004 and 2005, is also available and volume three will be available in November.

First of all, apologies if you arrived here excited by the pretense of the crappy (yet oddly endearing) 1980s cartoon of the same name. Here's something very arguably better. Adam Phillips, the guy who created the superb Bitey Castle shorts, has been commissioned to produce a number of brief animated cartoons to promote the new 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons.

Episode 1: The Beholder (above)
Episode 2: The Gnome and the Teifling
Episode 3: The Mindflayer

He's working on a fourth as I type.

Meanwhile, Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins over at Penny Arcade and Scott Kurtz from PvP have put together a podcast of, essentially, eight hours of them playing Dungeons and Dragons around a microphone. With the wrong people this really could be the dullest thing on earth but it somehow manages to remain entertaining throughout the four half-hour and a bit podcasts they've already put out. Stick this link into iTunes or your podcast grabber of choice: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/rsspodcast.xml or, iTunes users, try this - more here, though you'll need to sign up for a free account to access the pages.

They're also doing a little strip to accompany each show.

And, oh ok... If you insist.

Oh hi... are you still here?

I've been a little bit more than busy recently and quite a lot of dust has settled all over the furniture here at Antikewl Daily. I've been such a bad blogger that I've sometimes found it easier to twitter cool stuff or simply email other bloggers so the cool stuff doesn't go to waste! Here's a great example of that. It's an awesome animation by Italian artist Blu (thanks Edd!) and I meant to blog about it ages ago. You've probably seen it already by now.

Right, this is going to stop right here! From now on I pledge to post here at least twice a week. Not a massive target, granted, but I believe that if I aim low I'm bound to at least nearly hit it form time to time! You never know, I might even get around to shoving that new design up one day as well...

If you're reading this, thanks for sticking around!

P.S. If you're into the whole twitter thing, Antikewl Daily has a twitter feed as well.

Remember Atari? They used to be good. Actually they were rather great and pretty much defined my childhood. Anyway, Kotaku do too and have uploaded a rather cool catalog of Atari stuff from 1981.

Those sure were the days...

Ex-Test Icicle Lightspeed Champion performed their track Galaxy of Lost Souls in full Star Wars garb at this week's NME Awards show. Unfortunately I couldn't find a video of it online anywhere but did instead stumble across this gem. Lightspeed Chamption performing the Imperial March and Star Wars theme. Lovely.

Update: There's now a video of them performing at the NME Awards on YouTube. Enjoy.