up and down ‘around town’ / dave the chimp
contents page 2 / Every self respecting magazine should have cartoons, or not? Berliner all star Dave the Chimp was kind enough to draw us a page. Where you ask? Look left! page 6 / Nice to meet you: Kinos page 8 / Nice to meet you: Anton Eager
page 34 / For more than 15 years, Cone the Weird has been working on different kinds of design and illustration for clients around the world. He’s also co-founder of the collective The Weird, a melting pot of ten individual artists with a focus on character design and odd ideas.
page 20 / Mark Gmehling is specialised in character design, animation and rigging. But don’t think of him as a guy that is glued to his computer; he still finds time to go out and paint his images on walls!
page 44 / Freights, just rusty old trains with a little extra something something painted on it.
page 62 / Dutch photographer Ralph Roelse shot another great serie. Check out Man Machine!
page 72 / Guest editor Salme Liivrand reports on some of the promising talents from the Baltics; Ernest Zacharevic and Kiwie.
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page 50 / Serch is one of the Dutch pioneers in the hip hop scene and has been active as a graffiti writer since the eighties. Get ready for a long read!
Besides all this, we have a thing called ‘the Great Outdoors’ that features a selection of work from all over the world. Now turn the page!
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the great outdoors
Daan Botlek / India
Daan Botlek / India
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Daan Botlek / India
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the great outdoors
Wurstbande, Joren Joshua, Lasse Wandschneider, Ilse Weisfelt / Berlin
KBTR / the Netherlands
Zosen, Mina Hamada / France
Zosen, Mina Hamada, GR170 / Spain
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‘World made of plastic’ SatOne, Wow123, Roids / Bremen, Germany
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the great outdoors
Amok / Australia
Ozon / Rotterdam
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Amok / Australia
Kinos / the Netherlands
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Digital sculpter Mark Gmehling Mark Gmehling is specialised in character design, animation and rigging. He studied art, graphic design and marketing and worked in advertising for a while then got self employed as illustrator. Alongside this, he works as teacher for graphic design, communication design and digital illustration two days a week at German university WAM, Die Medienakademie. But don’t think of him as a guy that is glued to his computer; he still finds time to go out and paint his images on walls.
The first thing people must think when they first see your work is that all images are hand sculpted. Either as plastic models or ceramic, and not as a computer drawing. Or not? “I always answer the question if people ask if it’s a photograph with: “I wish it would be, but I can’t afford the production of this thing at the moment. Unfortunately it is a visualization of a sculpture”. The ones that are ok in terms of static and production, I print in 3D and paint them. An example is the ‘holy grenandes’, I hand sculpted them and they are 50cm high. But a lot of my stuff is too fragile or complicated to produce, which means there’s a lot craftmanship involved to produce it, and I never learned how to do that properly. Maybe that’s one of the benefits of 3D: I just visualize what I got in mind without restrictions of materials or gravity ;) I already use 3D printing, but I’m still waiting for a consumer machine that fits my needs in terms of smoothness of the final surface and other production issues. At the moment I order my 3D prints from companies that offer laser sinthering which is a bit advanced to rapid prototyping.”
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Have any of your characters been turned into designer toys? “Yes, I made a few 3 inch toys and a big 8 inch toy called Moneybunny and I developed Mr.Egg, a blank toy published by Dudebox. I’m highly interested in that field and I’m open for companies that like to collaborate.” What is your background? “It all started with graffiti, but even before that my mother always supported me drawing and painting. She bought magazines about artists and techniques ever since I went to elementary school. She gave me artist tools and paint, canvases etc. To be honest, I painted with oil and chalk already before I got my hands on a spraycan back in 1988. Around that time I noticed grafitti blooming in my city and simply started doing it too. I switched from skateboarding to graff and I was hooked quite fast. I studied fine arts, but keeping in mind a professional career in the future, I also studied Communication Design and Marketing (this made my father a bit more relaxed about my income). Then I worked in a few
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the great outdoors
Shue77, Nychos / Austria
Shue77 / Austria
Shue77 / Austria
Caver / Portugal
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< previous page: Video game nerdism, 2013, 80 x 60 cm, acrylics and ink on canvas
The weirdest cone in town Born and raised in Munich, Cone the Weird has been a graffiti artist since 1993. For more than 15 years he’s been doing different kinds of (graphic) design and illustration (digital and traditional) for clients around the world. Along with Nychos, Look, Dxtr, Vidam and Low Bros he founded the collective The Weird, a melting pot of ten individual artists with a focus on character design and odd ideas.
What’s your background, what was your education? “My first artistical education was without a doubt graffiti. I started in 1993 as a thirteen year old kid, wandering through the city and trying to find painted walls and trains and taking as many photos as I could. Drawing was a daily routine and I started to analyse forms, structures and colour schemes. Years later, I worked as a trainee in a TV and movie company. Most of the time I did shitty storyboards there, nothing very special. Nevertheless, it was a good time with interesting colleagues and I learned a lot. It gave me the chance to experience how television and movies work, what the world of agencies and the jobs can be like. With these impressions, I decided to study communication design and left my hometown. My goal was to try out different disciplines and techniques and find my own way.” So working as an illustrator was a logical step. “Yes. I guess this was driven by the access to my dad’s collection of comics and illustrated books during my childhood. He had different kinds
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of comics and books about ancient cultures of mankind with lots of illustrations. I loved to browse through these books and explored the many pictorial worlds in there. At that time, I recognised different styles. A Hal Foster comic, for example, had a lot in common with historical books about the Middle Ages or American Indians. Obviously, he first had to learn about what he was drawing before he was able to do it. In comics, I was able see how different drawing styles can look like. Later, I came into contact with books of production designers such as Syd Mead. I also do have a soft spot for myths and tales. In these kinds of books, you‘ll sometimes find really nice old illustrations. Nowadays, with the flood of images in the Internet – it‘s just too much for me. I get overdosed easily. Books have a healthy limitation.” When you were working as an illustrator, what kind of clients did you have? “I worked for newspapers, publishing houses, music labels, film companies, PR agencies, manufacturers and private clients.”
Sucreries en masse 2, 2014, 30 x 40 cm, ink on paper
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heavy loaded freights
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Three decades of Serch Serch was born in 1972 and raised in a working class family in a small Dutch town called Zwolle. From a young age on he was outside playing soccer or wandering around the neighbourhood and the nearby train tracks where heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d put coins on the rails, waiting for the train to run over it and flatten them. But even then his biggest hobby was drawing and as he grew older him and his best friend â&#x20AC;&#x201C; who would later become his first partner in crime - filled day after day and page after page, creating all kinds of weird stuff.
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