Sights & Sounds: Animal Collective / ‘Spirit They’re Gone, Spirit They’ve Vanished’ by Nick Iluzada

Sights & Sounds: Animal Collective / 'Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished' by Nick Iluzada

Nick Iluzada

I’m really excited to share this new Sights & Sounds series, and so happy to see people who are equally excited to create something rad. I’ve been a big Animal Collective fan for years now, and I felt like they had the right vibe to really inspire some great looking wallpapers. Our first wallpaper in the series is for Spirit They’re Gone, Spirit They’ve Vanished. Recorded back in ’99, the album is technically the work of Avey Tare and Panda Bear, the other guys hadn’t joined the group yet, and was heavily inspired by Avey Tare’s move from Baltimore to New York. It’s amazing how you can so easily hear the very foundations of their style in this album. The production, while not the greatest, is the one thing that makes it feel not quite right. Nonetheless, it’s actually a pretty amazing album, Panda Bear’s drumming in particular is something to hear at the very least.

To illustrate the album our fearless curator Andy chose Nick Iluzada, who has one of the coolest last names ever. Before this project I wasn’t familiar with Nick’s illustration work, which is a total shame. Nick has a wonderful sense for color and motion, check out his Footbawlerz series to see exactly what I mean. The variety and creativity in his sketchbooks is also something worth checking out as well.

Here’s what Nick had to say about his wallpaper:

“I created this image simply with the hope of capturing the feel of some specific tracks (most notably Chocolate Girl, Untitled, Someday I’ll Grow To Be As Tall As the Giant, and Alvin Row) with the album title as the jumping off point. While the record sways back and forth between gritty, high-pitched noise and serene textures, I felt that there was some sort of middle ground that could be worked with in terms of bringing the imagery away from it’s Baltimore (make everything neon rainbows) roots and a subdued yet coarse feel would do just the trick.”

A huge thanks to Nick for creating such a beautiful wallpaper and Andy Mangold for choosing such a talented guy. Check back next Wednesday at 10AM PST for the next wallpaper in our series, Animal Collective’s Danse Manatee.

Bobby

Bobby Solomon

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July 20, 2011 - See more posts by Bobby

A Bunch of Spore Updates

Wired put up a really great gallery/article with some updates about Spore.
First off, the game is being released September 7th for Mac, PC, and Nintendo DS, all at the same time. That’s still quite a ways away, but Will Wright has figured out how to keep everyone happy till then… a Creature Editor! It’s going to be released a few months before the game comes out, and will allow you to make creatures just like you do in the game. It’ll tell you as soon as Spore comes out, and allow you to import the characters you’ve made as well.

Another cool detail they’ve leaked is that you can start the game at any point. So if you don’t want to start out in the “cell” portion of the game, you can jump directly into the making of your creature. I think this could be helpful especially if you’ve played the game a million times and are sick of being a tiny shrimp in the evolutional tide pool.

I guess there’s also something hidden in the center of the universe, which you can try and find once you get the space travel ability. Will Wright and his creative team have totally done it again, and I’ll be posting more of these nerdy posts as more info becomes available.

Bobby

Bobby Solomon

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February 13, 2008 - See more posts by Bobby

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