My friend Takeshi asked me to make an image for the Indiana State Yo-yo Contest, so I did this illustration this morning:

Simple but stylish, huh? I enjoy making yoyoing related art, but I’m starting to move to other fields such as skateboarding and snowboarding.

Here is another yoyoing design (this one is from Vulto):

Musically inspired by:

 Silversun Pickups – Draining

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Closure In Moscow – Sweethart

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Sorry for being away for too long, things have been hectic here. I’m working with several projects, preparing the release of a new brand, hiring new designers and studying Joomla and Magento. Gotta find some time to sleep and eat in the middle of that!
In the last weeks I have designed a packaging for a new product from Vulto and I’m extremely satisfied with the result. The product is a new professional yoyo and it’s going to be released in a couple of weeks. After over 7 months working with this project I cannot explain how happy I am to see it coming to life!
Unfortunately I cannot share any images or renders now, but I will let you see a quick preview of the packaging (actually this is just a mockup):

I always include special messages in my packages and this time I used a quote from a Thrice song. This is a killer packaging, I will post more pictures soon!
I’m also working in a series of packages and paper products for another brand. Can’t wait to see all these items reach the production line.

2009 is slowly turning out to be one of the greatest years for rock, punk and indie. I’ve been following amazing releases in the last couple of weeks and the next months look very promising.
I’ve been listening to the newest release from 311 – a song called “Hey You”. It’s a soft, jammy song with all the traditional features that made 311 famous. The song is great, but it’s nothing different from their old stuff. Anyway, it’s nice to see that 311 is back.

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I’m also into the new Blue October album (Approaching Normal) that got nice reviews on almost every site I follow (except for AllMusic, of course). Here is a short sample:

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Another band that has returned is Propagandhi. I have to admit I though I was going to be very disappointed with their latest album. However, it’s a very solid release and almost all songs are great. Punk is not dead!

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Finally, I can’t wait to see what Thrice is creating so I started to listen to some of their old songs again. Today I was listening to “The Sky is Falling”, that is right here for your listening pleasure.

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I’m working on a new video for Vulto (yoyoing and skill sports company) to be released in a couple of weeks. It’s a collection of yoyoing, skate, bmx, juggling and many other sports. The video is really nice, aggressive and very entertaining (specially if you are a sports fan).

The best thing of this job is that we have have no limits and face no censorship at Vulto. The company is very open-minded, and since it works with sports we can push some boundaries when editing the video. We are using many different songs, from metal to downtempo, which is good for a music addict like me. We are also keeping it very simple. Our goal is to work  without many effects or corrections to keep the video as original as possible.

Yesterday Vulto released the first preview of this upcoming video. Enjoy!

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=305quosC4O8