Andrew Hem is a Los Angeles based illustrator with a remarkable style of illustration. His paintings are highly stylized, and an interesting mix between painterly techniques and detailing from a style which resembles sketching. We like how the color palettes lean contemporary. There is an interesting play between flat and dimensional, simple and detailed.

A recent Art Center grad, he’s since been on an intense exhibition schedule and somehow managed to find the time for A-list clients like Adidas, IdN, Lucky Jeans to name a few. Check you can see more after the jump and by exploring his site.
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To commemorate the completion of the 4-in-1 Robot Paper Toy Project seen in Giant Robot magazine, our loveley sponsors at Scion have teamed up with Giant Robot and are challenging readers to design their own paper figures for a chance to meet the master of paper figures himself and have their paper toy template distributed at the Paper Art Show in April!

DIRECTIONS
1. Download the blank template.
2. Customize the template with your own designs — draw, paint, use photoshop — be creative!
3. Scan or color copy your customized template and save it to upload later.
4. Construct your figure and take a photo of the completed piece.
5. By March 6, upload your scanned template and image of the completed figure using the link below.
6. Upload.
7. Winners will be announced on the site by March 11th.

GRAND PRIZE
•  $500 cash
• Airfare and accommodations to attend the Interactive Paper Art show at the Scion Space in Los Angeles on April 11.
• Inclusion of the winning entry in the art show, as well as distribution of the template to all attendees.
• Giant Robot prize package including a magazine subscription, T-shirt, sticker packet, and $50 gift certificate to the Giant Robot stores.

Just in case you couldn’t make the show, check out these pics from our sponsors at The Scion Installation Space on Flickr. Now running through Feb 7th.

Earlier this month New York hosted this years first IMS, where motor giant Honda unveiled the Fury. This new design takes Honda further in the chopper direction at the same time allowing the company to mass produce the custom looking machines. By utilizing a modification of the VTX 1300 motor, the bikes can be produced at the existing Kumamoto, Japan factory. The marketing push for the Fury is, in my opinion, not characteristic of what we usually see from Honda. They’ve taken the “extreme” approach with print ads, commercials, and web site design in an effort to further encroach on the market share of brands like Harley Davidson and American Chopper.

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Let’s say you have two grand to spend on a computer. You could shoot the whole wad on a macbook pro or you could do the responsible thing and buy a thousand dollar 14″ macbook and this bag (made to hold a 14″ laptop – that’s fate my friends). Laptops may depreciate, but everyone appreciates Italian leather bags. Black leather with silver hardware. Made in Italy. You can order it here.

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Visa seems to think so. Recently introducing the Visa Black Card which promises provide more luxury service than you average joe credit card. 24 hour concierge services are included in the hefty $495 annual fee along with a slew of insurance benefits for those who travel often. Visa has limited its membership to 1% US residents, making the card seemingly exclusive. They’ve also made of a carbon based material, for that extra slick feel. If your into the VIP lounge at the air port, and your own personal travel concierge than this may be a good deal. For the rest of us, we might need to rely on the old iPhone to do our booking and arranging.

Portuguese designer/illustrator DSRUPT has some nicely executed illustrations on his site. The photo-illustrative work is primarily print with some interactive thrown in for good measure. These samples were standouts.

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We know you’re always looking to be the first to rock some new threads. You’ve got black T-Shirts and more black T-Shirts, but Black on Black T-shirts, well you can guess what our favorite color is. This is one of those things where it looks like something ordinary until you step into just the right light, and then people stop look, and ask. Congratulations you just got caught looking cool without trying.

He loved to wove 2006
When she’s not designing Christmas Cards for Beck and doing cover art for the Silversun Pickups, Mel Kadel is penning and illustrating witty and insightful pieces. Much of her work is focused on social commentary illustrating societies weaknesses at the same time playing on the little things that eat us up inside. These pieces are more mature than a Shel Silverstein poem but evoke the sentiments from the same place. It’s amazing the frequency with which she produces work, from Brian Canning and Travis Millard to the 34 new pieces she recently posted on her site. Check out more work from Mel here.

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Former Vice photo editor, co-curator of the 2008 New York Photo Festival, Publisher, and curator: Tim Barber ostensibly does it all. He is the master behind Tiny Vices, an online art gallery, and he runs the print-on-demand publishing house TV Books. And he’s also a photographer. I suppose he also puts his pants on one leg at a time just like everybody else, but the main difference is, he’s also likely multitasking 15 other projects when he does it.

Check out his Times profile here and more of his photography here. We’ve collected some of my favorite images from Tim “I Do It ALL, No, Seriously, I Do” Barber for your viewing pleasure. See more after than the jump.

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