check the news about our Datahunter over there at the cool UK vinyl toy page:
VINYLABUSE.com

and in THIS THREAD you can read what others of the community think of Datahunter :)

check our ETSY-Shop to get your own handcrafted massivecut gadgets…

update: a few word about this paper-box: it was fun to make this colorfull version
of a packaging and also the folding works perfect…
but finally i don’t think it’s the right kind of packaging for the Datahunter ’cause
the style is too much like every mass-produced toy from china. It dosn’t hit the look
for an unique handcrafted toy like the Datahunter…what you think?
(yes, and i really fixed my nikon coolpix! :)

my lovely cam (coolpix990) is broken :( …so no pictues at this time, but at least
i have to post this template for a package of the DataHunters in processes. I was trying
to work with sketches and had a vage layout concept in my mind. Then i vectorized
my line drawings and do the inking afterwards with Illustrator.
Had the biggest problem to place all the necessary informations somewhere, set
points of interests, get everything together and ajust the colorrange.
I’ve printed different variations on 350g/m2 Brisrol Paper, cuted out, folded the packaging and attached the transparent window before glueing all together. Picures will folowing when i can finally grab another cam (..or maybe i should try to repair the old one:)

What u think? Anyone experience in print- and punching processes? Could use some advices…thx

click thumbnail to see all details

Nr. 02/36 of the “Treasure Island Serie” is SOLD!

But now, you can get Nr. 03/36 on etsy!!!
Be one of the 36 who can snatch one of these
beautiful custom 3D XBOX 360 Faceplates:

3D XBOX360 Faceplate - Teasure Island - Nr. 03/36

We are proud to announce that we have sold our first XBOX 360 Faceplate of the Treasure Island series to England! This was done without promotion but a lot of work to craft the item. (if you count all hours we have about 9 hours per item, plus material costs and hardware!) Hopefully the days where we had only expenses and no cash are over now. ;)
This small income will found over next ideas. Before we show them to you we will prepare the next piece of the “Treasure Island” for the shop. A little photo-shooting is on the time schedule. The Nr. 03/36 will be much more dark and blackly, take a look on our gallery. We hope there are 32 people more on this planet with a XBOX 360 who like the plate and are willing to pay a fair price for this piece of art. (we shipped some plates to Redmond to the guys of the XBOX-Division)

If you don’t like the XBOX faceplate, checkout the last post and come back in a few weeks. We will have a lot to show you! (What about a new apple rumor and toys toys toys?)

(Check this post for pictures of the 3D faceplate)

MassiveCut is pleased to announce the beginning of a new area in XBOX 360 customizing. Starting from today you can find the first piece of the 3D-Faceplate “Treasure Island” Series in the Etsy-Online Store. You can get the nr. 2 of 36 know!

Its real swiss hand made stuff! Every 3D-Faceplate is a unique artwork: this 36 pieces are based on the art of André Willimann who has sculpted, hand finished and painted them to the highest standart. First, he carved and shaped a prototype, of which we then produced by hand a mold to create only 36 pieces of this edition. The pieces are painted with oil paint and glued to an XBOX 360 Faceplate. the artist using for each a different color-scheme so each 3D-Faceplate is one of its kind, hand-crafted and consists of high-quality materials!

who will win the nextgen console war ?

Hi there; it’s 2 in the night and André and Pepe started hours ago
with the production of the caribbiean series. I joined them to give
feedbacks and entertain them during the long night. So what’s this
all about?
Art on game consoles, art on xbox 360. Its about giving the cold skin of
the xbox a new look and feeling. We try to transport the worlds of
our favorit games to the living rooms. So we decided to design and
produce handmade 3D-XBox 360 Faceplates.
All series will be limited to a number of pieces. We start with our
“treasure island” series! All plates are handmade and handpainted
and every one has a unique look. So you like to have a special
artwork for your xbox-case? we’ll post soon the first pictures
of the finished treasure islands…

the most time here i have snap up all the super sculpey in whole seattle, so don’t try to get that stuff till the artist shops get the next shipment ;) this clay isn’t available in switzerland (in fact it is, but for trice the price!!) and i hope they let me go through the airport customs and don’t take me for a terrorist with a bag full of plastic high explosives! i also found some sculpting tools and some dental tools in a army shop whitch i could grind in good shapes :) so i can’t wait to get back home and start a new design…but this has to wait another week, because i’m only a few hours in zurich and then go straight to belgium.

so this is my last night in seattle and i think i saw the most things that you should have on a sightseeing tour in downtown. i had a map, but i never looked a it and allways walked with no plan in my mind around…i think it was the most fun. an exciting bulding was the libary by Rem Koolhaas: what a huge and spacy thing! i really liked the wide proportions, the colorfull enviroment and there are still discreet places for study. good work!

finally i had the chance to meet J Allard the “brain” of microsoft for lunch and talk with him one to one. first i have to say he is really a nice and smart guy and he had time for all my questions…in fact he asked me more stuff then i did :) so we were talking first about how tricky it is to order lunch in a country you don’t know the words for choosing your sandwich ingredients, about his house witch he decided to renovate very colorfull and what i should see in seattle (like the libary builded by REM Koolhas, witch is anyway an obligation for me as architectur model maker & scenographical designer).

after the smalltalk part we get more to the core… :) :) :) Read the rest of this entry »

i started the day with a tour on microsofts “futur home”. it was really interessting and fancy, but also a bit scarry to see all the things taged by RFID and we as totally addicted peoples to our cellphones ( for my taste some of the ideas were a bit too much bigbrother…). back on work, i tried to do two illustrator templates of yesterdays sketches. the evening we spend some time in downtown seattle for exellent shushi and checked out the first thursday of months artwalk and see what kind of new stuff the galleries have to show…

today i had the chance to do some sketches for a xbox360 related thingy, maybe that even will be produced if tomorrow the ideas will fit and i gonna go allright with it. for lunch we were at red robin to catch some burgers and huge french fries (they more than double length here than you will ever get in switzerlaand…they must be genetic manipulated:) to call it a day, i was invited to a user research test of halo2 for pc that microsoft will relase. sharp at 9pm i was back at my hotel to zap on abc to see jack and the others in lost’s season 3…

yeah i know… many of you guys out there would given away their last trousers to take a look at BUNGIE studios. so i was there this morning and saw things that i dont can talk about, but i have to say: it’s pretty cool :) and they like kings for microsoft so i better don’t want to mess with them or even more with their laywers ;)

after that, i’ve been too microsoft main campus join some other guys from minneapolis and see shortly Major Nelson for lunch and have a meeting for an hour with Peter Moore…

Read the rest of this entry »

yesterday i land in seattle and was picked up by a huge limo (no joke..) to visit for a week microsofts entertainment expiriences group in redmond! jep, that’s because i won the xbox360 faceplate contest with my molten stone faceplate (see last post) this trip to the states.

so i dont have to tell you, what these guys do at EXG??? yes, they design all the xbox 360 stuff and a lot more cool things for microsoft like the new zune :) this monday was very cool an exiting, but tomorrow it would be come much more fun! they’ve set me up for a tour on BUNGIE studio!!!! and i also will talk for an hour with J Allard!!!!! (… i even don’t know what to ask him by now :) and a lot more stuff for the rest of the week. updates will come tomorrow…

see here my technorati profile:   Technorati Profile

i was allways stick by my good old nikkon coolpix 990, because she shot’s better pics with a 3 megapixel chip than many hyped 10 billon megapix digitalcam that allows you non of the functions like manual white balance or manual shutter. here is a great article that explains why a 5 megapixel camera isn’t necessarily better than a 3 Megapixel camera

the megapixel myth - by ken rockwell

still in progress, but i think the rough-cut is done…i have to carve the middle part structur more evenly to get the attention on the flow arround the power button. maybe i will lighten the arrows above a bit, they point in every direction and disturb the main flow too much.

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this stencil background from the theme “movement” was my inspiration for this kind of faceplate style. i have sprayed it on canvas a few years ago for one of my portfolio’s.

if you really want to fractionalize your baby with dremel and tools…be sure you know what you do ;) so, i’m not the guy to go for such things befor my warranty is gone…but here is the answer to every question you will have about modding the xbox and all the 360toys around’em, like: how to add a usb harddrive or how to add extra buttons to your controller :o

the llamma’s game console forum

last night i had my first battle with adobe’s illustrator ;) well, after try to draw some xbox 360 templates by hand with pencil, ruler and splines, what in fact i havn’t a way with, i tough about to do the task with illustrator cs2. nice programm and i think it is like as usual: practice makes perfect. as the sun was rises i have finished my templates (this arches are really tricky…it has still some rough edges). maybe you have cool design ideas…? if you wanna clean templates (.pdf/.ai/.png) to scribble your own xbox 360 artworks, you can send me a message.

if you want to do your own scalable vector graphics and you havn’t (500$ in pocket for) illustrator? here is a good open-source solution for osx, win, linux: inkscape.

i’m a huge fan of the art nouveau epoche because it was so kitschy ;-) here is a teaser what’s in process: one of my sketch sheets that i’m working on with some ideas for a new flower style… more coming soon.

my workflow thread for them, who interested in the process of such a molten stone 360 faceplate. i think it’s ok to keep my expirience for me alone, but it’s much more exiting to share it with you and get feedbacks from you :)

Read the rest of this entry »

you found my work-log for designs on the xbox 360 faceplate i’ve done and i’m about to create at the moment. i think this is also a good practice for me to write a bit more…so, this is my first bloggin activity and my english is bad as it could be…well, i try to give my best at all and i hope you will be courious to see my newest carvings here…but first, this part is all about how i get started…

my first faceplate - lava dungeon ooo/o1 -

i made this faceplate on march06 for a official microsoft xbox 360 design contest at our art scool. my idea was to create something that isn’t only a two dimensional, flat and graphical sujet. it sould be a new surface, a new shell on the front of the 360 (unfortunately i couldn’t design a whole box…but i have still time to do this on my own xbox;). to design this faceplate i have worked countless long nights, i hope u like it… i was inspired by some sort of lava dungeon and jump and run games.

all the buttons, the infrared and the hatches function proper. there was also a case in expanded polystyrene to transport the faceplate safetly.