The Brilliant creative team blog

Just in case the U.K. gets a gnat’s privates worth of snow this Christmas...
Brilliant have written the ultimate guide for all you dedicated snowball assassins out there.

With our tips you will MVP any match, teach children the spirit of competition, make new friends and most importantly... enjoy the sweet taste of the enemies tears!

Brilliants Guide to Snowball Fights.

Illustrations by Boulet.

Dumb Ways to Die is a beautifully animated Melbourne Metro Trains transport safety ad which features colorful characters singing a catchy tune as they set fire to their hair, poke a stick at a grisly bear, get their toast out with a fork or use their private parts for piranha bait.

The video is also designed to demonstrate the danger and stupidity of playing on train platforms, tracks and level crossings by the myriad of other dumb ways to die.

The song is performed by Melbourne artist Tangerine Kitty, the song was produced by Cat Empire keyboards player Ollie McGill.

Along with the song and clip on iTunes and YouTube, Metro Trains are developing posters and announcements at stations and educational material for school students.

They might look like sharp photographs of ordinary people, but the images below are actually ballpoint pen drawings created by artist Juan Francisco Casas.

Casas started experimenting with the ballpoint pen as a joke, just to see if he could draw something so realistic people would think it’s a photo. He began reproducing photos of nights out with his friends, and he liked it so much that he never gave it up.

His work measures up to 10 feet high, takes up to 14 ballpoint pens and up to two weeks to complete, but the final result is absolutely mind blowing.

We were checking out a new radio station on itunes in the studio this week, Buzzoutroom.com filled with loads of awesome downbeat breaks, blips and bleeps. On their website I found this video which really had nothing to do with anything except it used a ninja tune track over the top of it, but seriously, give this a watch!

The guy creates a truly fantastic portrait of his dad using dots... a couple of million dots actually and all hand drawn... with one pen. I can't remember the last time i put more than a few hours into a piece of artwork before calling it a day, but 210 hours is some mental dedication.

This week conceptual designer and illustrator Ralph McQuarrie past away. Even if you don?t know it, you will all have seen his work come to life on screen.

Ralph was the concept artist behind the original Star Wars trilogy, George Lucas commissioned Ralph to draw up some scenes from a space-fantasy script and ended up designing most of the main characters including Darth Vader, Chewbacca, R2-D2 and C-3PO. His artwork heavily influenced the film with Lucas taking a lot of reference from Ralph's artwork when considering scenery, buildings and vehicles.

McQuarrie played the role of General Pharl McQuarrie in The Empire Strikes Back and he also appears in Echo Base on Hoth in the film's opening sequence.

So not only did he get to design Star wars, and star in it but an action figure in his likeness as "General McQuarrie" was produced for Star Wars 30th anniversary... how awesome is that.

Star Wars is not Ralph's only triumph, he also worked on the original Battlestar Galactica TV series, E.T., Cocoon, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, batteries not included and Jurassic Park.

Cheers for all the beautiful illustration and inspiration Ralph.

Summer Streets is a series of typographic illustrations designed for the New york summer streets festival produced by Chris Labrooy. The festival is all about using New Yorks streets to play, walk, bike, and breathe, getting outdoors, having fun and enjoying NYC's environment.

Nearly seven miles of NYC's streets are opened for the festival over three Saturdays during August.

Check out the rest of the series or visit the Summer Streets festival website for more info.

This morning I stumbled upon the portfolio of Max Kostenko whilst googling the date for mothers day (It's the 18th by the way), I'm not sure what I clicked on to find Max's portfolio but I'm damn glad I did... the power of random link clicking hey.

Max is a Russian Illustrator and that's about it really because everything on his blog is in Russian so all that is left is to go and enjoy his stunning work.

Nikita Nomerz is a Russian street artist who travels around local cities in search of derelict buildings to deface with, erm... faces.

His work isn't restricted just to this but it really is quite unique, at least to me it is. He paints on anything from water towers to dilapidated buildings and beyond.

Check out more of his work.

Happy new year everyone... so back to work and back on the hunt for more awesome stuffs to inspire, excite and generally distract you from what you are supposed to be doing.

I have found some really talented work by Laura Bifano who takes the focal subject of her paintings and throws a modern twist at it, turning the subject into blocks with almost an over sized, disorienting pixel like effect.

They have a hallucinatory quality to them which I really enjoy plus, it reminds of that Simpsons episode... you know the one where homer eats the mega hot chilly and trips balls.

View more of Lauras fantastic collection here.