Oliver Georgiou
Sweet Kicks Willy
Last week I went out with a few mates to a Wu Tang / Native Tongues night here in Tokyo, I met some interesting cats including a guy who goes by the name of Sweet Kicks Willy. He commented on my Nikes and we got to talking about trainers and sneakerism in general. At the end of the night we exchanged numbers and yesterday I went to his house to kick it and check out his sneaker collection. He was making a video for youtube showcasing some of his ‘swag’ (which is massive)
I asked him a few questions about our shared obsession…
Oliver Georgiou: Tell us about your love for the sneaker game.
Sweet Kicks Willy: Ah man, it’s all about stepping correct and coming right with you shoe game. You can look broke down as hell but if you got sweet kicks then you got swagger.
OG: I watched your first video on youtube, it was kind of amusing but also informative.
SK: Yeah cheers, I was tired of seeing fake ballers putting their weak collections up on the tube, all that “rate, comment, subscribe” business is just tiring, thought I better get on it and preach some realness.
OG: So where do you get your kicks from?
SKW: Everywhere, it’s raining Nikes on planet Earth!
OG: Any words of advice for those thinking to step into the shoe game?
SKW: It’s not just how they look but also, maybe even more so how they ride, if you are gonna wear some flat soled kicks then wear some loafers or some boat shoes, why set trip when you can bounce?
Photos taken by Mark Drew
I asked him a few questions about our shared obsession…Oliver Georgiou: Tell us about your love for the sneaker game.
Sweet Kicks Willy: Ah man, it’s all about stepping correct and coming right with you shoe game. You can look broke down as hell but if you got sweet kicks then you got swagger.
OG: I watched your first video on youtube, it was kind of amusing but also informative.SK: Yeah cheers, I was tired of seeing fake ballers putting their weak collections up on the tube, all that “rate, comment, subscribe” business is just tiring, thought I better get on it and preach some realness.
OG: So where do you get your kicks from?
SKW: Everywhere, it’s raining Nikes on planet Earth!
OG: Any words of advice for those thinking to step into the shoe game?
SKW: It’s not just how they look but also, maybe even more so how they ride, if you are gonna wear some flat soled kicks then wear some loafers or some boat shoes, why set trip when you can bounce?
Photos taken by Mark Drew
Joey Ahlbum
A week ago I revisited Charlie Ahearn’s 1983 masterpiece the infamous Wild Style. There are so many different characters, one liners and influential scenes in the film but the stand out sequence for me is most definitely the animated title sequence in the beginning. It actually took me over an hour to get past the five minute point of the film for all the freeze framing and scrolling back and forth, so after watching the film I decided to get my research on and find out who the animator was behind it.
Numerous searches led me to initially believe that it was solely animated by graffiti king Andrew ZEPHYR Witten, but knowing that the animation process is quite complex I suspected that there must have been an actual animator involved to hold it all together and bring it into reality, so I continued and found the name Joey Ahlbum, a New York City born and based animator. It was time to reach out and touch somebody. Here are some extracts from our recent email banter.
“Yes indeed I did animate the opening titles along with Zepher. Of course Charlie Ahern the director had a big part in the concept. I don’t really remember how I got to meet Charlie Ahern. I do remember that I showed him my thesis film from SVA and I think he liked the fact that it was colored with magic markers.”
“It’s been a few years but as I recall it was a real collaboration with Zephyr mostly doing key frames and then I would do inbetweens but some key frames as well and I think we all worked on coloring it in magic marker.”
“This was back in the days of film and cels so for some sections we would cut out the paper and mount it on a cel so we could have the same background. I remember for one section Zephyr did a whole bunch of random spray paint back grounds which we changed every four frames or so. Then I shot the sequence on an oxberry animation camera on film.”
“It was a blast and I got to meet the artists from the film like Fab Five Freddy and go to some great parties too.”
“Zephyr and I became friends and we worked on some other projects for MTV. Years later Charlie put out a coffee table book about Wild Style and Zephyr wrote a very nice blurb about me. I really appreciated that. Thanks for reaching out and saying hello.”
Joey is still living in New York City and is still very active in the animation world. Check out his website HERE.
Numerous searches led me to initially believe that it was solely animated by graffiti king Andrew ZEPHYR Witten, but knowing that the animation process is quite complex I suspected that there must have been an actual animator involved to hold it all together and bring it into reality, so I continued and found the name Joey Ahlbum, a New York City born and based animator. It was time to reach out and touch somebody. Here are some extracts from our recent email banter.“Yes indeed I did animate the opening titles along with Zepher. Of course Charlie Ahern the director had a big part in the concept. I don’t really remember how I got to meet Charlie Ahern. I do remember that I showed him my thesis film from SVA and I think he liked the fact that it was colored with magic markers.”
“It’s been a few years but as I recall it was a real collaboration with Zephyr mostly doing key frames and then I would do inbetweens but some key frames as well and I think we all worked on coloring it in magic marker.”
“This was back in the days of film and cels so for some sections we would cut out the paper and mount it on a cel so we could have the same background. I remember for one section Zephyr did a whole bunch of random spray paint back grounds which we changed every four frames or so. Then I shot the sequence on an oxberry animation camera on film.”“It was a blast and I got to meet the artists from the film like Fab Five Freddy and go to some great parties too.”
“Zephyr and I became friends and we worked on some other projects for MTV. Years later Charlie put out a coffee table book about Wild Style and Zephyr wrote a very nice blurb about me. I really appreciated that. Thanks for reaching out and saying hello.”Joey is still living in New York City and is still very active in the animation world. Check out his website HERE.
Hello Dad
“I’m in jail, I’m gonna stay here. I like it here. I like it, yeah, throw away the key…” Infections rantings of Was (Not Was) American eclectic pop group that first rung in my eyes one night sometime in the mid 90′s while watching MTV’s Liquid Television on SBS. This fantastic film project was animated by Christoph Simon in 1987 during his time at the infamous Animation programme at London’s Royal College of Art.
The animation itself has a kind of paint on film feel but there are definitely some pastels involved so I’m not quite sure how it was executed, despite that like so many other things on that show it embossed itself in my mind. I was very pleased to see “Hello Dad” on the program for The Melbourne International Animation Festival earlier this year.
Christoph Simon seems to be a hard person to find info on but I do know he also created at least two other clips that were shown on Liquid Television, “What Up Dog” and “Earth to Doris” both also animated to music by Was (Not Was).
HERE for “Hello Dad, I’m In Jail”
HERE for “What Up Dog”
HERE for “Earth to Doris”
The animation itself has a kind of paint on film feel but there are definitely some pastels involved so I’m not quite sure how it was executed, despite that like so many other things on that show it embossed itself in my mind. I was very pleased to see “Hello Dad” on the program for The Melbourne International Animation Festival earlier this year.
Christoph Simon seems to be a hard person to find info on but I do know he also created at least two other clips that were shown on Liquid Television, “What Up Dog” and “Earth to Doris” both also animated to music by Was (Not Was).
HERE for “Hello Dad, I’m In Jail”
HERE for “What Up Dog”
HERE for “Earth to Doris”
