A Kooji Cottage Christmas!

Have a Fantastic Xmas everyone! From all at the Kooji Cottage :D Mwah! x

Hang on...who's that in the window?

Lord Whitney's Shop Now Open!

As a follow up to our last post our friends at Lord Whitney have just unveiled their brand spanking new shop! Take a look at these tasty treats - Scrumptious!

A Plot to Kill Lord Whitney Book - Buy Here

The Curious Circus Sideshow Character Cards - Buy Here

The Curious Circus Sideshow Screen Printed Poster - Buy Here

A Plot to Kill Lord Whitney Full Set - Buy Here

Absolutely stunning stuff for sale and just in time for Christmas too. Only the most respected of book-worms will have 'A Plot To Kill Lord Whitney' stashed on their shelves. Go get a copy! Do it now!

www.lordwhitney.bigcartel.com

A Plot To Kill Lord Whitney

We received this curious invitation (via carrier pigeon of course) cordially inviting us to attend an evening of murder, mystery and merriment. It would appear that some dastardly fiend had attempted to kill our beloved Lord Whitney!

Image © Lord Whitney

We both put on our sleuthing gear and headed straight to the scene of the crime, the Victoria Hotel in Leeds. The clues as to who'd killed the Lord appeared to be hidden amongst a photographic exhibition of 'Lord Whitney's Curious Circus Sideshow' and the book launch of 'The Plot to Kill Lord Whitney'. Not your usual crime scene but nevertheless we soldiered on determined to seek out the truth!

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth! Holmes, is that you?

Our hosts declared that "upon the hour of nine o'clock we shall reveal the detective who has fathomed the most creative but yet believable murder plot theory and award them with a special prize."

Johnny received a special mention for his theory of raging jealousy and deceit:

'I have deducted that Eric was in fact guilty of attempted murder most horrid! Driven by jealousy over little Derek's success on stage and with the ladies, he plotted to capture his vertically challenged companion in a large jar then drown him in poisoned Cognac! However, Rodney Arthur found out and ran to warn someone but tripped over Tramp the Clown, hitting his head and forgetting the whole affair!

Lord Whitney was not the intended target.'

Signed Detective Johnathan Gallagher


Lord Whitney never fail to amaze us with their creativity. A most entertaining evening! We look forward to our next invite ;)


For more about Lord Whitney follow these links:

To see their fantabulous creative workings look here: www.lordwhitney.co.uk

Read all about Lord Whitney here: http://lordwhitney.blogspot.com

Limited edition books, screen printed posters and other delights can be found within Lord Whitney's Shop: www.lordwhitney.bigcartel.com

I Want My Kooji TV!

Favourite videos, uploads and giggles galore can be found here on our very own YouTube channel! Tune in and laugh til ya socks pop off :P

Image 'Kooji TV' © Katherine Moss


Head on over now:
http://www.youtube.com/koojicreative

Halloween Candy Cram 2010

Have a happy Halloween Kooji Buddies! Hopefully it'll be crammed full of delicious chocolatey candy (but don't forget to brush ya teeth afterwards!)

Here's Kooji chillin' out with our Guard Frog, Frankie, Yorik and Pumpkin Head (Skeley one arm's sneaking in an appearance too).

Frankie's sulking (too much candy!)

Johnny chomping on a Candy Rat

Tasty Goblin Stew! Yum :P

...and chilled Baby Brains for desert ;)

Kilo75 Turns Ten!

The lovely peeps over at Kilo75, Matt and Monica, invited us both to a party they threw last night to celebrate the company’s tenth anniversary.

The party was a held at Joiners Bar in Temple Works, Leeds - a really cool arty spot which we've frequented before for art events. It was a great night out, with lotsa tasty nosh and good music (We both scoffed a lot of those finger nibbles :D)

Here's to Kilo75 Hip Hip Hurrah! May you enjoy many more happy years :)

Feeling Light Headed?

The Light Shopping Centre held a competition recently to design a re-usable shopping bag. My design on a cool fabric bag!? How could I resist?

The winning entry will be launched at the ‘Leeds Loves Shopping’ event next month and the winner will also receive £200 to spend in The Light! (This year's Christmas pressies are riding on my getting this!!) It's for a good cause too as all proceeds from the sales will be used to help feed the animals at Meanwood Valley Urban Farm.

So without further ado here's my submission!


'Feeling Light Headed?' © Katherine Moss

'Feeling Light Headed?' © Katherine Moss

Shopping at The Light always makes me feel giddy and light headed. I wanted my design to capture this with a girl's swirly hair floating off in all directions, busying about her head as she dashes from shop to shop!

Voting is open until the end of this month so if you're passing through the centre take a look. It's up on display opposite Body Shop :)

Art in Unusual Spaces

We headed over to the Corn Exchange in Leeds this weekend after hearing about a cool new arty happening called Art in Unusual Spaces - 'A series of visual art exhibitions, installations and curiosities in shop units and across Leeds city centre.' We eagerly looked around the results of Drawing Time! an hour long drawing extravaganza involving 46 artists. Each artist had a set amount of time to produce their drawing depending upon their position on the circular balcony on the first floor.

Here are a few of the drawings that really took our fancy:

Image © Kristyna Baczynsk

Image © Drew Millward

Image © Helen Harrop (we collaborated with Helen on this Travelling Moleskine)

Image © Oliver Redding

Image © John Chamberlain (check out John's blog here)

Image © Neil "Women 158" Parkinson

Image © The Pern

Image © Richard Shields

Image © Curse273

Image © Jordan Ramoth

Image © Graham Pilling

We think this is a brilliant idea, using empty shop spaces in this way, and will definitely be on the look out for other events!

'Art in Unusual Spaces is a scheme which endeavours to open up empty shop spaces in Leeds City Centre.'

Check out the website here

Brand New Talent

It's here again! As unbelievable as it may seem it's been a year since Leeds College of Art's last End of Year Show. This year's exhibition entitled 'Brand New Talent' was full to the brim with creative work from the newest crop of graduating students.


Out of all the creative degree shows Leeds College of Art's are our favourite. We've never been disappointed in the standard of work on display and there's always sure to be a select few that really stand out. It's a chance for us to see what's new, which trends are trending (or being over-trended!) and who are the new kids on the block.

Johnny perusing a portfolio :D

Here's a selection of pics from the BA (Hons) Graphic Design course that caught our eye:

Image © Nick Birch

Image © Nick Birch

Image © Rob Cope

Image © Rob Cope

Image © Gemma Grainger

Image © Claire Nicholson

Image © Dean Gray

Image © Dean Gray

Image © Olivia Greaves

Image © Kate Prior

Image © Kate Prior

Image © Kate Prior

Image © Kate Prior

Image © Sam Putera

Sculpture © Jennifer Burton

This little fella escaped from the Fine Art department!

Portfolio Websites: A collection of links found on business cards from the show:

Sara Yates
Hayley Kavanagh
Lucy Hawkins
an& design
Adam Sneade

and if those aren't enough we've bookmarked a whole bunch here

The Caught Exhibition

Well, I've got to say we were both really chuffed to find out about this super secret hush hush cool arty exhibition held at Temple Works last week! Both Johnny's new friend Pete and our old Comic Book Night friend John Chamberlain let us know about it, so I guess we're quite well connected in the Leeds art scene :D The Caught Exhibition was organised by BestJoinedUp who set up Live Art Events in Leeds and across the UK and featured lots of tiptoptastic illustrative artworks from John and tons of other exceptional artist's work.


We didn't take any photos (not wanting to break the whole secrecy hush hushness of it all) but you can check out BestJoinedUp's photos on Flickr here or the ones on their FaceBook group where they've linked to other peep's photos from the event too.

We also saw a cool 'guerilla infra-red graffiti installation' called FriiSpray which has been developed by the Jam Jar Collective, some beeeautiful illustration/ graffiti/ street art from The Pern, Neil Women158 Parkinson, Sune, Replete and many more - wow those guys are prolific!

Check out these other contributing artists
Tons of inspiring portfolio sites to browse through:

Matt Saunders
Eight-Bit
Phill Blake
Clumsy Kate
Luke Drozd
Mr Gauky
Miss Led
Gary Milne
Pinky

Help!

The latest issue of the Good To Know Project is out now! Johnny and I had our collaborative doodle and submission for the topic of help featured in the zine. We talked about the friends that we've made through our collective 'Kooji Creative,' how it's been a great help to have a support network of this kind and how important it is that we share advice and information with fellow creatives.

'Kooji Creative' © Katherine Moss and Johnathan Gallagher

Check out the sneek preview on Issuu here or better yet buy a copy here :D

What sort of support do you receive as an artist? What advice would you share with fellow artists about getting help?

The Fireys

Just spotted this blog post over at Lord Whitney and a link to the photographs they took at this year's Emerging Artists Awards, at artsmix, for their 'Cabinet of Curiosities.' An amazing side show attraction style exhibit allowed us to don cool masks and get dressed up as the 'Fireys' from the film Labyrinth.

'The Fireys' © Lord Whitney http://www.lordwhitney.co.uk

Check out Lord Whitney here: www.lordwhitney.co.uk
Read their blog here: http://lordwhitney.blogspot.com

Put It In Context

Our friend Racheal from Underground Art School recently released issue 4: The Simplicity Issue, which includes a resource zine called 'Context.' We are both very honoured to have our artwork (a collaborative piece we called 'Learning Your ABCs') shown in Context Zine. Check out our promotional video to find out more:

Click the TV Screen to Play/ Pause

Context: A Resource 'Zine


Underground Art School Magazine Issue 4: Simplicity

Both Underground Art School's Issue 4: Simplicity and Context Zine are available to buy now! So go on! Do it! BUY IT NOW!!

The Pikaland Community

As a follow-up to our last post, we're really pleased to hear that our friend Amy from Pikaland (a blog about living the illustrated life) has just launched The Pikaland Community! It's a really cool place to make new friends, chat about all things creative and collaborate. The PikaPackage Project is organised there too :D

Go check it out, get signed up and get stuck in!

Stop Thief!

A little while ago I spotted this post about plagiarism on a really cool illustration site called Pikaland. As any creative knows plagiarism and copyright theft of any kind is really serious and something we all think about and often take great steps to prevent. The blog post really got us thinking and so we ended up writing a very long (eek!) reply about a horrible case of plagiarism we came up against last year. After posting our reply I re-read the post and realised it was going to be published in a really cool zine called the 'Good to Know Project.' What's that I hear our readers cry!? Well, "The Good to Know Project is full of advice + inspiration from artists/illustrators/designers on creativity, business and life."

It's great that something so positive came from something so negative, not only did we get our post published in the zine along with a couple of doodles, we got chatting with the creator of Pikaland, Amy Ng, and were so inspired by her work and creativity that we added her as one of our Kooji buddies in the collective.


'Stop Thief!' © Katherine Moss
'A Precious Burden' © Johnathan Gallagher

It's hard to believe that there are people actually out there willing to steal other's people's hard work and worse yet when you discover it's someone you know. Fortunately one of the great things about the internet and social networking in particular is that the culprit can quickly be spotted and have their shame publicly blasted about on the net.


Good to Know #7: Plagiarism

The full copy of the Good to Know Zine issue #7: Plagiarism is available to read online on Issuu here. Better yet, go grab yourselves a paper copy of of the issue here and read it in it's full physicality!

Check out past issues of the zine here.

Bounty Huntress

Today sees the release of collective member, Ste O'Brien's online comic, Bounty Huntress! We've been looking forward to seeing it hit the shelves (web) and now the wait is over. Check it out yourself here.

Bounty Huntress follows the exploits of Seisha Djynn, a deadly bounty hunter with her own ideas of justice (as long as there's a fat pay check at the end). Make sure you click on the TWC link to help support what's sure to be an epic series!

You can keep up to date with Bounty Huntress news on the BulletDollar blog here.

An audience with Sir John Hegarty

Creative Networks had a fantastic talk last month by Sir John Hegarty, advertising legend and guru extraordinaire, so I thought I'd share a few snippets from the evening. According to our host, Steve Smith, Yorkshire is expanding faster than any other creative region in the UK. The future really is creative!

Here are some fantastic advertising campaigns Sir John's been involved in over the years. These videos were posted on YouTube as a test-bed for market research - they got millions of hits!

Smirnoff Raw Tea Party Commercial (I really fancy a cuppa now;))

Life is Short - Xbox Commercial

Part-way through his talk Sir John made this statement:

"Technology has always been a spur to Creativity. Now more than ever."

Mixing Traditional Arts with Digital Technologies has been one of my obsessions for a long time now and I was so pleased when he said this. I wrote my last dissertation on this subject: 'The Fine Art of Multimedia Technology' and so I'm always fascinated to hear anything that uses the words 'Technology' and 'Creativity' in the same sentence. Creative peeps are so lucky to be living in a time when when we have these tools at our finger-tips. The computer has really transformed the way I work. All hail Creative Technology! :D

...and just to finish this post off with a few giggles here's a link to a cool flash website that Sir John's company worked on and was also featured on FWA.

MySpace Fan Video