Chances are, if you've looked at a weirdshistic record cover by Yes, Asia or other bands, you've admired Roger Dean's paintings of surreal landscapes. If you've ever seen all good people turn their heads each day, then you're already a Dean fan.

Connor Freff Cochran, founder of Conlan Press (which is busy putting out a bunch of Peter S. Beagle books, hosting Beagle's 52/50 poetry subscription service, and putting out art books) contacted us and suggested that Avatar's lush moon might have gained some inspiration from Dean. And when you look at Dean's artwork and compare it to the concept art we posted the other day, it's hard not to see the resemblance.

All of this makes me want to rent Avatar (when it's released on DVD) and see if I can sync it up with YesSongs.

OK, I admit it: These really are pieces of jewelry, created by twentieth century American artist John Paul Miller, who was fond of using precious metals and enamel to recreate spiders, insects, and various cephalopods. I love how these piece look beautiful and disturbing at once.

You can see more of Miller's work in this online gallery. [via feuilleton]

Holbo is a philosophy professor when he isn't concocting weird tales of squid, and it shows. The book starts with his whimsical musings on the scientific names for "owl" and "squid," and then abruptly becomes a meditation on why squid and owl are considered "binary." Why can't they change places? It's a little like reading a Victorian children's book and suddenly discovering that in fact you're buried knee-deep in an essay on language and deconstruction. Which isn't to say it isn't completely fun and silly. I've excerpted a few pages from his book, which you can see all of on his Flickr stream, and buy a copy of at Blurb.

Since the mid-2000s, Mishka NYC has been at the vanguard of popular streetwear. A cornerstone of their success has been designing clothing influenced by gonzo horror, Z-grade sci-fi, and the overall dank and stanky underbelly of pop culture. Indeed, their gear is worn with equal aplomb by metalheads and hip-hoppers (Lil Jon and Lady Sovereign have sported Mishka in music videos), and the label's past collaborators have ranged from everyone from Iron Maiden album artist Derek Riggs to erotic photographer Ellen Stagg to electro-reggae supergroup Major Lazer.

Label heads Mikhail "Mike" Bortnik and Greg Rivera were nice enough to sit down with io9 and answer some questions about Mishka's design philosophy, winter line, and how Stan Lee cold lamps it at Comic-Con:

What's the Mishka origin story?

Mikhail Bortnik (left): It started sometime in '03. My job I was working at was going to close, so I decided to take a stab at t-shirt design, which I had wanted to do since college. This was about the same time I met Greg. A few months into it, I realized I was in over my head so I asked Greg to join on-board and sell the line. Greg immediately came on as a full-time partner. The basic idea was we wanted to sell street wear, but we soon realized there were so many fans who were into both street wear and scifi that there was absolutely no reason we couldn't incorporate these two things.

In terms of scifi, what were your earliest influences?

Greg Rivera (right): A lot of our influences have come from B-horror films, straight-up scifi films, and comic books, especially for Mike. I was big into horror comics when I was kid and also things like The Twilight Zone, Tales from the Darkside, anything with the ironic twist at the end. Both of us are also big toy fans. Being in our early thirties, we grew up with 1980s toys, which ended up being a huge influence in our designs.

MB: One example of this influence was in our Fall 2008 Skyway Trippers collection – we tweaked an Israeli Special Forces design to include the phrase "Spaceknights" in Russian, as a homage to the old Spaceknights comic and toy line.

ROM Spaceknight allusions? That's wild. On a similar note, Mishka has a roster of kaiju-like characters who appears on a lot of your apparel – i.e. the half-serpentine, half-ursine Death Adder and the Cyco Simon skull. What's the story behind them?

MB: Actually the notion of bringing characters into the clothing brand goes back to metal bands. Cyco Simon is a reference to [Megadeth's ] Vic Rattlehead and Eddie from Iron Maiden, and we wanted our own. As for the Death Adder, we use our designs to tell a story with him – he's often seen teaming up with our Soviet super-soldier character.

Are we going to see an Adult Swim series with these guys anytime soon?

MB: I'll be honest, Greg and I would love to be able to a comic book or cartoon series with them.

What was the first sci-fi influenced Mishka piece?

GR: "They Live" was probably one of the first ones. It's hard to remember since we've had so many designs over time.

One of my early favorites was your Judge Death-inspired "Kill Motherfucking Depeche Mode" logo.

MB: That was a mixing of the old Brian Bolland artwork with what people guessed [what the name of German industrial band] KMFDM stood for. KMFDM actually gave us a cease-and-desist for that one.

Really? Not the 2000 AD people?

MB: We figured we'd get something from them or Depeche Mode, but no, it was from the KMFDM people!

On a similar note, when was that moment when you said to yourselves, "Holy crap. We can't believe we just put that on a t-shirt."

MB: The "Tom of Eternia" t-shirt.

GR: Mike had the idea of doing a Tom of Finland-style shirt [featuring He-Man].

MB: If you've never hear of Tom of Finland, he's like the homoerotic artist. There was this impetus [to create this shirt] early on when someone made the comment that all we do is put naked girls and 80s cartoon characters on our shirts. Street wear on a whole seems more macho than we are as a brand, so Greg and I were like, let's do this.

GR: Our friend Robin Nishio – who is this amazing illustrator – met up with us and Mike pitched him the idea. Robin actually went and bought two big books on Tom of Finland and aped the style exactly. That was the coolest because we got so much shit from our customers because it was like, "Here's Skeletor as the master and He-Man down on his knees, gay porn style."

What sort of pieces are in the pipeline at the moment?

GR: We did this series of shirts for [the new heavy metal-themed video game] Brutal Legend and we're working with Dark Horse Comics on a project.

Oh wow, are you at the liberty to talk about that right now?

MB: Not really, but if anyone has followed our brand, you'll know that one particular Dark Horse character particularly sticks out.

As far as the Winter 2009 line goes, you seem to have strong robot theme going. You have the Terminator cyclops, the Decepticon hearse, and my favorite, the Ultron bear. Why robots this season?

MB: We've gone so far doing themes that this season just happened to be robots. This was probably one of our most rigid designs themes. The Ultron shirt's been particularly popular.

You guys hit up the San Diego Comic-Con this year. How was it being a street wear brand at what's been historically a comic and scifi show?

MB: We were selling some things there, but we were mostly there as fans.

GR: It's been a little calculated – and not to reveal all our secrets – but if a lot more other brands saw the potential of that market, you'd see a lot more people doing it. It's hard for us to do business, because Mike and I go and we're just geeking out. Besides going out there to meet Tim and Eric [from Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!], we're both really into Japanese kaiju and we had the chance to show off our own kaiju designs.

MB: Comic-Con 2008 was my first one. We wanted to see the Lost panel, but after we saw it spilling into the street, we just said "fuck it" and went to the Battlestar Galactica panel. That crowd was pretty big too, but Dean Koontz was still speaking. So yeah, we killed two hours listening to Dean Koontz.

Any good Mishka Comic-Con party tales?

GR: We crashed an Activision party at the Hard Rock Café and saw Stan Lee. If you're at a Comic-Con party and you see Stan Lee, you know you're at the coolest party.

MB: He was just hanging out with this girl on his arm.

GR: (laughs) She looked like she was twenty years old.

MB: I don't if she was, like, hitting on him or he was hitting on her, but Stan Lee's exactly how you picture him. He really says "true believer."

I wouldn't want him any other way. Do you find yourselves getting calls from influences who've enjoyed your work?

MB: Other than the artists who we're huge fans of and end up working with – like Derek Riggs and L'Amour Supreme – no, not really. A lot of our influences are grumpy old men.

What would you say is the most quintessential Mishka design?

GR: On our first trip to Japan, we stayed in this little town outside of Tokyo and found all these old Japanese horror and sci-fi press kits. These kits would take the coolest part of the movie and turn it into poster art. We found this great Westworld kit and Mike added some comic book stuff, like Ultron and Cyborg from Teen Titans to the design. To this day, it's still one of my favorite ones.

MB: We also found this Motel Hell kit in which we used for our "Electric Funeral" shirt. We electrified the faces and it turned out great.

Alright guys - some final lightning round questions. Kim Cattrall in Big Trouble in Little China or Kirstie Alley in Wrath of Khan?

MB: Kim Cattrall. I'm a Next Generation fan, what can I say.

Zardoz or Troll 2?

GR: Troll 2.

MB: Zardoz.

Would you rather have John Carpenter compose you a personal theme song or direct a movie about your life?

MB: I'd rather have him direct the movie because then he'd have to compose the film's theme song.

Shit! I hadn't thought of that loophole. Any final words to io9 readers?

GR: By all means check Mishka out - you'll definitely find something you like.

Mishka apparel is available at their website and their Brooklyn store at 350 Broadway in Williamsburg, NYC. Store photography courtesy of Dave Digioia.

We interviewed creature designers Wayne Barlowe and Neville Page, plus concept artists James Clyne, Ryan Church and Daphne Yap, about creating a whole new universe from scratch. Plus we've got some stunning concept art, from the new book The Art Of Avatar. In a year that's seen some amazing books of movie concept art, The Art Of Avatar features 106 pages of lush full-color paintings, interspersed with the industry's greatest design minds geeking out about every little aspect of Avatar's creation.

So here are a few things you didn't know about the design of James Cameron's Avatar:

Avatar Started As A Four-Month, Late-Night Jam Session At James Cameron's House

"[We'd be] working late at Jim's house, and having him come back after a three week spell of being down at the freaking Titanic, and having him tell us a story [about being on the ocean floor]." Read the rest of the story.

Pandora's creatures were partly based on cars

Early on in the process, James Cameron "mentioned the core idea" of having Pandora's creatures be "superslick and aerodynamic, and be like a race car with racing stripes," says creature designer Neville Page. Read the rest of the story.

Those crazy color schemes are from the ocean floor — and Art Nouveau

"In the real world, we didn't invent these colors. They exist on animals today. We didn't invent a whole new palette. I think the problem is — the challenge is — you don't often see large creatures with this much color on them." Read the rest of the story.

The human hardware, including those crazy battlesuits, is all based on real stuff

"One thing I worked on big interior for the mech suits, and the whole interior had to have a reason and function for why the suits were lined up the way they were, and how they could work on them like a pit-stop at an F1 race. It had to have that functionality." Read the rest of the story.

Avatar concept art from The Art Of Avatar (Abrams 2009)

Over at the Food Futurist, Christophe Pelletier describes a new study from BioScience on the viability of offshore fish farming. He writes:

From an environmental point of view, the idea of shifting the production of animal protein from the land where it uses scarce resources such as land and water, to the ocean where space and water are no limitations anymore sounds very sensible. From a nutritional point of view, replacing meat and dairy by seafood that is rich in healthy components such as omega-3 fatty acids is quite attractive, too.

He could easily be describing the future of farming, especially in areas like Hawaii or Japan.

Meanwhile, Inhabitat points to a real-life ocean-industrial setup that's coming online soon in Honolulu. It's an energy-efficient cooling system for the city that uses cool water from the ocean to keep buildings cool too. They write:

Frigid seawater pumped in from the ocean's depths will soon help cool more than half of the buildings in Honolulu's downtown. Honolulu Seawater Air Conditioning LLC, which is undertaking the $240 million project, expects its technology to cut the Hawaiian city's air conditioning electricity usage by up to 75 percent while slashing carbon emissions and the use of ozone-depleting refrigerants.

Ocean engineers, your time has come.

[via LaToya Egwuekwe]

Fashion blogs have been pushing the meme that thigh-high boots are going "cyberpunk" lately, and this seems to originate with Fashionising.com, who included this paragraph in a roundup of recent boot styles:

Futurism/Cyberpunk: building upon the cyberpunk influences of recent years, some designers have thrown an element of dark futurism into the thigh-high boot mix. Particularly evident in the wound-and-bound effects of boots by Rodarte and Topshop Unique, this is a trend I expect we'll see more of in coming seasons.

Already, these "cyberpunk" boots have been seen on Twilight's Kristen Stewart (see picture) and Lindsay Lohan, among others. Here's a gallery of the boots most likely to plug your brain into cyberspace.

Hussein Chalayan adds garters to thigh-high boots. (Photo by Imaxtree, from New York Magazine.)

Jean-Paul Gaulthier, photo from Fashionising.com.

Rodarte.

Topshop Unique, from Fashionising.com.

Photoshoot from Numero Korea Magazine, via Fashionising.com.

Twilight star Kristen Stewart does a photoshoot for Allure Magazine wearing Rodarte boots. from Fashionising.com

Rodarte, from Fashionising.com.

Louis Vuitton, from Fashionising.com.

Sadly, this means no Death Star gracing the Dubai waterfront. Sphere-loving Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas will have to turn elsewhere to construct his weapon-shaped buildings. The proposed Anara Tower, with its giant, non-functional turbine, has also fallen to the architectural chopping block.

And though construction was set to begin on these wind-powered, rotating towers, they won't be spinning any time soon.

Perhaps, someday, these projects could be floated by another bubble, but for now they're going back in the drawer. You can see more architectural casualties of Dubai's financial crisis at Inhabitat.

Dubious Dubai: The Towers We Will Never See [Inhabitat]

Many moons ago, we showed you Coleran's film reel, which showcases his work on such films as Alien vs. Predator, Blade II, and The Island. More recently, Coleran has updated his website with tons of the user interfaces he has developed for a host of science fiction and spy movies.

These are just a small sample; his site contains dozens of images from each of the films he has worked on.

Playback Graphics [Mark Coleran via Metafilter]

Children of Men
Children of Men
The Island
The Island
Blade II
Blade II
The World is Not Enough
Mr. and Mrs. Smith

Architect Jacques Rougerie, whose designs are frequently centered on marine living, has teamed up with oceanographer Jacques Piccard and astronaut Jean-Loup Chretien to develop the concept for the SeaOrbiter, a semi-submersible laboratory. The idea is to give oceanographic researchers a permanent base of operations in the ocean, much like the ISS provides in Earth's orbit. The concept designs for the SeaOrbiter include living quarters, laboratories, and a pressurized deck to allow residents to take daily dives. Rougerie believes that such a base, which would allow researchers to go on months-long missions, would improve our understanding of the oceans:

At the moment, they [oceanographers] can dive only for short periods before they have to be brought back to the surface. It is as though they were taken to study the Amazon jungle and then helicoptered away again after an hour...SeaOrbiter will provide a permanent mobile presence with a window to what is under the surface of the sea.

Rougerie claims that he has half of the €35million needed to complete the SeaOrbiter, and plans are to launch the floating lab in 2011.

One giant leap for ocean exploration [Times Online via Geekologie]

This image is just one of many that made me fall in love with concept designer William Smith's art. I first stumbled across his work while searching for "restaurant at the end of the universe" illustrations, and found his gorgeous depiction of Milliways (the aforementioned restaurant). His rich colors recall a more innocent era in space illustration, and his seascapes and landscapes are positively breathtaking.

Smith told me in email:

I'm currently in Houston Texas working at TimeGate Studios as a concept artist. The website [where you can find these images] has my most recent personal work, some are personal projects but most were done for the Environment of the Week on ConceptArt.org. Unfortunately I can't release anything that I've done professionally to date. On the technical side of things, all the work on the page was done digitally using Photoshop and a Wacom tablet.

See more of Smith's work on his website.

MAD Architects has just unveiled the Urban Forest, the latest vertical garden to grace the world of concept design. Each floor features garden space and some of the floors are completely open, containing only plant life in lieu of the residential and office space on the enclosed floors. The abstract floors are meant to evoke an organic look, and the transparent outer walls give the impression that each floor hovers above the last.

MAD Architects are the authors of some truly bizarre and ambitious projects, not the least of which is their idea for a star-shaped mobile city, aptly called the Superstar. The Superstar is meant to travel from city to city and be more than self-sustaining energy-wise, feeding power back into its host city.

MAD architects: urban forest [Designboom via Inhabitat]

To see Pope's article in its full-resolution glory, check out "It Will Come From Japan!" at GQ.

[via Forbidden Planet]

Bender describes his collection of cleanly packaged, post-apocalyptic products as a comment on the way companies market to consumers and the eases with which buyers accept corporate messaging:

By presenting a fictitious worst-case scenario as genuine the Anarkon project questions the influence of corporate, branding and advertising power in a culture consumed by consumption. Its goal is to encourage citizens to examine their response to commercial messaging and to play a more active role in determining the limits of corporate power in American society.

Anarkon [okay beta via Lovely Package]

Portuguese architectural firms Atelier Data and Moov designed Forwarding Dallas for the Re:Vision Dallas competition, which solicited sustainable designs to construct on a city block in downtown Dallas. Forwarding Dallas took the top prize, which means it will actually be built, with construction starting in early 2011.

The design is inspired by natural hills, with different portions of the hills designated for different uses. The valleys are filled with public green spaces; vegetation, including food, will be grown on the step-filled slopes, and the peaks are topped with solar panels and wind turbines. The plan is for the community to be completely self-powered, and it even features a rainwater collection and storage facility.

But the community — which will include apartments, a gymnasium, a cafe, a daycare, and exhibition space — isn't merely sustainable; it's also a practical, cost-effective design. The construction is completely prefabricated and streamlined for rapid construction. The purpose of projects like Re:Vision Dallas is to provide cities with a model for off-the-grid architecture that's quickly realized and doesn't break the bank.

Dallas sprouts green city block downtown [Re:Vision Dallas via Inhabitat]

Paolo Soleri, who coined the term "arcology" to describe a super-dense hyperstructure that houses tons of people in a sustainable manner, is building Arcosanti, a nascent arcology, out in the Arizona desert between Phoenix and Flagstaff. So far, it's still fairly small, and is supporting itself by making Soleri's ceramic and brass bells — a lot of the cool-looking structures are actually foundries for the bell-making, or casting tons of concrete for more structures.

Journalist Simon Bisson visited Arcosanti, and took a ton of photos. (There are more at his Flickr stream):

The idea of a sprawl-free city seems attractive and smarter for our long-term survival. And the two great barrel vaults look amazing in the middle of the desert, as the sun goes down. But after visiting the site, Bisson has a couple of concerns:

However I'm left with some disconcerting thoughts.

The society that's grown up around Arcosanti reminds me of the guilds that built the great cathedrals of Europe. It's not difficult to see the arcology as a secular cathedral, a project that will take generations to complete and that will never be what Soleri dreamt all those years ago. Perhaps that's not a bad thing.

One thing did seem clear: it's in the wrong place. If arcologies are to replace the urban sprawl of a city with a new, intentional community on a human scale, then the desert (as beautiful as it is) is the wrong place for Arcosanti. It should be in a city, in a Detroit, a LA, a New York, a London, a Moscow, a Hong Kong. It shouldn't be isolated, a new Taliesin for Soleri's architectural disciples. It should be a visible sign of a different way to live, of a new city. Make it La Sagrada Familia, big, vibrant and reaching in the heart of Barcelona, not a hermitage in the desert.

[Simon Bisson on LiveJournal]

We mentioned a while back that Scott Chambliss, who designed the set for the most recent Star Trek movie, highlighted cited Eero Saarinen as the influence behind the slick, iPod-white designs we see at Starfleet and aboard the Enterprise. But that wasn't Star Trek's first dance with Saarinen's designs. His iconic Tulip Chair became the basis for the seating seen in the original series, and his sweeping, modernist style is clearly an inspiration for that contoured, ultra-clean future.

At once elegantly organic and evoking a sense of progress, Saarinen's work attracted not just the Star Trek team, but other entities looking to harness that sense of looking forward. General Motors, IBM, John Deere, and CBS all contracted Saarinen to design their corporate headquarters, and his designs became a symbol of an America that firmly believed it was marching toward the future.

New York's Museum of the City is currently hosting an exhibition "Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future," which features, among others, the Saarinen designs below.

Making the Face of Modernism Familiar [NY Times]