Kaws is like Santogold right now. Whereas I can’t turn on my TV without hearing Santogold in the background of some commercial or other, every website I click (from fine art to art toys to fashion) has Kaws’ XX trademark splashed all over it. If it’s not Saturated that’s got everybody’s blog agog, it’s this very hush-hush Kaws x Star Wars Storm Trooper collab. The Kawstrooper is everywhere, morphed into a variety of graphics: standalone hazy, colorbanced, multiplied and watermarked. All this fanfare and fuss with very little details. Of course it’s cool. Of course it merges two iconic toys significant, particularly, to my generation. Will it have the edition size of Kaws’ last toy? Of course not. But will I try to get more pics and details as soon as they avail themselves? Bet on it.
September 23rd, 2008 at 1:57 pm
you might want to give credit to ToysREvil
for the Photoshoped pic you used in your post.
September 23rd, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Looks like Instinct Toys already got credit via their watermark on the image…! I’m really on the fence with watermarking. If TRE made the pic, hats off to them; it’s a great image. But this is what happens when you watermark every pic; the mark is meaningless, another site uses the image and puts theirs on it.
September 23rd, 2008 at 4:31 pm
ToysREvil got the Kawstrooper image from HKANYTIME
and then did some cool Photoshopping.
http://toysrevil.blogspot.com/2008/09/kaws-x-star-wars-storm-trooper-kaws.html
He went out of his way to make sure people
knew he was altering someone else’s photo.
So I was guessing he might want others to
do the same for his.
I didn’t even notice the BLOG@INSTINCTOY mark
the first time I saw it. I can see how you
wouldn’t have known about the source of the
photo since Blog@Instinctoy didn’t mention
it (at least in English - I can’t read the
language they’re using).
September 23rd, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Thanks for the heads-up krakit. Images can get no respect
It is hard to track every little image from every little site, that’s for sure! I think we can all agree we attribute our news and images more heavily than most.
September 23rd, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Thanks for the heads-up krakit. It’s definitely hard to track down the source of all images and gratuitous watermarking drives me crazy. In this case, there’s a bunch of work on the image, so it makes sense and I’d cite TRE in that case. My preference is not to see a blog’s name on the image–that HK-ANYTIME one is awful! I toyed with a few watermarks on earlier posts, but ultimately, even when I combine and color-balance the graphics, the pic is about the artist, not the blog. Linkage and cred should be contained within the words, not the pic. But that’s just my opinion and one I reserve the right to change in the future!
September 23rd, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Thanks for responses. It’s good to see
you guys have already done some thinking
about the subject.