Like the artist and designer who inspired the new collection, Louis Vuitton is heading downtown for its new Stephen Sprouse collection.

This week, the company’s boutique on SoHo’s Greene Street will be transformed into a Sprouse destination in time for the collection’s arrival.

“SoHo is a special place for the entire launch of the Sprouse collection,” said Daniel Lalonde, Louis Vuitton North America president and chief executive officer. “It’s in the proximity of where Stephen Sprouse hung out, so we are going to give the entire store a Stephen Sprouse feel. It will have a lot of reminders of Stephen Sprouse. We will be giving it a new identity.”

For instance, the company is wrapping the store in vinyl and spray painting neon graffiti all over the facade. The window display will feature a 6-foot neon light installation in Sprouse’s Rose motif. The store’s interior, enhanced with black brick wall facing, will also be sprayed with the neon graffiti. Read more »

Check out this new key fob from Delphi, using E Ink and destined for a futuristic auto near you. Using the same E Ink tech in the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader but 40 percent thinner and on a smaller scale, it sips power, digitally painting images on a screen without continuously using energy. This key fob is an example of what can be done with E Ink’s next-generation segmented display cells (SDC), thinner and flexible enough to bend around curved devices. This groundbreaking gadget will wirelessly communicate with your car, telling you from a distance if you need gas, giving you remote starting capabilities, letting you adjust your car’s climate control, and even helping you find that vehicle in a vast, crowded parking lot. Its E Ink allows this handy little bauble to go a long time without a battery charge. Best of all, the company says mass production will keep the price low. Whoa. [via]

From the same artist that brought us the realistic Bowser painting, comes this one of Sonic The Hedgehog. He even included a little pixelated version of what a more realisitc hedgehog would have looked like in game.

The biggest challenge about this one was, that the original Sonic looks everything but realistic. He is so stylized, that it’s hard to tell if he is a hedgehog at all. This made it hard to find a middle course between the initial design and the look of a real hedgehog.

In the end I decided to give him a color-pattern that resembles a West European Hedgehog but facial proportions that stick to Sonic himself. His white gloves and the red shoes he kept as another link to the original, but the shoes underwent a little redesign. In addition his body looks like that of a runner, making it more believable that he can run at such high speeds.

So, what do you think? Good, bad, or ugly? I can’t really judge since I was caught soliciting my vote in return for “inappropriate” favors during a bikini contest. So yeah, banned from judging.

sonic the real hedgehog [essenmitsosse]

Thanks to Tal, who is not only faster than Sonic, but has more gold rings

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