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Every now and again, I love a good plagiarism story! In this case, it's pretty bad. Maxine Carsboult has pretty much ruined her career as an illustrator by blatantly retracing work of established illustrator Julia Pott, amongst others.

The work in question is pretty-much exactly the same, with some slight differences. What's more - it's not just one piece of work, but a whole portfolio of work. Carsboult even plagiarised the work of Pott and other artists / illustrators for the majority of her degree show exhibition. Bad move.

Since Pott is an established artist, the case has gained quite a bit of attention with work comparisons being posted on You Thought We Wouldn't Notice and Soho agency Yellow Jelly have removed any references to Carsboult on their website - which is where she worked on a design placement.

Cartsboult has since gone into hiding online; deleting all social networking profiles and illustration portfolios. Oops.

(h/t Nicola Rowlands)

Back in the days when I owned a Commodore VIC-20, text-based adventure games were amongst my favourite titles to waste the hours away.

With limited sound, simple graphics, and tiny amounts of computing power, the first games on home computers would hardly raise an eyebrow in the modern era of photorealism and surround sound. But with superb story-telling, the solving of intricate puzzles and the art of writing, these games described fantastic worlds to their readers, and then invited them to live within them.

Rising from side projects at universities and engineering companies, text-adventure games would describe a place, and then ask what to do next. They presented puzzles, tricks and traps to be overcome - they were filled with suspense, humor and sadness - and they offered a unique type of joy as players discovered how to negotiate the obstacles and think their way to victory.

Get Lamp is a documentary, conducted by director Jason Scott, that interviewed around 80 people over a two year period. These were then compiled into one epic documentary that tells the story of the creation of these incredible games.

The 2-DVD set is available to pre-order now, which comes with a numbered, limited edition collector's coin (pictured).

Just chattin' about S-Club 7, McFly and how boy bands are gay over in #myopera and it struck me...

Francesca "Frankie" Sandford (pictured, far left) who was in S-Club Juniors, is dating one of the guys from McFly (who undoubtedly had cracked one off over Sandford under the bedsheets whilst watching CBBC on a Saturday morning) and is now in The Saturdays, is hot. Really hot.

I never thought I'd say I fancied someone from S-Club Juniors.

One thing I'm definitely going to miss about Urmston is Saturday mornings; where Sally and I go into the town centre, get some breakfast and take a look in some of our favourite shops - which includes the excellent Traditional Sweetie Shop.

This week's confectionery of choice was a colourful selection of bon-bons!

I love birds and so was pleased to see a range of bird illustrations by Jacqui Oakley hit the front page of Behance Network.

Using a combination of oil paints, ink and digital media in her work, Jacqui explains why the feathered creatures are so fun to illustrate; "I love working on bird illustrations. There's so much personality and texture to work with. It is funny lately that I've had multiple requests for similar 'bird song' compositions. I try to make each one distinct though."

You can see more of Jacqui's work on jacquioakley.com