Studio Ghibli revealed that Princess Mononoke is coming to the London stage. Theater company Whole Hog Theatre will be doing a production of the 1997 anime next April at London's New Diorama Theatre.

The stage version is a collaboration between Studio Ghibli and Whole Hog Theatre, and it has been in development for over the past year. This "epic ecological fable" will feature original music and large puppets crafted from recycled materials. Tickets can be pre-ordered right now.

Above is the first image from the production.

'Princess Mononoke' at the New Diorama Theatre [Whole Hog via Twitter via ANN via Japanator]

Yesterday at an anime festival in Shenzhen, China, a cosplayer showed up dressed as a female spirit. Dressed? Did I say dressed? Silly me.

The cosplayer showed up as the Chinese apparition Nu Gui, but the crowd that gathered was very real. Dressed only in a flesh colored skivvies and wearing nipple covers, the cosplayer draped herself in long-flowing hair.

Nu Gui (女鬼) is a vengeful ghost with long locks, who usually is seen in a white dress and often seduces lecherous men to kill them. Here, she's unclothed and posing for pics.

While not technically nude, police apparently took the woman away—probably for indecency.

(The media referred to this cosplay as Nu Gui; however, some readers have pointed out, perhaps this woman is cosplaying as Alma Wade from F.E.A.R.)

深圳动漫展裸女"求包养" 引观众围观 [Yahoo! China via Heaven]

Kotaku East runs from 4am to 8am Eastern. For more info about Kotaku East click here.

Badass Japanese soap opera (and occasionally sublime brawler) Yakuza's first two games are getting HD re-releases on the PS3. This trailer gives us our first look at the updated editions in action.

While many "HD" ports are disappointing, that shouldn't be a problem for the Yakuza games. After all, outside of cutscenes many parts of the last two (three if you count the zombie game...four if you count the medieval Ryū ga Gotoku Kenzan spin-off) games have looked like HD PS2 games anyway. Yakuza 1 & 2 in HD should look like...HD PS2 games.

Fingers crossed this pack comes to the West, mostly because it'll be a chance to play all the games in one box, and in their native tongue to boot (the first game was given a Hollywood dub by Sega for its Western release back in 2005).

One of the Zelda series' most dangerous (and creepy) enemies, the skulltula, is the star of this great piece of art by Asashi-Kami.

Bonus: if you like it so much you'd like to wear it on your chest, you can.

Skulltula [DeviantArt]

---

What do you get when you cross Optimus Prime with Warhammer 40K's Orks? A joke with a terrible punchline, I'd wager, but also this amazing custom piece by Singaporean madscuzzy.

While it may just look like a slightly modified version of an existing Transformers toy, it's actually the result of a ton of work on madscuzzy's part, in which he took a Warhammer 40K Ork Trukk model, cut it apart, added some joints so it could transform, added some more parts so it looked like a robot, then had to paint it all.

A lot of work, then, but a lot of work that was worth it, because this thing is incredible.

Interview: madscuzzy (Creator of Orktimus Prime) [Tabletop Geeks]

---

Curiosity is the name of the first title legendary designer Peter Molyneux has worked on since leaving Lionhead. This is not a trailer for that game.

Well, it is, kind of. It's brilliant satirist Peter Molydeux's trailer for Curiosity, which takes Molyneux's penchant for hype and blows it quite literally out into space.

While there's official Lord of the Rings (and The Hobbit!) LEGO sets, to keep them affordable and able to fit on a store shelf they're kept small and fairly basic. So the official Helm's Deep set looks nothing like this monstrosity.

Built as a promo centrepiece for a store in Oslo, Norway, Daniel Z's massive model contains everything you'd need to recreate the most badass battle of the series, including an exploding wall, a tossed dwarf and some Rohirrim who figured it was better late than never.

Daniel Z "DNL"'s photostream [Flickr, via Brothers Brick]

---

BioShock's Big Daddy enforcers look great, but they're stuck in the past. All that rust and brass, it's so 20th century! What they need is a makeoever, bring them up to 21st century standards.

Artist Sean Bigham tackled the issue a few years back, and the results are surprisingly tasteful.

I especially like the little claw. Functional, yet adorable.

Those things that I actually finished… [Sean Bigham, via OTL Gaming]

That's it. No mahine guns today. No more giant robots, no post-apocalyptic landscapes, no bloodthirsty aliens. Today, we're looking at video game concept art that's so damn bright and cheerful it'll put more peps in your step than you'll know what to do with.

It's all the work of Floriane Marchix, who is currently at Dreamworks but who used to be employed at Ubisoft, where she worked on the delightful Rayman Origins.

You'll see a ton of stuff from that game, but I've thrown in plenty of personal work as well. Because it's great.

You can see a lot more at Floriane's personal site.

To see the larger pics in all their glory (or so you can save them as wallpaper), right-click on them below and select "open in new tab".

---