Will Draw 4 Food

I found these two videos recently that make me believe I really need to go all out on the girl I love, when I want her to marry me. How can I not when there are people out there doing things like these?

LUCK – NYC Wedding Proposal from Aria Melody DJ on Vimeo.

In the above video, from what I believe is that the guy got help to make a video about him and the love of his life, without his love ever knowing why they’re filming her. Or that they told her something else that the project is about. Then at the end… Well, I don’t think her tears are staged.

And this one, I’ve seen that quite a lot of people do similar things… But this is the first one that I’ve ever seen.

I once made a mini-comic for a girl’s birthday. It took me two weeks to write and draw. When I gave it to her, she laughed.

So for a long time, I felt like I never wanted to make anything for anyone ever again.

But seriously, I just haven’t found that girl yet. Have you found that guy/gal?

Today I walked about 3 miles just to mail a bunch of posters to people who were kind enough to buy one. Fortunately it was a beautiful 80 degrees as I walked, and I listened to a terribly boring audiobook, so it was a nice little breather for me.

It was almost like I want to mail out things every other day, to have some time to myself, to walk, to get fresh air… But only when it’s nice out. So no poster selling during the winter.

Bruceman’s album is on it’s 6th mix, and the 7th revisions should hopefully be its final, where we then send the files to get the songs mastered. It’s kind of eye-opening to see what goes into cleaning up music. A garage band has that “garage” sound for a reason. Basically that band has one shot to record their song, and then they’re done. If someone’s voice cracks during a line, that’s what you’re going to get on the album. No auto-tune. If someone misses a note, that’s now the final version of the song. Those sounds you hear from large albums sound different for a reason, and I’m experiencing the process.

If you told me I’d be in the middle of this back in college, I would’ve looked at you oddly. I might’ve misunderstood and said, “Oh I’m making album covers? Okay that’s cool.” and miss the point that I’m co-producer.

I penciled about six comic pages in my sketchbook tonight, so I have things to scan and ink tomorrow. But the coolest thing created today were Nintendo mii characters for the 3DS. You see, you can turn those mii characters into QR barcodes. If your 3DS scans them, you’ll see the mii character that was made.

And somebody came up with brilliant idea of using that, placing it on a ticket for a concert, and if the right mii character is scanned, that ticket holder wins a free prize.

When you’re making things like that, and it’s considered part of your job, then by golly, life is good.

And it is. When the only real problems in life is trying to lose a few pounds for a wedding, then there’s just nothing worth complaining about.

Everyday of my life seems busy. Even those days that I rest. As if I have to schedule my breaks, or the times I watch television. It’s completely batty, isn’t it?

May 22nd marked a day where I mostly read and responded to e-mails related to work. I checked out an apartment building that ended up being way too small to live in, and then went to dinner with my Mother. She wanted to look at more apartment listings online at her apartment, but instead I aimed to go home.

After hugging the cat, I began to work on some drawings for a mini-comic I’m offering as an incentive for people to purchase the upcoming rock opera project to prevent illegal pirating. After finishing a page and a half of that, I decided to head to the gym, just to get a mile’s jog in me… Because I want to be a more slender than I am. (I’m shallow towards myself)

And I thought to myself, “How can I label this rock opera project a success?”

I believe I’d call this a success the minute all the funds are paid off, and we’re in the black. I have to admit I’d love to make so much money that everyone involved could have some sort of income flowing from all of this to help pay rent, or maybe an upcoming wedding… But seriously, I wouldn’t mind just having the finances paid off. Even if we end up making just $50 total, I think I’ll be happy because we let the world know what we’re capable of, and still moved enough albums, t-shirts, what-have-you out the door to pay for itself.

It will be like a calling card. A way for the world to see who we are. That alone, is really exciting.

May 23rd, the sun begins to rise. I sketch more for the incentive bonus comic while watching cartoons and doing dishes. I realize I needed to package about ten posters that sold last week to get them out the door sometime in the afternoon. I screwed up, and it will now be my top priority to get at least a handful of them ready for the post office.

I wish the post office wasn’t a mile walk, is all.

Exchanged e-mails with Matt. He’ll be busy working with the mixer, Rick, while I also look for any problems in the songs that my inexperienced ears can pick up. He’s being optimistic that all sound files will be sent to the master Monday night or Tuesday, so that we have a digital release no later than May 31st. Once those files are all ready, I can make an order with a cd company, and get a first print run of 300 CDs. But I am not too concerned with that. I just need to get all the art files ready on my end done, which is the CD packaging, the bonus comic, and the things I promised to those who pre-ordered… Avatars, wallpaper designs.

Once those are all done, I feel like I can really rest for the first time in a long time.

It’s exciting.

From a site I’ve just found tonight, informationisbeautiful.net, this infographic from April 13th, 2010 shows how many listens, sales, whatever it takes for a solo musical artist to make a US monthly minimum wage.

There were quite a handful of people involved in making this graphic, so after reading my input on the matter, I suggest checking out their site.

That said, it’s scary. I know that. It’s interesting to me because I’m about to dabble into that world for the first time. Online distribution is difficult, and the only big winners of the equation for the time being are companies like Apple and Amazon. The digital retailers. But just the same, I do think it is very important to have your content out there, even if you are only making a ton less than you hope, for exposure that can benefit you later in life.

Few things I thought when reading this:
1) If you don’t have the audience, you can’t do this full time unless you have multiple projects (and thus sources of income) coming in to you at once. So if you are able to understand that if you’re just starting and aren’t expecting to live off of this stuff immediately, then the fact that you are getting any return investment from the time you spent on your album, then you are on the right direction.

2) This chart doesn’t recognize that people will probably use more than one of these ways of getting their albums out there at the same time. One album could be available on itunes and directly through the artist at the same time, and then played for free (at a lower quality to give incentive to purchase) on streamed sites like Rhapsody and Last.fm. The streaming sites can help build your audience in ways you wouldn’t be able to reach them otherwise. They might like your stuff and head to your itunes digital copy and buy it as a result. But if the artist focuses on just an actual CD being sold directly through to them, then they have to compensate with a much smaller audience. mico-transactions will add up if you continue to pump out material for the internet-age’s audience.

3) This chart also doesn’t show that the artist might come up with other sources of income from the project alone, such as t-shirts, live performances and other merchandise that relates to the album. Related to this is that any album (or any project that anyone in their career of choice) becomes a sort of greeting/business card. It shows the world, “This is what I can do. Let’s make the next one get to the next level.”

The chart does show, however, that it is important to not just create a product, submit the appropriate files to a digital distributor of your choice, and wait for the money to roll in. Once the album is done and ready to go, the work is far from over. You then have to spend a long time promoting both yourself, your work, and your talent. The thought of that possibly terrifies a lot of people, paralyzing them from ever going as far as they could.

But if you keep at it, work to have your audience grow, your skill improve, your craft excel… Then the money will begin to reflect that as well.

-J

This is one of the weirdest things I’ve seen online in a while. And that says something, right?

Observe a video of a woman having chocolate poured on her, and then if you want, observe the follow ups when she dunks her face even more in the chocolate, and observe just how thick it gets? I really don’t know how to explain this:

I can’t embed it, so Just go to it and come back, haha!

While showing the The art director of this site/store this video he said, “Reminds me of the old days of college art classes that tried to push the definitions of what ‘ART’ was.”

I told him, “I think one of the definitions of art is to make the observer think. And this succeeds in me thinking. But it makes me think, ‘What were THEY thinking?”

I’m able to go to museums and get a good understanding of where the artist was coming from, or what they were trying to accomplish in a certain piece, both because I experience similar things in my own career, as well as studied art history both for school credit, and now just to educate myself… But performance art always leaves me more confused than not!

(via kottke.org)

I’ve been trying to make a weekly art challenge thing over at 4colorrebellion.com and sometimes I get submissions from people that are too talented. What I mean by that is that I might be a little bit jealous. But a healthy jealous because I don’t have any ill-wills toward them.

One person who submitted had a bunch of designs on their website, and one I thought was so cool, that I wanted on a t-shirt. I told level up studios about the design, and what-do-ya-know? They ended up making an agreement to actually print and sell the thing! Yay! I helped someone else’s career! (Even though she’s hyper talented and would’ve had no problem anyway.)

So the design is up for pre-order right now. It’s too bad I don’t get any “finder’s fee” for this product, so it’s not like this is some kind of advertisement I get paid for, haha. I just think it’s interesting that I’m sort-of finding talent that deserves attention, and am using network skills to have that happen. And then to see it all work out in the end.

Go team.

I liked this considering how typographic heavy my work has been lately.

The author describes this video as each letter shown is the first letter of a certain font.

Graphic t-shirts have always been a serious business, and I mean that with as little sarcasm as possible. But These folks have taken it to the next level by making stylish designs by having the pattern laser cut on one shirt, and the color being used from the shirt underneath. While it’s on the pricey side of things, the end result of how it looks will probably mean we’re looking at a future fashion trend.

Someone wanna buy some of these for me? I take medium or large, depending how far in a diet I am.

How cool is this? The graphic designers Sam Cox and Justin LaRosa use lego pieces as if they’re letterpress printing. Which is such a clever way to produce art. I took printmaking in college, including silkscreening, monoprints and etching, and you have to really love the craft because some forms of printing can be really tedious.

But the end result? I always found them looking beautiful.
And these pieces are no different:

Check out more at fastcodesign.com

Ah the beauty of animated film. It brings back the youth in adults, and keeps kids young.

The Beauty of Pixar from Leandro Copperfield on Vimeo.