Here it is… the final part in the RubberOnion Freelance School and we’re talking about the likely goal in your third year: growing your business. Everyone starts this journey for different reasons, but independence is usually high up on that list. So what happens when you get to that point that you’ve gotten into the freelance game, you’ve established your brand, you started making some more money, and now you’re up against a production wall – you just don’t have enough ours in the day to progress any farther by yourself… you grow your business! This episode covers when to hire-out, which types of jobs to hire for and how to adjust your quote price for a team, the option of connecting with other Freelancers, contracts and the benefits of a virtual studio.

Become a Patron on my Patreon page to get the more detailed ebook in February on starting a freelance business.

And don’t forget to check out the companion blog post with this podcast to read a more structured write-up on what to expect in your third year of being a Freelancer!

Listen for Hollywood Jack ‘n the Beanstalk, speedbumps and potholes, and “thumb or finger?”

Please Rate & Review us on iTunes

And you can now listen to us out on SoundCloud!

Topics & Timestamps:

Media Referenced During this Episode:

Rob attempting to be “can head” (mentioned at 6:55)

A photo posted by Stephen Brooks (@rubberonion) on Feb 4, 2016 at 8:04am PST

“The Mess Around” scene from Planes, Trains & Automobiles (25:10)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8riUi_rgOQ

#RubberOnionBattle for Jan 2016 compilation (35:37)

“Moshi Moshi Moshi” animated by Stephen for MindCandy (50:32)

Check out more of your hosts:

Stephen Brooks
Rob Yulfo

And please Rate/Review us on iTunes
 Subscribe on SoundCloud 
… and Rate/Review us on Stitcher while you’re at it! (=

The post How to Keep Your Freelance Animation Business Growing – RubberOnion Animation Podcast #118 appeared first on Artiholics.

This week we have a very special interview: Alan Becker, creator of the hit “Animator vs Animation” stick-fight series joins us to talk about his experience with Kickstarter, what happened when his first short went viral, and how he actually does the things he does! There’s a lot of really great stuff here for young and old animators from the Indie scene, especially when he starts talking about when and how he had to navigate the murky waters of a viral hit. And be sure to check out his work embedded below!

Annotations:

 
“Animator vs Animation 4”

 
Behind the scenes video

 
His Flash tutorials

 
“Animator vs Animation 3”

 
“Animator vs Animation 2”

 
“Animator vs Animation 1”

 
“If Water Had Eyes”

 
Spirited Away MineCraft project

 
Check out more of your hosts:
Stephen Brooks (@RubberOnion)
Rob Yulfo (@RobYulfo)
Pat Ryan (@TheBadPatRyan)

And please Rate/Review us on iTunes
… and Rate/Review us on Stitcher while you’re at it! (=

The post Interview with Alan Becker, creator of viral “Animator vs Animation” stick-fight series appeared first on Artiholics.

Pat couldn’t join in this week, so Stephen and Rob decided to discuss their own experiences in building an animation brand (indie and freelance) on the internet, and what trials, tribulations, and learning experiences they had to go through to get where they are now. Just like episode 25, we hope you enjoy this departure from the normal “stories of the week” format and encourage you to join the conversation in the comments section below!

First thing Stephen ever uploaded to YouTube: “Making Of” Frank freaking out scene from “Three’s Horrible” (3 video playlist)

First thing Rob ever uploaded to YouTube: Monster throwing up babies (very “Rob”)

Stephen’s VLOG series chronicling the creation of an animated short (playlist)

Check out more of your hosts:
Stephen Brooks (@RubberOnion)
Rob Yulfo (@RobYulfo)
Pat Ryan (@TheBadPatRyan)

And please Rate/Review us on iTunes
… and Rate/Review us on Stitcher while you’re at it! (=

The post Two animators talk about experiences building an internet brand appeared first on Artiholics.

Imagine if Auguste Renoir and Valerie Solanas had a baby…

Artist Greta Bank‘s show NSFW allowed her to transmogrify Portland, Maine’s SPACE Gallery into an immersive landscape of paintings of the female form, raw building materials, and a wall of diffused light, but that was only part of the fun. She transformed herself as well.

Donning a partial drag persona, she created an alter ego of faux French Impressionist, Gustave Menet.  A “genderfucked” woolly-stilt-walking male artist trope with TITS!  Wielding handmade brushes,  a spirit gummed  gray biker beard fright wig, the titular NSFW Hell’s Angels style jacket, red crotch flowers simulating menstruation, and a bra.. Painting in the middle of a gallery, he/she painted and overpainted the pieces in the show off and on during the course of it’s eight week run last fall.

The experience was documented by filmmaker David Meiklejohn.

SPACE Gallery is located at 538 Congress St., Portland, ME.  Their current exhibition Free For All is an unjuried group show featuring works by a wide variety of artists in a democratic curatorial fashion.

More of Greta’s work can be found on her website: MySecretStudio.com

The project NSFW was funded by The Artists Resource Trust and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Written by Cojo “Art Juggernaut”

The post The One NSFW Art Opening You Can Take Your Kids To (Video) appeared first on Artiholics.

   Large drawings, some over one kilometer in length take shape under Sam’s rake.They can take the form of geometrical patterns, figurative work, or sentences.

“I try to integrate my work in the nature as well as the nature in my work. It’s all natural and disappears in a few hours.”

“I take photos of my drawings before the tide erases them.”

“Then I try to tell another story.”

He has brought his rake and his camera with him to beaches in France, Spain, Morocco, England, the Bailiwick of Jersey, and Bermuda. The best photos are printed in a limited series on brushed aluminum for the grain and light.

But this is just the beginning for him, there are more beaches in distant lands to rake.

Basically every sandy coastline on Earth has the potential for being one of Sam’s canvases, it’s brilliant really.  It’s like an impermanent series of Nazca lines…Now that I’m writing about this I am already dreading the thought of hipsters getting inspired by these pictures, and wanting  to co-opt this concept and invade Rockaway Beach with rakes this Summer.  Please, please, please, if you are reading this and had that thought yourself.  NO…We are on to you.  Be a fucking original.

Learn More on Sam’s Website www.sam-dougados.com and like him on Facebook

Written by Cojo “Art Juggernaut”

The post French Artist Creates Mile Wide Beach Graffiti in The Sand appeared first on Artiholics.

When proposing a building design, an architect will draft a realistic architectural rendering.  This is a fiction, the illusion of a 3-D concept model of a building which only exists on paper.  This sort of rendering makes it easier for a client to “picture it” as a finished structure in relation to the existing architecture and being a physical fixture in the world around it as very little is left to the imagination.

If you are an entrepreneurial mogul such as Jay Z setting out to launch and brand a previously unknown Cognac, you find yourself with a unique challenge. How do you go about giving something that didn’t previously exist in the marketplace a chance to compete with other high-end alcohols, all of which already have a strong foothold on the nightclub’s coveted top shelves?

Aside from paying top dollar for that shelf placement, you can also skew your advertising with some fantasy. You realistically render it into reality.  Place the liquor in an atmosphere in which your product “should” exist.  A beautiful photograph of the largest musician in the world sitting in his massive Tribeca penthouse with a $6,850,000.00 view, wearing a $4,000 Tom Ford suit, smoking a $45 cigar, while admiring his print of Basquiat Untitled (1983).

This “Insta-cred” elevates the alcohol to the level of all that is around it, as we (as well as products) are judged by the company we keep. It’s validated as an intrinsically high status liquor because of its dominant placement in a world of previously validated status symbols.

So with this in mind, let’s come up with a further proposition. You are Jay Z.  You love the fine art world, are a collector of the arts, and seek acceptance by the upper crust fine art elite as an artist.  You feel like the modern day Basquiat, like the modern day Picasso, yet you aren’t garnering any fine art respect.

You would like to be dually embraced as an entity that exists outside of the “Mtv Rap World” as well as continue to be looked upon by rap fans as somewhat of a god among men.  How do you bridge the gap between a hip hop performance and performance art?

By using the business model of selling an unknown Cognac to a high-end consumer. The key would be to craft a narrative that places you into a position of power as a reputable performance artist.  A lot of art world players would have to be precisely aligned “in the same picture” to give the illusion of uniformity, so that your product — in this case “Jay Z” himself — is not only integrated into the fine art performance art world as a supporting element, but as a powerful entity with dominant placement (the glowing bottle in the foreground).

Throughout this new album Magna Carta Holy Grail Jay Z sings about the various art pieces he wants to own, or currently owns.  If you want to build an art collection of that scale, it would total slightly less than $500 Million dollars, which if he had his heart set on it, he could buy up all the pieces he mentions and still have $500 Million left in the bank.  There are some things money can’t buy, and apparently art world Insta-cred isn’t one of them.  Let’s examine in detail.

Because this song is so fine-art-centric, Picasso Baby director Mark Romanek is quoted as saying he was directly inspired by the documentary The Artist Is Present. The film chronicles Marina Abramović ‘s retrospective at MoMA which was highlighted by her daily “duration performance piece” whereupon she would sit facing members of the public one-by-one, making a lot of them cry.  The artist was present, and you were eye level, an equal.

To “sample” this performance (with a few tweaks) and jump into duration performance art piece without having previously existed in the fine art performance world takes balls, but if you have a nice warm glowing bottle- it’s part skill, part psychology, part who you know, and a lot of creative fine tuned editing.

A few months ago the Internet blew up because Jay Z was in Chelsea secretly filming (not so secret to the art world twitter heads) a six hour performance art piece at a small white wall gallery reminiscent of the Marina piece- and Marina was invited. This was edited down to a 7-minute (11 minute with credits) “Performance Art Film” aka Music Video which “isn’t a video.” Watch the HBO film Picasso Baby (above), and as you do, think about Jay Z’s positioning, posturing, and the way it’s cut.

As the performance was going on in real time, the internet buzz from people watching the vines and reading the live tweets were mixed between “this is an amazing piece of performance art” and “this isn’t art.”

A musician on a stage in front of an audience is performing, and Jay Z is a hip hop artist, so yes, this is performance art… if you do it in front of 60,000 people (his normal audience size) or 60, it doesn’t detract from the art of performing, so I don’t see what the beef is.

You might have thought you were coming to view or participate in a performance art piece, but you were also unwittingly invited to a sparring match. A shootout at high noon.

A Matrix duel in a white dojo, and tough luck, you are Morphius- oh, and you have to sit on a bench……against Bruce Lee…

…with slight of hand skills.

I’ve got 99 Problems and Marina ain’t one.

and fists……forming invisible guns… you are no match.  Because you aren’t the cowboy in the white hat, he is, and you also don’t have a voice. There are a lot of people with pure white shirts in the crowd, but he never squares off with any of them. There is a lot of subliminal shit happening here.

A one-sided rap battle in which you have literally no chance of winning or even anything close to looking superior.  Not because you are an inferior artist, but because you don’t get a chance to defend yourself.

If you have ever seen 8 mile, or watched any Rap Battles on Youtube, you will have noticed that the protocol is very much the same as this performance.  One rapper gets the opportunity to get up in the other rapper’s face, tearing them down with rhymes as an audience reacts.

They have to just stand there silently and take it… but the beauty of the rap battle is that the person taking the punishment gets a chance to retaliate with their own rhymes, while the initial rapper takes his turn remaining silent as the audience reacts.  Not so in this case, as the only one with a mic is Jay Z.

Was this a duration performance?  Yes.  Was it one where the artist stands above you, yelling down at you from a white pedestal, directly into your face,  in an all white room, wearing white, while you sit there and have your reaction filmed from multiple angles and by dozens of smart phones? Yes again.

I wondered about how Marina might have felt in accepting the invitation to be upstaged at a performance which would be ripping off her own performance, knowing it would be edited.

There was a lot of subliminal psychological stuff going on in this film, to position Jay Z as an authority figure in the fine art high-brow performance art world.

For one, the constant battle for height with Marina.  We reduce our height to show subordination to others and increase height to gain status.

Shaking a finger “no” at her, and laughing when she pushed her face on his… very weird shit happening.  I’m really breaking this down, probably too much, but 6 hours was edited to 7 minutes. These exact seven in this exact way. Pretty sure they thought about every second of footage.

In editing this tight, there are no accidents or misplaced frames.

I’d imagined Marina might have felt something like the former The Police front man Sting to P.Diddy.

Do you remember when P.Diddy and Faith Evans did a tribute song to the Notorious B.I.G. and they “sampled” Sting’s I’ll be watching you, with “I’ll be Missing You?”

Later, after there was no signs of this going away, Sting showed up on stage in a (If you can’t beat em’ join em’) appearance to sing the hook underneath Puffy literally talking over what was once his song. Although it appeared as though Sting refused to change the lyrics from I’ll be Watching You to I’ll Be Missing You, it still seemed to be giving P.Diddy the OK, even if it was reluctantly.

Marina looks like Sting.  This is her world, but Jay Z is more famous.

It seems like people were kind of enamored.  Some people danced and played along, others were being beat down by shadowboxing and words being thrown in their face.

You know when you are on the subway and those groups of 3 kids with a boombox get on, and they start the music super loud and then start spinning around the poles, doing flips and stuff very close to you, where they almost hit people?  It’s the proximity that makes it uncomfortable, and if you embrace it and let yourself be impressed, you will be part of the show, but if you bury your head in your phone and don’t want to participate, it becomes more awkward.  And when you look awkward, you get dominated.

Jay Z came off looking like Jesus Christ walking into the room giving out gold bars.  Yes, if he wasn’t famous nobody would give a shit about a guy talking in rhyme about what art pieces he “wants to line his castle” with.

Yeah, the discomfiture is probably what sets it apart from being a rap concert. Plus having all those alpha art-world personalities in the room and basically making them sit on a bench.
The balls behind the concept: I’m going to rhyme talk at your face, about how I want to own artwork – really loud, and you will sit there awkwardly, and this is art.

Were they swept up in the moment? They felt like they were special, because they were invited to be there, and in the room with one of the most famous musicians currently on the planet.  Like the Marina piece, they got to look into his eyes and connect.  They got to be performed to one-on-one.

Actors, film makers, painters, gallerists, art critics etc..

It is a very strange little art video, and there is a lot to be learned behind the psychology at play here. To put it in the rap musician mindset… If I sign with a record label that already has a lot of big named acts on their label, that makes me legit, and makes me on their level, a big name act – so when Jay Z throws these big performance artists into his video and they dance around with him, it’s fake legitimacy. But since they are into it, do they in fact make it legit?

I did like that there is a line in the song about him being the next Jean-Michel, and that’s one of the only lines where you don’t actually see him saying it. That would be too pompous a line to come out of his mouth on camera, and he felt that, and edited appropriately.

All this said, I think Jay Z is a genius.  To say he isn’t  an artist is absurd.  When it comes to marketing, making hit music,  and the business of art – he is on par with Andy Warhol.  Andy once said:

“Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.” – Andy Warhol

Jay Z has got that part of the art game on lock.

The post Jay Z’s Empire State Of Mind: The Hip Hop Picasso is Present Baby appeared first on Artiholics.

New York City – Monday, December 16, 2013

The good folks at Creative-Capital.org have offered Artiholics.com an exclusive (one day) jump on publishing videos they shot of their 2013 Creative Capital Artist Retreat. It’s a rare glimpse into the artist’s creative processes, as the peel back the cover to reveal the inspiration behind their work, as well as what they have learned and how they’ve grown as artists along the way . These videos have not been made public, so you can only see them here on Artiholics. I sat down and watched a bunch of them, and picked some I think might be of interest…

Jen Bervin
Jen Bervin (2013 Literature Creative Capital Awardee) presented her project “The Silk Poems.”  In her experimental book “The Silk Poems” she wants to “explore the cultural, scientific, and linguistic complexities of silk, mending, and the body on nano-imprinted silk film.  The pages will be combined into a transparent book, a single small sheet, with every poem present, that can be read / projected with fiber optic light.” – Jen Bervin
This video includes a clip from a TEDx talk by Fiorenzo Omenetto, a Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Tufts University who is researching biomedical silk.
Read more about this project here: creative-capital.org/projects/view/744

Degenerate Art Ensemble aka Joshua Kohl and Haruko Nishimura
Degenerate Art Ensemble (2013 Performing Arts Creative Capital Awardee) presents their project “The Predator’s Songstress.”   They make “Performance work inspired by punk, comics, cinema, nightmares, and fairy tales.  Driven by the power of live music and our own style of visceral movement, theater and dance.” -Joshua Kohl
Find out more about their project here: creative-capital.org/projects/view/775

Patty Chang
Patty Chang (2012 Visual Arts Creative Capital Awardee) presents her project “The Wandering Lake.”  She talks about some of her earlier performance based work, and it’s evolution into borderline surrealist documentary video instillations, which led to her “The Wandering Lake.” 20th-century explorer Sven Hedin coined the term the “Wandering Lake” to describe Lake Lop Nur in western China when he was commissioned by the Chinese government in the 1920s to find a modern silk road that was accessible by car.  The Wandering Lake is a video installation based on Patty Chang’s journey by camper from Europe through Central Asia to China with staged performances along the way.
Learn more about her project here: creative-capital.org/projects/view/708

Simone Leigh
Simone Leigh, sculptor and video artist (2012 Visual Arts Creative Capital Awardee) presents her project “What’s Her Face.”  She uses sculpture to interpret how a belief system might be transferred from one object to another through sculpture.
Find out more about her work here: creative-capital.org/projects/view/714

Connie Samaras
Connie Samaras (2012 Visual Arts Creative Capital Awardee) presents her project “Edge of Twilight/Tales of Tomorrow” at the 2013 Creative Capital Artist Retreat.  Watch as she talks about her “Edge of Twilight” photos of an all Lesbian Retirement community, which of course led her to her current work, creating a lesbian time travel video.

Learn more about her project here: creative-capital.org/projects/view/728

Wakka Wakka Productions
Wakka Wakka Productions (2013 Performing Arts) presents their project “Made In China.”  Wakka Wakka are puppet makers and puppeteers, who have received awards for “sophisticated puppet theatre”. Named after a phrase Fozzie Bear makes when a joke doesn’t go over very well, their uncomfortable delivery could have used a little better timing.  Captain Kirk would cringe at these uncomfortable pauses.  Somebody must have told this guy to Sloooow down, and enunciate- and he took their advice and multiplied it by 10.  Ben Stein talks faster than this guy in Ferris Bueller’s day off.  Spoiler, it takes 2:26 to see a single puppet.  Once it gets to their reel, then it takes off.  The puppetry is pretty damn cool.  The puppet show they got a grant for “Made In China” is political.  “A dark musical comedy, about the complicated relationship between the US and China.”
Find out more about their project here: creative-capital.org/projects/view/788

About The Creative Capital Artist Retreat
The Retreat is the centerpiece of Creative Capital’s artist services. The 2013 Retreat in Williamstown, MA, was our largest convening to date, bringing together 350 artists, arts professionals and arts advocates. This four-day event included presentations by 86 artists on their works-in-progress, consultations and networking events, and focus sessions on key issues in the field. Peter Sillen (2005 Film/Video awardee) and C41 Media interviewed Creative Capital staff, artists, consultants and supporters at the Retreat to learn more about the transformative experience of the Retreat.

Published with permission by Creative-Capital.org

Written by Cojo “Art Juggernaut”

The post ARTIHOLICS EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: Creative Capital Artist Retreat 2013 appeared first on Artiholics.

I’ll be the first to admit I don’t watch new music videos that often, so when I heard this song Radioactive by Imagine Dragons I didn’t search it out…Until today, and wow, the video does NOT match the song.  Actually, if I had 1000 guesses, none of the elements shown would have made the list.

Ok, so how did this happen?

I do watch a few shows on Syfy, and when the show Defiance was set to premier they started showing ads for the Defiance video game, which was actually launching before the pilot episode even made the air, and the commercial for the video game had this badass post apocalyptic song I had never heard before.  As seen below:

Now, the song was pretty kickass. Teamed with explosions, alien chicks with dreadlocks, giant subterranean crab-monsters, roadsigns in shambles, mad max style armored cars, materializing cyborgs, and futuristic gun violence…I was in.  Not on buying the game, but at least giving the pilot episode a watch… but, bait and switch, the song was only used in ALL OF THE VIDEO GAME BRANDING, but not at all used in the actual show.  The theme to the show was an orchestral wannabe John Williams composition. As heard below:

So yes, I watched the first 3 episodes of the show before bailing on it, but the song stuck with me.  I also noticed it was getting radio airplay whenever I would be driving and listening to top 40 stations.  So I decided to check out the video for this song.  In my mind I was going to find something visually that tied into the music, which would most likely be a cross between Evanescence and Monster Magnet.  My mind was nowhere near reality.  It was more of a cross between East Bound & Down‘s Mexican Cock Fights and The Muppet Show.

Check it out for yourself.  There are a few good things that happen in this video. The best of which is Lou Diamond Phillips getting work.

Written by Cojo “Art Juggernaut”

The post Expected Badass…Got Muppets appeared first on Artiholics.

Ok, I feel robbed…the other day I was watching Science Channel.  It was a show about how science fiction writers have effected reality, when they mention hydrogen fuel cells for cars.

I made a model of a hydrogen powered car in the late 80s for a school science fair project. The simple beauty is that water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen so if you separate the gases through electrolysis you have pure hydrogen gas to burn in an engine as fuel and oxygen to breathe …and the only thing that comes out of the exhaust pipe when you burn hydrogen would be liquid water. Now this car is set to be mass produced by 2020…. I got a C on this project, and the diorama was good too..WTF!!?

They were talking about filling your car with hydrogen at a hydrogen gas station, with the electrolysis being done in these large machines, my concept was more self contained. The electrolysis would happen within the engine, so your car would run on hydrogen gas, the Oxygen would be breathable air released into the atmosphere, and you would only pour water into your tank, never to have to pay for gas again.  The exhaust pipe could even be hardwired back into the engine so the water vapor produced could be reused as fuel.

Going on Youtube I found many videos of a man named Stan Meyers who as early as the 1970s had started experimenting with water powered cars, and by the early 90s had developed a prototype and had filed dozens of pattens.

As witnessed in this news report, the pentagon was interested in his invention.  So if he invented it so long ago, why doesn’t this exist en masse? …If you journey down the rabbit hole you find, yes, it’s fucked up.  Before the cars could be mass produced, Stan died of mysterious causes.

There are tons of videos of amateur tinkerers and inventors building off of Stan’s concepts, creating water based, or hydrogen based prototypes and posting their results on Youtube.

Written by Cojo “Art Juggernaut”

The post Youtube Art School: Designing A Car That Runs On Water appeared first on Artiholics.

New York, NY – Thursday, July 18, 2013

As part of the shit _____’s say meme, of course there are now a bunch of Shit Artists Say and variations on the theme videos.  We start with the original BELOW (VIMEO), which I first saw on Hyperallergic.  Since then many videos have cropped up on Youtube.  Some of these are dead on. Enjoy.

Shit young artists say.

Shit Photographers say.

This one is maybe one more for emerging musicians.

Artist / Other jobs.

Shit people who go to art fairs say.

Shit Art Student’s say…they are just learning to BS, cut them some slack.

And of course, there is the shit people say to artists.

Here is shit non-art majors say to art students:

These are great, they missed a few, most of these can be answered with yes, no, or no shit. Here are some I get a lot.

“Do you do logos?”

“Can you design my website?”

“I have a niece who paints, I have to introduce you to her. Maybe you can give her advice.”

“I wrote a children’s book, can you read it, maybe you would want to do the art for it.”

If you tell someone the price of a piece is “Only x amount” and they respond “Only!?”

“I want something like this, but it needs to be more ‘x color’ because my living room is mostly x color.”

“We don’t really have a budget.”

“We are a not for profit, so we don’t really have a budget.”

“We only have a tiny, tiny, budget, you understand.”

“This will take you no time.”

“It’s just a simple little drawing.”

“Since you are my friend, one day you probably will give me a piece right?”

“Where do you get your ideas?”

“Where do you get your inspiration?”

“How did you learn to draw like that?”

“Wait, you made this?”

“Oh my god, I didn’t even know you painted?”

“This looks really professional.”

“Wait, there is such a thing as ‘art school’? Is that like, a seminar, do you like get a certificate or something?”

If you are in a relationship with a non artist you will get family requests or comments like:

“Can you draw my grandma’s dog, she would love that.”

“Can you design a logo for my aunt’s business?”

“Can you help my uncle out with his website design, you are so good with that.”

“Your sleep schedule is fucked up, that’s not my problem, why do you have to work at night anyway?”

“Can you draw them for a wedding gift?”

Written by Cojo “Art Juggernaut”

The post Shit Artists & Art Students Say… appeared first on Artiholics.

New York, NY – Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Racism is a tough subject to explain to a kid.  This video from 1970 of a 3rd grade teacher, teaching the ignorance of racism to her students by tricking them into hating each other is pure brilliance.

Realizing how it felt to be hated or treated differently for having a different color eyes, something which only a day before meant nothing, transformed normally civil children into hierarchical-minded evil discriminating brats, hurting each others feelings and even starting fights with children of different eye colors.  It’s an amazing to watch.

It makes me think of the Maya Angelou quote I’ve seen posted  on Facebook a dozen times.

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

– Maya Angelou

These children will forget the teacher’s name.  They will forget their fellow student’s names and what they were called each other during the experiment, but for the rest of their lives they will remember how it felt to be shat upon.  To be treated as a lesser human being for just having a different colored eye.

The sad thing is that I don’t know if this sort of experiment could be done today.  The first kid that told his parent’s about them “being bullied” for the color of their eyes, and mentioned the teacher told them they were worth less because of their eyes and for the other children to treat them differently because of it, and that teacher would be on their ass with their desk emptied into a cardboard box before the next school day.

It’s a shame because it’s  life altering lessons like this, that if taught young, could make a huge impact in a child’s life, which would ripple on to their kids, and their kids, for generations.  World altering lessons.

While viewing this video I was reminded of the Starbelly Sneetches.  Not the Starbelly Sneetches video below, the book (which I was read as a child), but the sentiment is the same- but packaged in Sneetch form.

My toddler self learned a lot about morality, fairness, racism, and the golden rule as a byproduct of being a Dr. Seuss Fan.  You get sucked in by the fantastical worlds, bizarre rhyming speech patterns, and amazing art; the subliminal lessons and morals don’t beat you over the head, but he would gently and poetically whisper to you in Seussian alliteration.

Why don’t more things I love as an adult also have subliminally positive side effects?

Written by Cojo “Art Juggernaut”

[via Upworthy]

The post Do You Remember The Starbelly Sneetches? Explaining Racism With Art: YOUtube Art School appeared first on Artiholics.

2013 can be noted as the year of the word “Epic” as well as the year The Illusion of Depth mirror art (usually enhanced by neon), a trend that  took the Art World by storm.

I first noticed and pointed out this ART WORLD trend at Scope Art Fair. Recursive Mirrors – AKA “Infinity Mirrors” were everywhere. When I went to art fair after art fair I found that it wasn’t just a Scope phenomenon , the trend was a reality.  It’s everywhere.

But how are these shallow mirrors that seem to have the amazing illusion of depth? Ask the YouTube, and you shall receive.  Here are a few videos that explain how to make them really cheaply, and actually it’s a pretty easy illusion.  More a magic trick than a piece of art, but for some reason this year it has tricked itself into almost every art fair.

Thanks to YOUTUBE ART SCHOOL, you can learn how to make one yourself:

This DIY demonstration is presented by Armookie

A helpful step-by-step walk through by Muhamed Retkoceri
.
Once you learn how to create the illusion, you can make anything with it, not just artwork that hangs in The Armory show, how bout a living room table.

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There are many inventions, skills, and artistic innovations that have been lost to antiquity.  The composition of Greek Fire; the ingredients in the Rarest Color Blue, and up until recently Mayan Script.

One that is rarely thought of as a lost ancient art is the bouffant of the ancient world.

In a report by BBC UK, a hairstylist and “hairdo archaeologist” Janet Stephens on a trip to a museum noticed the intricate hairstyles on ancient Greek and Roman sculptures and thought that they would work as a hairstyle for a modern day bride.

Much in the way a painter can learn color, composition, and technique by studying a master painter at a museum, she was taking tips from the ancients.

What has always been believed to be by historians as intricate wigs, she observed that the hair looked less like a wig, and more like the clients she deals with on a daily basis in the salon.

She began the task of trying to recreate the styles using modern hair pinning implements, and becoming frustrated because they failed to do the job, she had to rediscover old tricks of the ancients to make the styles work.  Visit the BBC UK website to watch a video of Janet describing the process of rediscovery, and modern hair art innovation, with a little help from ancient sculptures.

Written by Cojo “Art Juggernaut” 

The post Ancient Artistic Hairstyles Lost To History Have Been Rediscovered appeared first on Artiholics.

I got sucked into the depths of the web last night when I watched this cartoon animating a portion of the season finale of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares.

This animation was done by Jaxamoto.

The full episode (above) featured Amy’s Baking company and is a must watch.

After seeing that I got into watching all of the news coverage and the facebook posting war, and yelp battles that came next.

This took me into first steps of an all night cleaning session where I sorted and reorganized my studio while watching the first season of the American version of Kitchen Nightmares on Netflix Streaming.

Still a disaster area work in progress.

I have learned a few design and culinary tips by mainlining an entire season of Kitchen Nightmares back to back on the internet.  TAKE NOTE:  if your restaurant is failing and you were thinking of trying to get a 15 Michelin star chef to come hang out for a week and yell at you but the waiting list is too long, here are a few tips I can give you just based on what I have seen on the TV.

The first is that your food sucks.  If Ramsay was there he would never like any of your food, most likely comparing it to a turd, having no taste, or he will actually leave your restaurant to vomit.  This is because you use shit ingredients, frozen food, processed food, and don’t know how to either cook at the right temperature, or plate a dish to look presentable.

The second is that when Ramsay fixes your restaurant the main thing his design team will do is paint the walls in warm yellow / gold hues, throw in a few big comfy couches, put fresh flowers all over your restaurant, and put candles on every table.  Your restaurant most likely will be compared to a tomb, or a grandma’s house.  You need to modernize it and make it more warm and inviting.  If the building is historic, or the restaurant you own is old or a legacy, and you have a few tasteful antique photos of either the building in earlier days, or photos of the restaurant in a different time period, Ramsay will frame these and put them near the door so guests will be able to enjoy them while they wait to be seated.

Do you have a shitty sign, a sign from a different era, or a sign that doesn’t mention that you are a restaurant?  Maybe no sign at all?  Invest some real money in an actual sign made of cut wood or rock.  It shows permanence.

As for the food, replace all of your frozen and processed food with fresh local food and fresh ingredients.  Use veggies that are seasonal, and change the menu according to the season.

At the end of the episodes there would usually be a few lines of type mentioning how successful the restaurant had become 2 or 5 months after the taping as a follow up.  Being that the first season was shot in 2007, it’s interesting to see this show back-to-back as I was able to google the name of the store and the words Kitchen Nightmares after every episode to see what became of them five years later.

This was actually kind of sad.  About 90% of the restaurants went out of business, were sold, or the head chef had a heart attack, drug overdose, or committed suicide (that one was depressing).

Now begins night two of the art studio overhaul.

Written by Cojo “Art Juggernaut”

The post YouTube Art School: Kitchen Nightmares – Crazy Amy Animated & The Internet Wormhole appeared first on Artiholics.

New York,  NY – Tuesday, May 21, 2013

One of the amazing things about the internet, and about YouTube in particular, is that there are a lot of artists and craftsmen out there willing to film “how-to” art tutorials and put them online FOR FREE.  Skills that have taken a person decades of trial and error, education, interning, and apprenticing to acquire.  The knowledge which you formerly would have to have taken the same long path to achieve is now just a YouTube search away.

If you aren’t looking to spend 100 grand getting your Masters Degree in Fine art, but you do want to have the same (or better) skills as a master craftsman, YouTube Art School is for you.  Today’s lesson, how to FABRICATE IRON MAN’S ARMOR:

There is a whole community of people on YouTube building IRON MAN armor right now, sharing tips and tricks, as well as their progress along the way.  Anthony Le is by far the cosplay god of IRON MAN building. Are you a skinny nerd who wants to get this kind of attention at a comic convention? Time for you to build an IRON MAN SUIT.

You can see “Master Le” has made a few versions since his original.

Including War Machine.

As well as Iron Patriot.

Jay May makes his helmets out of fiberglass.
Now there are a few approaches you can take to making your Iron Man suit.  A lot of people on YouTube go the “Hollywood Prop” route, making it out of light materials made to simulate metal such as fiberglass, plastic, or cardboard.

Jay May also teaches you how to build a rudimentary vacuform table in your garage, to mold your various IRON MAN parts out of plastic instead of fiberglass (which is how the helmets are made because it’s easier to hinge).

YouTube User Jay May has not only designed IRON MAN and War Machine IRON PATRIOT helmets, he has also added the electronics to make the faceplate open automatically while wearing them.

How to use a Pololu chip to make the IRON MAN faceplate open.

Jay May created a tutorial on the mini Maestro 6 channel by Pololu. The computers behind the IRON MAN electronics within the hardware like servos, switches, LED lights and some programming features. Most of Jay May’s videos were uploaded in the past week, you can watch him build the suit in real time by FOLLOWING HIM ON YOUTUBE.

Building a suit shouldn’t cost you a fortune if you are good at improvising. James Bruton built this IRON MAN flux capacitor ARCH REACTOR out of dollar store parts.

IRON MAN’s palm with a hole for the repulsor ray. James has uploaded a series of 5 videos just devoted to sculpting and fabricating IRON MAN’s hand armor

James shows step by step how to 3D print your IRON MAN fingers. This was uploaded a week ago, he probably has a few more videos yet to shoot as he finishes fabricating the fingers.

IRON MAN boots.

So how do these stack up to the real props used in filming? I would say, they need a little battle damage. Show us he’s been in a fight or two, not right out of the box shiny new. Other than that, amazing craftsmanship. If you’ve seen IRON MAN 3 (spoiler alert) these guys have A LOT of new source material to build upon, 43 different suits if I remember correctly? That’s a lot of trips to the dollar store.

Being that it’s a full body suit of future armor it seems like a herculean task, but if this 16-year-old kid can make one in 20 weeks, why can’t you?

Don’t have a computer to 3D render for you?  You can always start it with clay.

Written by Cojo “Art Juggernaut”

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