2021.09.19
Trevor and I have been looking forward to FanX for months, since the voice actors of Overwatch's Sombra and Symmetra were coming. I invited Jasmine and Lucas over on Monday to be introduced to the event, and I give them their tickets. The CEO of JWright Companies organizes the event, and he gave me five tickets. Trevor came, and we planned some things that we would do.
My CEO gave me two family and friends tickets, which I did not know what the benefits entailed until I asked him on Tuesday. It was not on the website. He said that they were VIP passes. I realized then that I gave Jasmine and Lucas tickets that were very valuable. The main benefits that I used of the VIP lanyard were I used the VIP line to get autographs; although, there were no lines when I visited them. Secondly, I got a limited edition T-shirt and a pin.
On Wednesday, we recorded this week's podcast. I posted it to the Talk to You Later show because I did not want to edit it, since I had goals to get autographs on Saturday.
Thursday was the first day. Jessica almost joined Trevor and I. I thought that if Jessica saw what we saw she might be traumatized. Trevor and I mainly explored the main vendor booths on Thursday, but we did attend a panel about the profession as an artist. I got the following notes:
"Art School? The important principles for a successful artist" was lead by the following panelists: Howard Lyon, Paul Mann, Roger Motzkus, and Kim Passey
Panelists introductions
Paul Mann is too busy for a conference. He does movie covers.
Kim Passey has 20 years of Illustration and Gaming artistry. He had a hard time transitioning to digital art; although, he found a way to get paid to learn the digital arts, since the gaming industry was requiring so many artists. Kim has been a concept artist for the last seven years. He helped produce the award winning Animal Jam video game.
Roger Motzkus did Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and many other shows. He also did the iconic first cover art for Doom.
Howard Lyon wanted to do art for D&D, and he got his first job with them. He also produced art for Magic in his 12 years in the gaming industry; however, he also had goals the gallery industry, and he has pursued that for the last 12 years.
Listening to their careers, I saw that it takes a lot of work to adapt and survive in the industry.
The first thing that they taught was to understand the elements and principles of art. These appeared to be basically everything that you learn in art school. The elements of art are the following: line, shape, form, texture, color, and value. An etcetera was added to the end of the list, so there is probably more. They did speak as if the list is comprehensive.
The principles of art were listed as follows: emphasis, balance and alignment, contrast, repetition, proportion, movement, and white space. The principles were explained that they be a evaluate or a hierarchy of implementation in the practice of production. A methodology is learned through experience, but a panelist gave the following order: shapes, values, form, color, and details.
Art Degrees are optional in their opinion. One of them did not even have an art degree. Degree did not help another in his art industry. Professional work made his art truly art, meaning that he did not truly practice art in a professional manner until he got into the industry. Instructor should make it before they teach. Art schools do employ teachers that never established a true career for themselves. The business of art is not taught in school.
Go visit and talk to your favorite artist. Roger corresponded with the artist for six months before he was allowed to observe his favorite artist for ten days. He said that he learned more in those ten days than his whole institutional training. His favorite artist prioritized art over everything, buying paint before food.
Think. Where do you see your work being sold? What is trendy? Understand the industry and market. One thing that is nice is that an artist only needs one person to buy the piece. Work your audience. It is important to network. Artist can get a representative to market for them, having an agency or representatives gets you introduced to clients. Social media can get you opportunities just by sharing incredible artistry. Each art requires a different marketing method.
Be willing to take criticism. Be critical and objective of your own work. Develop a thick skin. Never complain when you get client feedback. You are creating your client’s art not yours. Receive critics gladly. Learn from your network. Business is all about networking. In-person meetings are most impactful.
Understand taxes and legality of marketing. Pay quarterly taxes. Get a good artist accountant. Keep formal and informal ledgers. Collect receipts for everything. Most things can be written off from taxes.
Don’t be too strict on art preference. Life does not go as planned. It took 23 years of work to do work for his goal of gallery art; although, Gallery take part of the sale money. Do what you love.
Have a style, but be able to do a lot of different work. Paul kept his style since the beginning of his career. Paul and Roger is so old their style is coming back to preference. Have a unique style. Don’t do what everyone else is doing. Absolutely worth it.
I explored the Creator Rows on Friday. Two game producers pitched me their product on Friday, and two authors pitched their books to us yesterday. One had a representative. It was interesting. The author shyly sat next to the representative, a game developer had his brother be his representative.
I attended a panel about web comics on Friday evening. It was called "Web Comics: Saving the Entertainment Industry, Four Panels at a Time." Christian Lambert, Mike Lovins, Travis Romney, and Jemma M. Young were the panelists. We arrived a little late, but I got the following notes:
There are many options to make money as a web comic producer, but consistency is necessary. It takes time. One cartoonist established a following of 14000 after 6 years. Selling merchandise is an option. There are websites that can make merchandise for you per order without requiring you to keep an inventory. The sell of hard copies is another option. WebToons has coined the scrolling comic panels, but that would eliminate the opportunity to sell hard copies, if you dedicate your Web Comic to that presentation. One can build an audience through Kickstarter and Indigo. Comics is published by many publishers. It is thriving.
A few other questions were asked like the panelists opinion on fill content. Are behind the scenes pictures good? One person found that releasing concept art is good for feedback.
What are their canvas of choice? iPad Pro, Traditional, Cintiq Pro with WebStudio,
Adobe draw, Procreate and Photoshop are good options. The practice of color in photoshop was expressed. Clip studio is better than photoshop. SketchPad is a simple procreate.
Efficiency of production can improve by 16 hours for one page at first to 3 hours per page now.
What is more important story or art? Story make them stay. If they can’t tell the sequence of the story, you are not doing your job. Text should not tell the story. Story keeps the audience interested. Story wins. A quick gag may not need a little of skill.
What are the panelists workplace like? One stated a man cave with music recording and collectibles. Although one person said that they like to be out and about working on their iPad possibly at a Starbucks, another stated that iPads lack ergonomics while another said that her couch is her workspace.
How do I test a story? An audience member asked this question to the panelists, and he got the following suggestions: get feedback from posting filler content, Believe in your story, Beta readers; share ideas with reading groups, and get a writing partners; not friend or family. If you can’t defend a idea, it is not a good idea. The web comic producer of Undead or the famous zombie show produced six issue comics until he found his hit.
Balance progression and content creation. Comics have to practice all skills.
Where to share my comics? One to two panels on Facebook works. Bite size comics are great for meme platforms. It depends on the platform. Imgur and Reddit are options too.
How do I keep motivation? Self-reliance is the motivation. Set deadlines. Plan the story. Go back to your story.
How do I improve efficiency? Save and reuse elements. Models can speed up the process too.
2021.09.26
This past week was unstable. We are enduring the side effects of family drama. My wife felt neglected because I edit the podcast on Saturdays, so that is on the verge of dematerializing.
I have been enduring the family drama all week, and I am not going to get into any details of it. I didn't even work out once last week. I was so exhausted.
I told my wife that I will re-prioritize my life, quitting the podcast late last week, to recover an emotional connection. She said that was a nice offer, but she did not say. Okay! Let's re-dedicate our lives to each other. There is no higher priority; then, on Tuesday she followed up on her suggestion that I post a podcast episode once a month.
Podcasting is a big part of my life, and the suggestion does not fit the nature of the podcast, since is a news podcast. News is not reported once a month. I thought about it overnight, and I thought of an idea. Maybe we can livestream each week on the Talk To You Later show, and I will compile a highlights episode for the Very Hicken Bros podcast once a month. When I pitched the idea to Trevor, he basically said the show must go on, and that I can be a special guest. Take a break and come on the show whenever I would like.
I am fine with quitting the podcast. I have written in this blog how hard it is on me, and that I expect that I will quit eventually; however, the show did not go on as Trevor expected, and we are probably going to talk about it when he visits today. Kyler suggested that we pay an editor to edit the podcast for us. That is a good idea, but we need to discuss this with everyone.
On Saturday, we went to help clean my ward's chapel. I am typically too busy editing the podcast, but we went also because there was a ward breakfast. I didn't have a podcast to edit either. Jessica and I worked together like we used to help vacuum the BYU-Idaho iCenter. I had a vacuum strapped to my back, and Jessica would watch the cord to make sure that I don't get snagged on anything.
The ward breakfast was nice. The bishop sat and caught up with us. I was also able to chat with a gentleman in the line. I was able to enjoy eggs, sausage, fruit, and a pancake.
We planned to go on a hike, and we drove to the Wasatch mountains to hike to Donut Falls. It was very busy with people taking family pictures. My Vice President recommended that we go there for the fall colors. We got some good pictures.
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| The trail had unique rocks in the path. |
2021.10.10
I didn't write in my journal last week because last week had a general conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. My goal was to stay awake for all five sessions, and I was successful! This is my main goal for each conference. I don't remember what happened that week. I just remember preparing for the conference by trying to sleep as much as I could; although, my body wasn't use to it.
My life goals/changes from General Conference is to read the Book of Mormon while I walk to and from work and memorize scripture during my spare time.
Let's see what my Whoop journal says. The main thing that happened is that I got my drawing tablet on the first of October. Since money is always tight, I knew that if I don't seize the moment of the budget, I would have to wait for a long time to practice drawing. I was thinking of getting an iPad Pro, but it was would take to long to find a perfect second hand seller to purchase an iPad and an Apple Pencil to match the available money that I have to use. A funny thing that I learned recently is that I don't know how true it is, but it appears that the importance of pressure sensitivity is a myth in digital art at least in anime drawing. I am still exploring and learning.
Linux does not seem to be mainstream enough for Wacom to develop software for, which makes sense because they don't have a open source community to back them up on Windows or Mac. They need to make the software and connections on their own. The installation of my digital art programs and drivers were much more simple than I expected. Everything of the tablet just worked, when I installed the drivers via a command, and the Krita art program doesn't even need to be installed as a program. It just works as an executable file. By the way I bought a Wacom Intuos Pro from a second hand seller local in Midvale. I saved probably 200 dollars by doing so.
Getting back into digital art is odd. It is not like mere sketching on a piece of paper. There are layers, brushes, commands, and more. It is awesome that Linux makes it all free. I have produced no art yet. I got all excited to join an art contest last week, thinking of how I will compose my art piece, messing with one night's rest, but I was ill-informed. The art contest already passed.
One thing that I learned is that my creative works will have little impact, so I might as well keep it focused on what I truly should worship. What I produce is a reflection of what I worship. I don't worship anime, so I am not going to draw that way. I will not make fan art because I am not a fan of anything. I realized that investing time and mental connections with creators or influencer that don't realize your existence is a waste of time. It is like a one way relationship.
We decided to launch season five of the Very Hicken Bros podcast because I am only going to edit one episode a month now. One thing that is interesting is that this enables Trevor to execute his vision better of the podcast. He wants a looser format, where the audio can be matched with a video. It appears that Nick Chao knows how to screen record, so he will provide the visual presentation. Trevor should publish that. I don't have time to look into that. It is his vision anyways.
I actually had time to workout last week. Drama calmed down. I explored the decentralized finance system a lot on Thursday because DC Comics are giving free NFTs on a side blockchain of Ethereum called Palm. It doesn't appear to have much going for it yet. They are still in their testnet phase; although, you can deposit real crypto assets to the blockchain. Like I said, I did not find reason to do so yet. I explored other DeFi opportunities because Palm only appeared to accept Wrapped Ethereum, Dai, and Portion. I learned that I need to deposit like three Eth to borrow Dai from MakerDao with 10,000 dollars as the minimum borrow against requirement. One thing that I worried about is whether Palm will require you to purchase a wallet. Looping requires me to pay like a hundred dollars to establish a wallet on their second layer Ethereum blockchain. It appeared that I could access both side blockchains with my Web3 wallet on Metamask.
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| They had freshly baked donuts too! |
One fun activity of the attraction is that pumpkins were set on barrels, and we could launch tomatoes at them three per admissions fee. Everyone enjoyed the opportunity, but only I hit the target.
We hung out at Jasmine and Lucas' place after, playing Just Dance 2021.We also watched "The Mitchells versus the Machines." Movie is up there with all the other many great animated films, but the relate-ability of the film makes it one of the best. It has many messages, and the story is good. It was made by the same studio that made "Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse."
It appears that I will have time to edit and publish this, so I will finish writing the last entry.
Oh. My primary lesson went well today. It is much easier when we only have one child to teach. We discussed the treasures of God.
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