M.I.A. "Born Free" Music Video

Artist M.I.A. released a new music video which has been thought to be interesting and it's also not you typical bubble gum, watered down video. What are your thoughts on it?


M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.

Director : Romain Gavras
Director of Photography : André Chemetoff
Producer : Mourad Belkeddar
Production company : elnino.tv
Executive Production : Gaetan Rousseau / Paradoxal
Special thanks to Lana & Melissa from The Director's Bureau

Danette Oberg Illustration In Weird NJ

I'd like to congratulate my friend Danette Oberg for having her illustration in the Weird NJ magazine. For those that don't know, it's a magazine featuring weird stuff about New Jersey, from urban legends to haunted houses to just odd places and people. There's also a Weird US website with other magazines of other states.

http://weirdnj.com/

Inspiration-Adam Isaac Jackson

Adam Isaac Jackson is an artist that I've become a fan of. His work is clean line work with ink & pen and creates some good pin ups. He's been hired by a couple of clothing companies such as Sullen Clothing & Fatal Clothing to name two. If you like prints, I think he may have a couple prints of some his illustrations.
http://adamants.wordpress.com/

Threadless: The Do-First Work Ethic(VIDEO)

This company is about 10 years old and it's a t-shirt contest site. I think learning about how other companies started is important. It's good for people in all fields to learn how other people came up, because everyone has something to offer. To reach success you have to grind and work hard.

Threadless: The Do-First Work Ethic from 99% on Vimeo.

Terrible, but Interesting shirt

see more

The shirt itself is definitely an interesting one, since it's trying to be creative, but it falls short of being appealing.

Logos are emotional too!

Over at the Graphic Design blog they posted logos that showcase the emotions of happiness and sadness. The graphic designer can give life to a logo, by adding some subtle or not so subtle imagery to create the emotion they want. It becomes a very powerful logo if you can really feel the emotion in the logo. Does the graphic designer do a good job? It doesn't hurt to have a face to be the face of your company.

Go to the link http://www.graphicdesignblog.org/smile-frown-logo-designs/ to view the rest of the images.

Adobe CS5-Production Premium

Check this out

Adobe CS5 - Production Premium from Seagulls Fly on Vimeo.

Skulls + Sonic the Hedgehog = Cool shirt that is available for 1 day

Pick up this cool looking shirt at http://www.teefury.com If you've played Sega Genesis or Gamegear you had to have played Sonic the hedgehog. So purchase this Jimiyo designed shirt, because it's only available for 1 day.

Futura x Yankees x Nike Collaboration

12ozProphet Presents... Futura x Yankees x Nike from 12ozprophet on Vimeo.



Celebrating the sport of baseball and the legacy of a team that continues to dominate, Nike Sportswear brought together two legends - Futura and the Yankees - to help usher in Baseball Season's 2010 Opening Day.

In case you don't already know, Futura is a massive baseball fan and has frequently collaborated with Nike over the years, so bringing him on board once again for this latest Be True installment was a natural fit. The result is a capsule collection released by Nike Sportswear in cooperation with the New York Yankees. The collection is inspired by a genuine love for sport and showcases an entirely new remix of Yankees graphics, slogans and iconography released on both apparel and footwear. 

Being an all around nice guy and good friends with the whole crew, Futura dropped by the studio the other day to discuss baseball, the Yankees and this latest Nike collab. Here's a short video brought to you by Also Known As and 12ozProphet highlighting some of it.


From: 12ozprophet.com

Pixels by Patrick Jean- 8bit Invades NY

This is a cool video that shows what would happen when the 8bit games of yesterday enter today's world in New York City. It's really cool and entertaining.


PIXELS by PATRICK JEAN.
Uploaded by onemoreprod. - Independent web videos.

Check Word-Of-The-Week.com

Two designers that were friends since high school, Brian Osborne and Caleb Stott, both decided to have an experiment with typography. Since high school they would design a words in their blackbooks and compare it with one another, now since they're both designers they want to continue that fun of creating custom typography. Every week they're taking a word and creating their own version. I like when designs take the task of creating something once a day or every week, it forces you to push yourself. I'm a fan of custom type, so I like checking it out. They have some good stuff.

http://word-of-the-week.com/

Moving

Eels

How I Made $7500 in 3 Months With My Art by Jimiyo

work full time with Teefury.com as an art director and curator, but an appreciable portion of my income comes from my own art.

You’ve most likely heard of the "starving artist" persona. This myth, at least in my experience, is incorrect. Unless it was based on wannabe artists who have no passion and lack work ethic, there is not one hard working, productive, passionate artist I know that cannot make good money creating artwork.

If you read any book on building financial wealth, much of the information will dictate that you leverage your time by creating instances in which no work except the initial effort is required to continue to make money. This means that you need to make money while you sleep.

People betting in the stock market, let their money make money while they sleep. A designer needs to set up situations where their designs will make them money while they sleep.

In the past 3 months, excluding my full time gig income, I have made approximately $7500. Much of this is generated by passive income streams from artwork that has been created and gets sold over and over as long as the product exists.

The art that netted $7500 in income can be separated into 4 categories.

1. Art Sold Outright
2. Physical products
3. Residuals
4. Digital products


1. Art Sold Outright.

The easiest, quickest money is Art Sold Outright. This is not a passive stream of income.

This income stream is a one time payment with no royalties. You make design. You get paid X for design. The end.

If this is your longterm method of creating income, you will not be leveraging your time. It’s like working on a hourly basis. You only get paid when you work.
This is not the path to work independence or a balanced life. Unless you are able to continously ask for larger amounts after each design, it will be hard to overcome the hours that is required to make money.

However there are opportunities that are good trade offs for straight payment design gigs. Provided your clients are enjoyable to work with, working for larger entities will help spur your name and build clout, so do not hesitate to work with qualified businesses.

I will not go into how to get clients, because I don’t know. They usually just end up approaching me, or I am referred to them by an artist friend. One needs only to create good art and promote themselves on the internet, and put the word out that they are available for work to get work. Search the net for places like Behance.net or Society6 to pimp your work.

2. Physical products.

This category requires some work so it is not necessarily ideal if you have to take care of the shipping and fulfillment yourself. If you can find a third party to do it for you the better.

Specifically, I have stickers for sale through bigcartel. I house the product at my residence, and ship it myself.

Previously, I sold a variety of shirts online as well as through several different boutiques.

At the peak of my shirt sales, distribution of my shirts though various boutiques used to generate $150-$400 on a monthly basis. For the minimal effort and up front investment, it was a decent experiment. It was only a few hundred shirts. You can imagine if you can make $150 a month, you can eventually make $1500, $15000, etc a month with growth into different distribution outlets.

Eventually I quit selling shirts because I got a wild hair up my ass and went on a 30 day road trip around the U.S. with the shirts, mostly giving them away to foreigners I met at hostels.

I preferred making art instead of managing product inventory and sales.

This category is important. By having a product, it builds your artist persona, and promotes branding you as a product. If someone buys a product from you, they will be reminded of you every time they wear your shirt, or see your sticker, thus opening the door for future products.

Even on a small level, create a product, and make it available to the public.

You need to build your fanbase. Start with 1, and then move to 1000.

3. Residuals

Royalities and residuals are a rare for a designer. Having participated and won at online contests like Designbyhumans and Threadless, I occasionally receive a check for residual sales.

If at all possible, if your legal use and copyright is going to be sold outright, try to sell to companies that can pay out residuals or release copyrights after use.

One of my biggest regrets is selling all inclusive copyrights of designs to companies for a bigger check. In the long run, although the money served well, I should have taken contracts that allow more flexibility in usage than a one time sell. It’s a great shame when a solid illustration does not get distributed well, and you only get a piddlely little check for all your hard work.

In my current situation, since I have a steady stream from my full time gig, I no longer sell any design outright unless it’s with a worthy notable client. Doing so allows me to sell the art product over and over, which is the most ideal situation.

Since I work at Teefury.com, I am able to get my work printed if it suits our market. Teefury does not retain copyrights to an artwork so often I transition many of the products to the 4th category.

(If you wish to submit to Teefury.com, learn more here.)

4. Digital products

This has been a great boon to leveraging my time in my artist career.

I currently sell products through RedBubble, TheGoldenBlack, and Bigcartel (vectors).

The products require nothing of me after it’s initial creation. The products sell while I sleep, and no shipping and fulfillment work is required of me as it is done by the supplier or digitally.

Although very small in income at first, over time, with greater product range, the trickle grows into appreciable streams of income.

The ideal longterm goal is to create so many small streams of passive income that it pays for your rent, mortgage, etc. Until it pays for everything.

Essentially, this is like starting a business. You start a business, with sweat equity get it up and running, and then as you increase your cash flow, you hire employees to do the work for you while you reap a bigger income with less work.

Instead of workers, your artwork are your workers.

I highly recommend any designer to get into stock art, as well as using sites like Redbubble and other third party art distributors to start building a income stream.

There are many avenues available on the web. Start today. You have nothing to lose, except from not following through and losing all the cash that could be made.

jimiyo.com [at] gmail.com
http://jimiyo.com
http://twitter.com/jimiyo

Super Street Fighter 4 Artist Posters

The Street Fighter series has to be one of my favorite video games ever. With a blend of martial arts,cool looking characters, and the simplicity of the gameplay I was hooked. Since Super Street Fighter 4 will be on the store shelves on April 27th, Capcom has released a new campaign using the artwork of selected artists. Dalek, Grotesk, 123Klan, Cody Hudson, and FUTURA were asked by Capcom to create ads for the Street Fighter campaign. Each ad has two characters fighting, but surrounded by the art by the respected artist. They're cool looking and it gives it a sketchbook feel. The new Street Fighter should be a fun game to play, until then here are the ads to watch.

Random sketches

I did have a goal to sketch more and sketch everyday, but sometimes I get caught up with life. Here are two random sketches. I worked on it a little bit on the computer as you can see some line work and a watercolor bottom on the female. I definitely want to work on some more sketches and illustrations.

Never be fully satisfied with your work

Never be fully satisfied with your work. As designers, illustrators, and overall artists we should never be fully satisfied, because there will be flaws that you may look back a couple days later and realize what you should do. The expression "you're only as good as your last job" is another way to look at it. You have to be satisfied enough for the client to like it, but it doesn't mean it you shouldn't continue on your design. If it's a personal piece, you should continue to push yourself to become better every time to you create. Every piece of art you make is a learning process. Of course there are people who have many years under their belt whose designs look like they're near perfection, but they may have found a routine to help them, but they know they haven't reached that status. I'm not saying you cannot be proud of your work, but realize that even though we stepped back with a satisfaction of the piece completed there is more than a finished product. What did we learn? What could I have done differently? Would it have been faster if I did it one way or another? Am I completely happy or just happy with it? If you disagree with a client and you have time, you can propose you idea to them with what you think will look better. It never hurts to keep yourself to a high standard. Having high standards is what helps give us that push to be better, especially since who really wants to be mediocre?
-Joe Baron

Drawing a Tattered Scroll From Scratch

This is another video from Jeff Finley, but unlike the Wacom Tutorial, this isn't a clear step by step video. It's an interesting video and you see how he transfers the art from Photoshop to Illustrator to make it into a vector image, but there's no clear explanation.

Draw an old-world style tattered scroll from scratch from Go Media on Vimeo.

Wacom Illustration Technique Video Tutorial by Jeff Finley

Designer and co-owner of Go Media Jeff Finley released a video tutorial showcasing his step by step design process. You’ll learn the process for manipulation and compilation of photos for reference, secrets of illustration with a Wacom tablet, and techniques for adding color and texture to finalize the piece. Honestly, it's good to see and can be very helpful, because there may be tips and tricks that you may not know about.
You can save $20.00 off your purchase with the coupon code "blackbeauty". That's very useful since the price costs $49.99. To purchase Click here

Here is what will be shown in the video to create the image that is shown above.

Photo manipulation

-Setting up document
-Finding reference photos.
-Combining reference photos into cohesive composite reference.
-Aligning the anatomy of a reference skull to a stock photo.
-Using layer masks to clean up composite reference.


Illustration

Ideal brush settings for use with a Wacom.
Drawing the skull

-Roughing in main outlines.
-Adding illustrated hash lines and stipple dots to suggest shading.
-Knowing the difference between anatomy & illustration.
-See the entire skull drawn in real time.
-Drawing more realistic teeth.
-Interpreting detail from the dull areas of the reference photo.
-Adding texture with illustration techniques.


Drawing hair

-Creating your own style from insufficient reference material.
-“Chunking” areas of hair to frame the flow.
-Subdividing the chunks to fill in the hair.
-Controlling line density to suggest light & dark areas.
-Drawing hair like a twisting tube.
-Getting in the zone with the lines.

Adding type, texture, & color

Adding fill and texture

-Filling the linework with a background color.
-Adding “noise” with texture.
-Blending in the artwork to the background with layer masks.
-Creating noise textures with the “guess & check” method.
-Adding positive & negative noise to the foreground & background to add cohesion.


Adding type

-Combining faces, weights, sizes & kerning for the perfect type treatment.
-Using Photoshop’s align & distribute functions.
-Simulating ink bleed on the type.
-Adding color

-Experimenting with textures & layer blending modes.
-Applying the global vintage color treatment.
-Spot blurring to add visual interest.
-Adding grain & sharpness with the high pass filter.

Win Free Apparel From Branded Baron Through Sojones.com

The street wear site, Sojones.com is hosting a contest with t-shirt company Branded Baron in which you post a comment in the article about Branded Baron and you can win one of 4 prizes. The prizes are 1 beanie, 2 t-shirts, and 1 sweatshirt. If you like winning Free stuff, then definitely go to the site and place a comment.

CONTEST ENDS APRIL 2nd
Click here to go to the site, read the article and post for a chance to win!
http://www.sojones.com/news/1670-streetwear-spotlight-branded-baron/