Acting/Roleplaying/Theater/Game Design Character Questions. Characters with character.

Found this list of questions in one of my old sketchbooks and decided to post it here since these are very important questions.

It’s vitally important that characters have character. Knowing the answer to just these sort of questions as a game designer, role playing game master, storyteller, etc. is very, very, very important. These are the kinds of questions actors ask themselves when preparing to take on a role and are the type of questions anyone involved in any art form that involves characters should be asking themselves.

How old?
Origin in Feeling toward others, society, organizations of note?

What is your concept of beauty?

What is your concept of fear?

Has your character encounters either ????

is characters goals, fears, hopes, aspirations?

dreams?

where?

Who?

What?

How?

When?

Why?

Talismans?

Artifacts?

Occupation? (or former occupation?)

Feelings towards… ?

physical = height? weight? shape? form, physique? eye color? hair color? skin color?

deformities?

Love(s)? Lovers? Sexuality? Sexual?

Dark Side?

Hobbies?

Religion?

Faithfulness?

Strength of will?

Age?

Intellect/physique meets background?

Purpose?

Reasons? (for being? for being in a certain place, etc.)?

Friends?

Enemies?

Allies?

Acquaintances?

Former Lives?

Birthday?

Birthday sign?

Name?.. and true name?

History?

Mentor(s)?

When and how did important dreams meet your life?

Name enemies you have met, not met?

Quests?

True Form (and it’s looks?) (physically and spiritually, etc.)

Who do you serve – people, self, country, a master, a religion, a gut feeling, a dream, a wife, a husband, kid, etc.?

Ever been to battle?

Ever been to a library?

Ever killed someone?

Ever graduate – from where?

Work experience?

Riches?

What do you value (as your riches, goals, etc.)?

Motives – ulterior, true, false?

Beliefs – myths, truths, half knowledges, lies, afterlife(s)?

Angered by _________?

Turned on by ________?

Virgin?

Origins unknown – history unknown?

Mentally deformed?

Hallucinate?

Drunkard?

Hippie?

Anal accountant type?

Archetypes?!?

How do you have fun?

Hangouts? With who?

Make a living by ___________?

Past Life ideas? — Reborn, death, life? Immortality?

Immortality as a goal?

Experience?

Practice?, etc. etc.

(I could go on forever with more questions)…

Build character. Characters that have character are far better then those with no character.

The Artist’s way

A couple of weeks ago one of my friends on Facebook posted about the difficulty of doing a week with no media because she was working through the Artist’s way. It was very ironic because Facebook is a form of media. Anyways, that sounded like something interesting to me, and is something I had vaguely remembered seeing or hearing about some many years ago somewhere… so I went to Banes and Noble and bought the The Complete Artist’s Way: Creativity as a Spiritual Practice.

It’s actually 3 books in one, but the first book is a 12 step process that you are to do one chapter of weekly, but according to the forums some do it in more then one week per chapter or even a month a chapter, etc. It’s a very cool process. The first chapter deals with doing “morning pages” and “artist dates” where you have to write 3 pages out every morning to sort of clear the mind of thoughts that sit and hinder your creativity unless you get them out somehow, and going out somewhere to explore the art world around you for inspiration about an hour or more a week.

It is a neat little process, and it’s been about a week since I started this. I am looking forward to working through the rest of the process.

Find out more about all of it over at http://theartistsway.com/

working on folio

Slowly working on portfolio website (see link on right). This weekend I put together a few of the pages over there. So far the Charcoal and Ball Point Pen sections are starting to shape up.

I have not put together the other sections yet completely since those require shooting digital photos of my works. Not being the greatest photographer in the world doesn’t make getting the quality that I like out of the camera the easiest thing in the world. Also, it does not help much that I’m shooting outside when I do the shots, and it’s been fairly windy the last several days. The other day I shot some of my brother’s old artwork from highschool and the tripod fell over with the wind while I was swapping drawings with others in the house. The part of the camera that attaches to the tripod flew off of the camera when it hit the pavement. I luckily got it back together, but have not tried to attach it back to the tripod since then. Note to self – add weights of some sort to tripod the next time I try to use it.

The ball point pen drawings are mostly some of the mall small scans I took. I tried to limit it to about 30 or so images for each section. That way a nice little navigation bar table fits well in most browsers. It’s still a little too wide for the smallest screen settings, but I really don’t think most folks use the smallest screen settings usually. If so, sorry folks… I am trying to get this thing looking good, not optimized for your super low res screens… It’s tricky using the floating navigation bars I’m using because Internet Explorer is tricky. If you don’t put the dtd type up at the top of the html, it doesn’t float the css navbars where they belong, and just sticks them at the top of the page where they scroll with the rest of it.

It’s slowly coming together. I’ve been doing some cleaning around the house this weekend since we’ll likely be moving before too long… found a bunch of ol floppy disks and that reminded me that the last time I tried to put together an online web portfolio like this I was doing it on floppy and zip disks on Campus because it was like the year 2002 and I was using the free modem pool that the University of Missouri had back then… a whopping speed of 28k! No wonder I got frustrated and quit putting together the website last time, lol.

This time, things are coming together a lot smoother, and hopefully this blog will help make things work out a little better. I’ll add more to the website as I get more images put together and organized. I really like this click the image to get a bigger copy of it idea. I also like the floating nav bars with transparent backgrounds that makes it nice, clean, and easy to maneuver around in.

Got any pointers, tips, or ideas on how I can improve portfolio? Shoot away and give me some comments. I like listening to what people have to say.

Dictionary of Imaginary Places

The Dictionary of Imaginary Places: The Newly Updated and Expanded Classic
is one of the BEST books on fictional places. Lots of interesting maps and various descriptions. If you like fantasy, fiction, or role playing, this is a must have. I used this book a lot back in college when role playing and also for just plain entertaining reading. Love it.

fantasy stuff… role playing… virtual reality… art – back to the basics

I’ve been kicked out of Entropia Universe a few days now since Vista went kaput on my computer and I don’t have a restore cd that works. I hate HP for not putting the restore cd in the box when they ship it out and rely on a hard drive restore that may or may not work when you need it… and then they want you to pay them lots of cash to buy a restore cd that may or may not work since their blasted hardware is junk that relies on partitions on a hard drive that might get corrupted someday (which happened to me I think)…

I am trying to figure out a way to make Entropia Universe work under Linux, but it’s not promising. I got the installer to work fine under Wine, but now need to install Direct X on wine and a few other things, and even then, it still might not work.

In the mean time I’ve been reading some of my old art books, studying some old drawing books more, and also reading a lot of old role playing books and things. Future posts will probably have more scans of my drawings and paintings, but might also have some other more philisophical thoughts, thoughts on role playing, stage lighting, animation, and a number of other things. Being offline in the virtual reality I spend so much time in has started to get me ‘back to the basics’ on a variety of trains of thoughts that I had several years ago and wanted to follow through back then but didn’t because I got too distracted with this other “virtual world”… I enjoy fictional worlds as a means of escaping reality sometimes – but it’s very easy to take it overboard with a super hyper imagination and make that false reality in to your over-arching real reality sometimes… Its something we all do on some level – people think about their soap operas while they work… or maybe their comic books… maybe something else. We all have hobbies, and most of us don’t have the ultimate job that keeps our attention that we love so much that we never think of anything else — anyways, I’m getting back to the basics mentally and physically on a lot of various levels at the moment…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escapism

German social philosopher Ernst Bloch wrote that utopias and images of fulfillment, however regressive they might be, also included an impetus for a radical social change. According to Bloch, social justice could not be realized without seeing things fundamentally differently. Something that is mere “daydreaming” or “escapism” from the viewpoint of a technological-rational society might be a seed for a new and more humane social order, it can be seen as an “immature, but honest substitute for revolution”.

interesting reading – dollies

http://cinevidproductions.com/Media/dolly.html

http://www.google.com/images?q=tripod%20%2Bdolly&hl=en&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi

interesting reading – diy greenscreen

http://www.lifeisaprayer.com/articles/photography/diy-greenscreen

http://www.google.com/search?q=homemade+greenscreen&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1

http://blog.mindbites.com/how-to-make-a-homemade-green-screen/

interesting reading – 3d Scanning on the cheap.

http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/how-to-build-a-3d-scanner-with-a-webcam-and-a-hand-held-laser-525466

I read this article a while back and actually tried something like it a year or three ago… actually gave me a reason to buy a laser level!

Using I-modeler and/or d-sculptor is much easier since you don’t have to mess with lasers and stuff. I might try to get in to this sort of thing at some point in the future again.

Using d-sculptor about 6 years ago, I created a 3d image of my sister and brother in law. They were kind enough to stand still long enough for me to shoot them about 30 times from different angles to make it work.

Back then, I did that using a blown up d-sculptor grid – version 1 – the version 2 grid is a lot harder to blow up – version 1 is just a square that’s cut in half – so the dots are much easier to put on a blown up thing… I used 4 blocks of hardboard (masonite) that were taped together with duct tape to do that, and I made the dots on there with white china market and black sharpie pen and permanent marker to make it visible from a distance.

Imodler is much harder to blow up since it uses a proprietory algorithm in how far apart the dots are… pain in the butt to print out a 6 foot wide thing on 8 and a half x 11 paper to blow up the imodeler – but believe it or not I tried that at one point in time, lol. If I do this sort of thing again in the future, I’ll set up the hardboard so that it has both the Imodeler and Dsculptor grids on it simultaneously so that I can make the 3d meshes in both programs using the same digital photos… as one might work better then the other and/or be more “professional”

At one point in time, I thought I could do this sort of thing as a part time job – sort of set it up to do 3d scans for people at county fairs and things to get the kids on 3d models that could be used to make 3d prints, modify to create avatars in 3d games that looked like the people scanned, etc. However, never pursued the idea too far since it takes so long to shoot the images and the model has to stand still. It could work with a single snap from a bunch of photos all taken at once, but that would require a lot of helpers and/or some sort of automated system similar to the rigs they use in Hollywood to do stuff like is shown on the Matrix I movie dvd… it’d be possible but difficult, and pricey… otherwise, it’s a slow process that requires the model to stand perfectly still. Getting children, or even adults to stand still is not always the easisest thing in the world to do…

Imaginitive Flight – on this Bright Night

Zodiac was on attack,
——
so Amma got on,
red gown flowing.
——
The horse was pale
white, and warm

on this cold
and listless night.
——-

——
In the spire
there was a squire
who spied his heart’s desire.
——
Hooves of thunder
took her asunder
——
His heart
was constantly bleeding…

Yearning and seeking,
Seeking, constantly seeking.
——
——
The land was plundered
as the hooves thundered
——
——

The Cheshire cat
laid on it’s back

micheviously smiling,
always smiling

——
——
The stars aligned.
The time was fine

when they finally met
in the heart of the city.
——
——

——
Gooving and grinding
musical binding
——
mystical hair
in the air

bodies swaying
ever so lightly
——
celestial choirs,
rythmic squires
——
throbbing & bobbing
orange and reds

currelean blue
strobes went dead

in the moon’s
bright light
——
——
The zodiac attacked the crazy cat.
but the Cheshire keeps smiling.
——
——

——
They did conspire
near the bonefire

twisting and turning
yearning and learning

the two became one
dawning rays of sun

Cheshire went away
——

creative bug done bit.

================
===Caffiene=====
================
Caffiene kills.
Caffiene heals.

Opens the mind.
Shakes and Grind.

Sleepless night
filled with fright

You know your hooked.
Urine smells like coffee.
=========================

It’s a no-go without the logo

==========================

The Art bug done bit. That is it. Time to be creative.

=============================

Signs from Heaven or from Hell
Only time will tell.

=============================
I browse in my under-trousers

Blue underlines appear in my browser
leading who knows where

Clickity Click
What a virus? Oh Wowsers!
=============================

==============================
You are just being silly.
Am I?
Yes you are.
Now where’s the ham and jelly?
==============================

================================================
=========HOURGLASS==========
================================================
Hourglass, hourglass why are you here?
Duh, the network is down.

Why is it down?
I got no idear.

Hourglass, hourglass, go away please.
There ain’t no way.
You got a virus that won’t make you sneeze.

Hourglass, hourglass, 8 hours have passed.
Now I’m headed home.

I’ll hide in your email,
and give you a blast.

Hourglass, Hourglass, now why are you here?
You have passed me to your home network my dear.
================================================

Talking in circles, the man did find the lady to ask questions.
She thought he was very smart and inquisitive.

Then one day she discovered the answers were nothing more than puzzles.
She got mad, left so sad. Hearts both were broken.

Such is the story of couples who walk and talk but do not listen.
Learn to communicate. It’ll save you both.

=================================
Number has changed. I have not.
I’m still here. Nothing to fear.

Blah blah blah
bleh bleh bleh

Onwards we go.
No money to blow.

The timing just might be right.
=================================

====================
Spend your life
spinning your wheels
Everyone says chill.

but I cannot.
I WILL NOT!

====================

===========================
Language is something.
Language is nothing.

Jibber and a Jabber
Collateral Tatter.

Creative clown
done left town

following after the clatter.

He done found
No one around

===
He and you alone
Alone in the dark
in a moonlit park

Smiling at
Cheshire Cat

It’s on attack
fighting the pack
of the Zodiac.

–
You know he’ll win
in the end.

Moon cycles turn
as they spurn.

The smiling clown
will wear the crown

staring from afar
as he sits upon his star

staring you down nightly
============================

Oh Lord!
What a Ward.

Used in vain.
It’s insane.

In the night,
In a fight,

even in Church on Sunday.

a few more…

————————————
===========CONFORM==================
————————————
Conform and get rid of your freedom.

Do things my way… the only way…
the way it’s always been done.
====================================

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
=======APPEAL===============
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
It can’t hurt to appeal.
Beg for more money.

You know you don’t deserve it,
nor does your boss!

but you do it anyways…
it can’t hurt to ask…
beg for more money…

Money they don’t deserve.

Money that they use
to make you serve…

Mammon is real and here now.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
+++++=========~~~~~
+++++dReAmS…~~~~~
+++++=========~~~~~
Living in the shadows
your dreams come out.

They are always beside you
but they don’t always shout.

They whisper silently
in your subconcious mind

Driving you ever closer
to the edge.

It is only when
someone you love
teases them gently

softly

that they begin to surface
driving you to become yourself
and start living your dreams.

one small sign of true love.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

=======================
Holy crap.
Screwed up so bad.
What are we going to do?

It’ll all work out.
It always does.

Maybe just not
the way you want it to.
========================

========================
come on now..
you can do it…

Just a few more steps…

OBLIVIOUS OBLIVION
========================

========================
come on now..
you can do it…

Just a few more steps…

Good Boy. Good Girl.
Good God.
========================

========================
come on now..
you can do it…

Just a few more steps…

Good Dog.
========================

========================
come on now..
you can do it…

Just a few more steps…

Good Job.
========================

========================
come on now..
you can do it…

Just a few more steps…

========================

=================
=====Act III=====
=================
Dreams die.
So do we.

but…

Life is worth
living.

Don’t make
the biggest mistake

Sometimes we do cry.
It’s ok.

We will live.
Life carries on.

Let it.
Allow it.

Don’t let the 5 act play
end at act 2.

Drama makes life worth living,
even if there are a few sad parts.

Don’t make your life
come to a tragic end,

especially when it’s just beginning…

even if it’s not…
a new beginning
is born daily.

Life is worth living.
Don’t cut it short.
=================================

==================================
I don’t wanna do it mama.
Don’t let them take me away.

Surgeon masks surround the child
as he looks up at the bright light.

Surgery sucks, but it’s needed.
==================================

========================================
Dentist chair and buzzing drill.
Lolipops to cure their ill.

Mickey mouse stickers stop the wails
Ah, Silence at last…

but not for long…
Open up and saw Aw.

Fears and Tears
as pliers come out.

Don’t you shout.
It must come out!

It must come out.
It simply must come out.

the jaw cracks, the tounge is lashed…
blood is everywhere…

but never fear
Almost done my dear…

Just 24 more teeth to go.
=========================================

=====================
=======ZIPPER========
=====================
Zipper of death
Zipper of Life

Camera bag does open.

Lots of toys
Lots of Joys

Click and Shoot.

=====================

Money comes. Money goes. All it usually brings are woes.

a few poems… simple and complex.

=======================
===LUMPS IN THE DIRT===
=======================
———————–
new brick walls…
new lumps in dirt.

Quadrangles are now triangles.

CHANGES, CHANGES, CHANGES..

Rec center is now 4 times bigger.
Construction everywhere.

CHANGES, CHANGES, CHANGES…

The new garage is really huge.
The new facades are really fake.

CHANGES CHANGES CHANGES…
ALWAYS CHANGING.

but,
The art hall remains the same…
always dirty, always grimy, always in need of repair.

MU’s wasted money…

Says the Millionare
as he passes through the
doors that bear his name.

———————-
Creativity stifled.
Funds are now dried up.
changes everywhere.
———————-

==========================
===REMEMBERING LONG AGO===
==========================
Gone are the days of wandering
around the Ville at night
Gone are the days of wandering
a camera without a light
gone are the days of wandering
paintbrush in my hand
gone are the days of wandering
throughout all of the land

running barefoot in the groves
through the pavement
on the concrete and the stone

10 years and more have passed
time pushes on…

History and Present Clash.

Time to begin the new song.

Time to follow the new path.

singing in the rain
watching the clouds again.

prisms of light and dark.
The greys, greens, blues, violets,

and of course the reds, purples, and
hazy darkness behind the trees so
brilliant red

Don’t forget the Oranges too.
—————————–

=========================
==DISTANCE IN THE DARK===
=========================
In to the night
we shall traverse

far
and
close

only

a
flicker
of
light
between

a small dim yellow flick
or maybe a currelean dab

as the night screen closes in
with ultramarine and precious
prussian blues.

—————————–

==============================
===LITTLE WHITE BUNNY TALES===
==============================
Where the fuck did that go?
Never God Damned Mind.

The cursing times…

Hide the tounge
The kids are near.

Hide the truth
Bring out the Lies

It’s Santa’s time.

Tooth faires sprinkling
different colored glitter
all around…

Why’s the colors different mom?

H377 if I know… Oh no…

I mean… darling dear,
oh me, oh my.

Let me tell you some more lies.
==========================

======================
=======GAPS===========
======================
Gaps between the poems
make you stop and think

times to reflect
times to remember
times to pause

and think.
======================

======================
=====SLOW DEATH=======
=======================
you are alive and well
you are sick and ill

the coughs of sick old
middle aged people
coming from their kids

all life is a poem…
REFRAIN is not far away

sound of the
busy bees working away
in their prison cells

those little things called
cubicles…
=======================

==========================
=====Cube cell hell=======
======ever binding========
======ever grinding=======

10 punch numbers worn off

keyboards dusty for years.

Counting down the days
til the weekends is here.

and freedom from these 4 walls
is clear… at least a while.
============================

new goals and organized life…

I’m going to try to get organized in my life again. I’ve created a daily spreadsheet that I will try to write too and check off as I go along that lists all the stuff I should be doing daily. Included in the list are
- walking the dog in the morning
- walking on morning break
- inhaling lunch and doing something creative during the last part of lunch breaks
- walking on afternoon breaks
- walking the dog in the afternoon after work – maybe ride a bike with the dog if I don’t walk him… possibly working up to 5 miles on the MKT trail someday?…
- working out for at least half an hour nightly either at the YMCA, with a workout video, on the wii, riding a bike, on a jump rope, or doing some other form of excercise for at least half an hour
- working on updating online places – this blog, turbosquid, entropia universe stuff, entropiaforum stuff, and whatever else needs to be updated…
- doing at least one chore a night (one chore is something like a load of laundry, mowing, working on organizing the basement, working on organizing the attic, dusting, cleaning one room of the house, working on a 3d project, working on a 2d project)

I like doing little organized excel or google document spreadsheets like this to keep myself organized. I used to do this sort of thing for 24 hour schedule back in college and a couple of years after that, when I was still in shape, healthy, and had a lot of ambitions… Well, it’s time to get my ambitions and goals set again, and not just continue to let myself be an out-of-shape old man… Time to be young, healthy, wealthy, and wise again…

Time to actually stop being a lazy bum with no direction in my life. The time has come, today is the first day in the rest of my life… an organized, orderly, and fulfilling life. A life full of vigor and life. A life worth living to the fullest!

Happy Wednesday.

Levitt in Color, New at MoMA

There are no installation views of the Projects exhibition in which Helen Levitt first presented her color photographs to MoMA’s public, for one simple reason: all forty pictures were projected onto the wall, fading as quickly as they appeared. The year was 1974, and Levitt was in the midst of a creative outburst—unusual not only because [...] http://bit.ly/aWjbvq

——————
Books by or about Helen Levitt

Searching for Tim Burton

The search for Tim Burton took us to four Hollywood studio archives, five independent production company collections, and four private lenders, exposing us to an interesting variety of archival situations. Studio archives are traditionally housed on the lots where their films and television programs are shot, or, if their collections are large enough and the [...] http://bit.ly/c3vwHP

————–
Tim Burton Items on Amazon

Mapping out Entropia Universe…

I started a google document… it might be a little easier to maintain than text formating in some Entropia Universe Thread or here in the blog, or on entries in Entropedia or something. It’s open to editing by anyone so it should be easy to keep things updated.

url to the new spreadsheet is
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AppC9Gwr9zBIdGhNY0FBdHhjdm1MYUxWT2hjWHBMbWc&hl=en

url to the html web page format of it is
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=thMcAAtxcvmLaLVOhcXpLmg&output=html

Almost nothing’s in it yet… but soon I’ll start using what info is available on Entropia Forum, Entropedia, and in game in the estate terminals to start making what info is in there accurate. I invite you to do so too. This is a huge project and I cannot do it alone.

There is a place on there to put the name of the TP, name of the continent, name of the planet, name of the service, a link to the service’s website or entropiaforum thread, and a link the the shop owner or estate holder’s avatar in entropiaforum… as I said, huge project…

I wanted to do this project about a year ago, but lots of things got in to my way due to lack of real world time, etc. I’m hoping that others will join me on this crusade to map out our virtual world, and make it easier to access the estate owners of various places, and make it easier to see exactly which shops are active and which are now.

We CAN make this the best darn resource on how to contact shop owners over time!

Inspirations – Jimmy Kuehnle

I looked up Jimmy the other day on facebook after looking through a list of artists that I went to school with at Truman State U.

http://assessment.truman.edu/components/5year/Art2004.pdf is the list of artist I found. That list is far from a comprehensive list as it only names a few names, and it actually has a lot of false or half truth info. I don’t work nor ever have worked for Boone Hospital. I do work in a University Hospital in the same town though.

I remember Jimmy from back there in college as being an interesting individual, just as I was. However, he was a lot more outgoing than I was.

It looks like that has not changed much, and has actually become the focus of his work to some degree. Drawing attention to ones self is something artists must do on some level since it’s all about bringing the fragile inner psyche out for examination by the artist and those around him or her that become viewers…

Here’s an interesting article on him that is linked to from his facebook account:
Don’t be alarmed: The walking balloon is artist Jimmy Kuehnle.

Using baloons to create gigantic mobile sculptures is a very cool idea. We all expect to see this sort of stuff going down a huge parade or something, but not just out in the everyday. It is neat to see that Jimmy’s becoming the pied piper so to speak.

I guess this sort of thing might make him seem silly to those that don’t know him, but that’s actually a good thing since it opens the general public’s eyes up – makes them become aware of their environment, surroundings, and gives them the privilege to meet someone that is a great artist!

Inspirations – http://www.wordsaroundtown.com/

Clarissa left me a little comment over at http://jeffthomann.wordpress.com/2010/01/09/mall-small-19-drawing/ talking about her friend’s website at http://www.wordsaroundtown.com/ so I figured I’d visit and do this Inspirations posting about it. I have not really done many (read any, lol) inspirations postings up til now that have to do with anyone’s art that I did not know about before now. Time to change that, and start exploring the art world in these here intra-web tubes.

As indicated at http://www.wordsaroundtown.com/page8.php wordsaroundtown.com is owned by Kevin McCartney Studios.

Kevin appears to be a very good photographer.

The words around town site seems to be made of various pictures that Kevin has taken and converted in to fonts to spell out words.
He’s using the forms he finds in his compositions as letters.

As stated in the site, Kevin has a real enthusiasm about this obscure typographical artform…

The challenge of finding objects around us that we normally pass by everyday without a second glance which look like letters has been exciting and fun!

Finding the hidden beauty in everyday things that we often pass by without a second glance IS, in my opinion one of the great things that exploring art does for people that get in to art.

Finding the invisible forms as Kevin is doing and making it visible is sort of a theme that has run through art for many years. It is an obscure idea that can be traced back to the Surrealist movement, especially in Salvador Dalí’s paintings… but the idea actually goes back a lot further than that.

Trompe-l’œil means “fool the eye” and that phrase is what is best used to describe or categorize this form of art. Actually, almost every form of 2-dimensional work that goes back to the earliest known cave arts is somewhat in this to some degree – since after all making a window out of something that is not a window as paintings do is fooling the eye so to speak.

It’s all about hidden messages or meanings, and really being a keen observer of the world in order to see the form and the way that simple basic design principles can allow multiple things to happen in the same plane.

The idea of bringing the reality of the 2-dimensional canvas of a painting or photograph in to the viewers plain sight so that it’s simple beauty can be observed in and of itself outside of all other rules and principles of creating illusion is a very modern idea that is seen over and over and over again in 20th centrury art. That’s why I say that genres like Cubism, Op-Art, and a lot of other genres that focus on the 2-dimensional existence of the plane in an artwork are MORE REALISTIC than simple little paintings that pretend to be windows showing pretty landscapes or cityscapes that most other people classify as Realistic…

Is it realistic to pretend that the 2 dimensional surface on a wall is something other than a surface on a wall? Sure there can be little pictures in there, just like there is on that flat plane you are looking in to to see these words, or that you will view tonight as you watch Prime Time TV… but isn’t it more realistic to acknowledge that what you are looking at is really a 2 dimensional flat surface?… as Kevin has done by seeing the letters in his photographs?

Some folks even take this sort of idea in photography to a whole different level in the form of Photomosaics… After all, if a photograph is really just a bunch of dots made up of 4 colors, CYMK (Cyan Yellow, Magenta, and blacK), it makes sense that each photo is balanced more towards one of those 4, so it makes sense to use an entire photo as one small element in a larger picture… Actually, given enough time and photos, photomosaic technology could go to a whole new level and allow an infinite amount of images to exist hidden inside of a set of photos… the first level would look like something from space, then as you approach it to the airplane level it would phase and each level as you get closer and closer could phase in to a new image, hidden… only to dissolve as new ones come in to play. The hidden typography that Kevin is searching for is a little different than Photomosaics, but not completely. There is a lot of similarities there – searching for what is hidden in plain view.

It’s strange but all language and all these ideas that get thrown at us daily in these little windows that are not windows are something that connects us all as a society. People from 200 years ago would think we are crazy staring at computers and tvs and spending as much time as we do daily on these devices that are really 2 dimensional boxes producing light. Works like this make people think. They can become kitsch or cliche sometimes if overdone, but they do start to open the mind, and let people begin to question reality itself on some level, which, in my opinion is what all great art should do.

Keep looking for the hidden meanings Kevin. Your typographic photos are amazing. Keep spreading the Love.

A few thoughts about illustration… copyright, trademarks, why “Work-for-hire” is EVIL… and Zombies, or actually Golems Really due exist!

While I say I love illustration, and want to get in to the illustration field, I think it only fair to give you a little bit of background about me, and some of my own personal biases and things about illustration… In the wide world of illustration, usually the client always comes first. The artist does work for the client. The artist creates things, but seeks approval from the client at each step of the process. The preliminary concept art is just thought of as something to hand to the client to seek approval. The client and artist then have a disucssion and talk about things, and go to the next step… and the artist continually changes the idea to be in agreement with what the client is wanting since the client has the ultimate say as the artist is seeking payment for the work from the client.

A little bit of a philisophical problem that I have with that sort of thing, at least in my own works, is that I consider each work of art that is created in every stage of creation as a seperate and unique art form… something that is not just a preliminary work for something later, to be discarded like pretty wrapping paper that is torn apart as a Christmas present is opened. The process of creation has multiple stages. Quick little doodles done in a sketchbook are just as valid as a final work of art as something that’s been re-worked three hundred times by an illustrator or designer that is seeking permission from his or her client.

Another huge issue in all of that is the “work-for-hire” issue. Many clients want illustrators and designers that work for them to consider their work as “work-for-hire.” According to the way contract law works, art that is created as “work-for-hire” is artwork that the client will own the copyright to. In other words, if an artist creates work-for-hire artwork, the artist will have to seek permission from the copyright owner to republish the work that he or she created, and the same thing applies to and “derivitive” work… that is work that is dervived from the original… That puts artists that work in “work-for-hire” contracts in a really sticky situation since they can never use the work for hire stuff unless they get permission again, which might actually end up costing them money, etc. The derivitive issue makes the bad situation even worse because most artist tend to build a sort of visual library in their subconscious that forces works they create later in life to resemble works they created earlier… which is something they could possibly get sued for if the earlier work was a work-for-hire form of art.

For this reason, I’m not sure if I could ever “really” be a full time illustrator. However, I do like the idea of illustrating things, and creating narrative structures, so it’s possible that I might be able to get in to this field sort of. One reason I really am attracted to using Public Domain stuff as the basis of illustration is that the original copyright owner no longer has copyright over that stuff, nor does anyone else… so it’s free game for anyone… However, writers that no longer have copyrights on their books are probably long gone, and so other people probably have created derivitive works of those books and artforms over and over throughout the years, so it leaves the ancient stuff as content that will be difficult to gain any economic profits off of in a direct manner… since dead writers won’t pay anything usually… That’s why I got interested in Cafe Press, Lulu.com and other similar types of places in my exploration of all of this stuff. The internet has created a lot of new little niche areas for many of us to investigate if we want to take the time to get in to it. There’s a lot to explore and play around with in the huge playground of tweaking public domain concepts, ideas, and works, and redistrubting them with our own little additions, changes, etc.

Eventually, if I do get in to making book covers and interior illustrations for Public domain books I will build up a lot of variety and introduce new fresh ideas, in hopes that maybe someday a real writer that is alive today might ask me to do some works for their books, magazine articles, blogs, etc. If that does happen, this whole work-for-hire issue will likely come up down the road. I guess I’ll cross those bridges if/when I get to that point. Regardless, if you create artwork, this IS something you should be thinking about somewhat. There’s a lot to copyright and trademark laws. I don’t claim to be a lawyer, but do know that this sort of stuff can be a major hassle if you don’t think about it before you dive in to a contract or situation similar to a contract that is all done with verbal agreements, etc.

Do you really want to give away your right to be creative?!?… Just something to think about.

A similar thing to think about – be sure that you are honoring the Copyrights and Trademarks of other… If you want to create a work of art depicting a soda can or car, are you aware that you could be sued by Ford or Coke, or any other company if the work looks too much like theirs? This is especially true of photographs. Speaking as someone that has had some photos removed from Turbosquid a few years ago because Turbosquid received a Cease and Desist Letter from Ford due to the fact that there was a Ford car somewhere in the forground of a picture I shot once, even though it was not the main focus of the composition, I can say this stuff is a reality you SHOULD think about before and while you are making your artworks. The possibility of having to go to court and pay high lawyer fees and court fees just because you clicked your camera in the wrong place is not a fun situation to be in! Ford is probably one of the biggest companies that chases people down for this sort of thing, but any copyright or trademark owner can do similar at any time because copyright and trademark law DOES apply to “derivitive works.”

For yourself, this can be a good thing, as you could possibly sue others if they create artworks that are in your style or just look too much like your work for your liking… However, what comes around goes around, and the you can find yourself on the receiving end of the same issue if you create works that are too much like other folk’s stuff too… which is something we all need to think about a LOT as everywhere you turn today there’s some namebrand, logo, or copyrighted thing in your face 24/7.

Your computer has a logo on it… oops better not photograph or draw it. You want to take a photo of a street – oops there’s a car on it that was created by an automobile company that has a trademark on that design. You shoot a photo of a gargoyle on a building – oops there’s an architect or sculptor somewhere that owns the copyright to that design. You shoot a picture of the sunset – oops there’s an airplane flying low there that was designed by a company with a trademark on that shape. You take a picture of a wall in your house – oops someone has a tradmark, and probably a copyright on the design of that wallpaper… Where is nature? That is one of the few things people can’t copyright… Nope?!?… someone has done a picture of a deer posing in that posture before! YIKES!

If you take a photo of someone, or create any form of artwork depicting anyone – you have even more issues to deal with since there are privacy laws. That’s why you always see notices in various films, literary works, etc. say any resmblence to real people in the characters depicted is coincidental, etc. It’s also why photographers need to get the permission of anyone they photograph, usually in a written form so that they can prove that the permission was obtained. The little photo of Barrack Obama standing next to the China Wall that was put in Times Square by the coat company is just one of the newest little examples of where these sort of issues can come up and cause major problems for all parties involved…

All of these little issues are amplified by the fact that Zombies, or at least Golems really do exist! As mentioned in How to Argue & Win Every Time: At Home, At Work, In Court, Everywhere, Everyday, corporations and money are both lifeless beings that we give life to… things that are really dead that we give power to.

(*Perhaps the Golem are the invisible corporations and the Zombies are the employees that become “dead” 40 hours a week to serve the golem?*)

Sometimes, actually far more times than we probably want to acknowledge, we actually give our entire lives to these souless, lifeless beings! Corporations are our society’s gods from the ancient world. They don’t really exist but everyone knows that they are there. Everyone talks about them… shares stories about them… We even give them Social Security Numbers and call those Tax Identification Numbers… We give them life through our <a href="Memes“>about them.

Logos and employees are just one sign of their existence, as are all the contracts created in their names… Curators of Universities, CEOs, Company Presidents and others in power in the coporate world, just to name a few, are the priests of this religion that we don’t call a religion, but they are NOT the corporation itself, even if they think they are. They are hired and fired by the invisible zombies or golems that we breathe life into, just like everyone else. The piece of paper that creates a corporation is NOT the corporation itself. The corporations don’t really exist in our world, but we all pretend that they do and continue to bring life to them in our belief in them… continue to pay homage to them every time we think about that brand name we want to pay for, etc…. They are the true gollems that all of us helped bring in to power to submit our entire beings too in some way, shape, or form.

Advertising, and all of the little illustrations that come from it is just one of the many little offerings that are given to these souless, lifeless zombies to help them exist. You can call me a crazy lunatic if you want, but when you really dig deep and think about it, you have got to know that it’s true!

Does this mean I don’t want to be an illustrator. Of course not. I love to illustrate things, tell stories, bring life to the lifeless objects around me.

In a strange way, all people that create art, or anything really – letters that you made when you hit the keyboard on your computer (you do know that each letter and phrase is different from place to place in the world which is why there’s different languages that exist – we all breathe life in to our own perception of reality that the elders in our tribe have taught us IS reality and so we make it become OUR reality too), recipies you put together to eat, All Things that we do really… sort of do the same thing, whether it’s for a corporation or their own needs and wants to create. Art itself is something we breathe life in to, and it sort of takes on a life of it’s own in that process. Maybe all of this is something Jesus was talking about when he said you cannot serve God and Mammon?… but in reality, that’s not really possible is it, at least not if we want to live in this world and exist – Give to Ceaser what belongs to Ceaser…

Anyways, I am a living being, just as you are, and as The Universe’s Creator is. The act of creating things is in some ways the real and ultimate goal and meaning of the universe?… or is it? Maybe, maybe not. Either way, be sure to make your works your own, and unique enough that you don’t get sued for copyright infringment by other humans or the golems that exist in our society.

Just something to think about…

Interesting Reading – Asimov’s Guide to the Bible: A Historical Look at the Old and New Testament

You folks reading this might think I’m nuts doing this many Interesting Reading posts in this short of a timespan, but there’s a lot of various books that I’ve read and/or am in the middle of reading that have a lot of relevance to this blog and life in general really, and are just great books that I think everyone should at least take a glance at some point in time… I’ll probably add more interesting reading posts in the not-too-distant future…

Asimov’s Guide to the Bible: A Historical Look at the Old and New Testaments is a very interesting book. Asimov, possibly one the greatest science fiction writers of all time, explores the bible from a scientific and historical perspective in this book. He’s an athiest, (and a former Jew I think) but that does not matter. He covers a lot of the historical aspects of each chapter of the Bible in this book from a scientific perspective. There’s not a lot of mushy love and miracle belief talk in the book like you see in a lot of the bible study books that are written by Christians. Also there’s a lot of discussion about geography and history of the locations in the bible, and how each of the main characters in the bible is thought of from a historian’s perspective and how they sort of fit in to the Social Studies and History books. That is something you don’t typically get a lot of with a lot of other books about the Bible. I don’t know that I agree with him on everything (since he is an atheist after all), but I do think he presents a lot of ideas that anyone interested in Religion, History, or Geography, regardless of whether they are Christian or not a Christian might find interesting.

His explanations that seem to explain away miracles or give them a new twist by allowing you to think about them in a different way than the way you might have been taught in Bible School by adding a bit of science is somewhat refreshing, and for the most part does not make the Bible any less relevant or True.

Remember, there are multiple perspectives to our reality… What everyone that witnesses anything experiences is likely slightly different than others that witnessed the same darn thing. It is good to sometimes think about things from a different angle. There might be a slight challenge to your faith in some of the info in this book, but that actually might be a catalyst that will help you gain a stronger faith by reading the book. There is a lot of historical and geographic info in here that you probably won’t come across many other places unless you are theologian and have read a LOT of ancient texts and have a masters degree in religion. It’s good to learn a few new things. and think about things in a different way on occassion!