Checyl- The Jewel Thief (Project Wrap-up)

Recently I closed up production on a job. Below is a breakdown of the process.

The task was to create a clothing line for a sport's wear company. I was given some references to go of but was left to my own devices pretty much from the get go. Noticing that the references provided were very character heavy, I decided to go a similar route but with fully fleshed out characters, rather than characters created simply for the merchandise. I got the green light and began production on what is to become a 5 design clothing collection. This post chronicles the process of the first design.

I began by researching what could be an interesting way to flesh out these characters whilst still making it a wearable design, so I thought it'd be cool if I could tell the story on the actual clothing.
After the story was written, development of one of the characters started, her name is Checyl- The Jewel Thief. Seeing as she's a fox, I sketched up a ton of different fox designs.

Quickly I learned that I don't actually know how to draw a fox or anything close to a fox, so I took to google for references. I drew real foxes, other artist's renditions and sometimes just studied dog like creature anatomy.

 
 


Once I felt I was happy with what I was drawing, I jumped into actually designing the clothes.

I knew I wanted a comic in there somehow, I also knew I wanted to illustrate a cover of a children's book. I roughed out the ideas for the 3 illustrations I needed to create, then I started researching poses, clothing and body types.


Once the research was done, I got the the images into Photoshop, made a template of them and printed them.
I went over those images with pencil, creating the final sketches for the illustrations.
Scanned those into Photoshop and painted away.

I tried to focus on the colors for the cover image, tell an interesting story with the comic, and have something that would look cool on the sleeves of the shirt, all whilst still applying the knowledge I gained during the summer, I'm still having trouble with stuff like, cast shadows, and which plane I'm on, but I'm rather happy with the images. Personally I think they are leaps and bounds away from anything I've made in a while.

I really liked the process and seeing that I learned so much while doing it, I decided to carry it on towards my other projects, that way I can both learn while I work and create imagery that I can say I am truly proud of.

Another post from the depths of the sky.

Nice title, right? Yep, came up with it all by myself. *wink*

I've been thinking a lot, after I lost my apartment because I hadn't made any money to pay the rent. I went back to my parent's house (writing this from there) in order to set things back up and take another crack at the whole thing. 

At my time here I realized that I was already living to a certain degree as an artist, and although that is cool, that is not my calling. I don't want to draw for a living, I want to create for a living. I want to have the opotunity to wake up in the morning and if I have an idea. I can do it, and be payed for this in order tokeep making more stuff; be that comics, art, movies, whatever. I want to create, I wand to give all my ideas life. Not just visual life, but movement, and breath, and a voice. The whole thing, I want to make them as real as I possibly can. With that in mind, I need to never again call myself an "artist" as sadly, what once meant a creator of things, now implies just someone that draws. No. I am a content creator. We are at an age, where the internet is almost the only way to survive, get a thousand likes on facebook, maybe get a commision from a client, gather an audience, become an icon. All's in the internet, and as such I must take my creations to there, but no longer trying to impress anyone, no longer trying to get their attention, their attetion wil come, all I need to do is create things that make me happy.

With all that being said; I lay below my Creator's Manifesto:

1- I want to create art that makes me happy. 

2- I want to be able to live from my ideas, and my creations and nothing more.

3- I want my work to be praise-worthy and admired.

4- I want my work to inspire others in such a way that they get into creating as well.

5- I will never just do it for the money.

From this day onward. I promise to do things that make me happy, thigs that I hope you will come to enjoy. I urge you to follow my twitter, my facebook, and this blog. And I hope you too can get inspired by what I'm trying to accomplish here. 

Till next time...

I figured it out!

I did, I finally understand!! I hate my fucking life, but only for one reason. I lost my apartment, and had to move back into my parent's house and I finally understand how my art works. If I want to make any kind of art, I need to be inspired; surrounded by people that are inspiring. Not in a horrible place that is just fucking boring! I hate this place. Which only makes things worse, because if I want to leave again and be on my own, the way I'm supposed to live, I need money. Yet, if I'm too sad to work, I don't make money! So I'm currently in a horrible, vicious circle. That being said, I can't change my position right now; not until I get paid and I can pay for a place of my own again.

Be advice, the next week will be powered by alcohol, because I hate my current stance in life, and as thus I need to drink in order to do my work. Figured the whole thing out!!

Reality Check

So here's come the undeniable truth, I hit a huge pebble in the road. I lost my apartment... Turns out everything you say on an email is legally binding, and I lost everything... But well, let's get back on our feet. We learned that if you want to move forward in live, and in the art world, it is important to know about legal things like contracts. I also learned that I can't count on money that I don't currently have on my hands; might seem like a no-brainer, but well fuckers, I didn't know such things. I am currently going back to my parent's house, hopefully to get back on my feet and move out again and re-start my life. I think this will be a good change, I lost 10 pounds in the last 5 days, because I didn't have any money to buy food, so I was pretty much just surviving off milk and vitamins. Horrible idea let me tell you, but at least I'm slimmer, and I can get into those sexy grey pants I loved.

I'm really sad, just trying to play it off as cool and what not, but it's a really sad thing that happened. Kids, don't pay $650 in rent. That's fucking insane, considering you can pay for much cheaper rent. It was a 2 room apartment, and well, you can get a 4 room house for $50 more. But again, I didn't know that. I think highschools should probably teach this kind of stuff, maybe then, we won't suffer when our landlord kicks us out.

On we go I guess, I'm going to go back to working 14hour days, and hopefully stashing enough money in the next two-three weeks to move out again, this time to a better place, a cheaper place, one I don't get kicked out off.

Going to start making music for people again, probably gonna sell my rapping/mixing/mastering skills on there too. Maybe even do some simple animation for people. Right now, I need to do as much work/money as possible, so let's see what happens.

I'm scared I'm gonna fail... I'm not sure if this was a failure already or simply just a misstep. The deciding factor will be to keep fighting on, even after all that happened today.

Long overdue update

For starters, it's obvious that I have messed up and my expectations of making this a daily thing have all but been very disappointing. To both myself and to you whoever is reading this, but you know what... I think it's ok that it's not a daily thing. Because when it was a daily thing although I could reflect I wasn't fully reflecting on what went right, and what went wrong. Making it a less "scheduled" thing allows me to actual sit and ponder about the issues at hand.

And what are those issues, you may ask... well... hmmm, fuck it. Let's start.

I am still making this my life, just needed to understand a couple of things. First of all was that if I want to make a collaborative, I need to work with people that are as dedicated and as dependent on the arts as me. Not make it with people that have, what one would call, a plan B. This is because people like that are very trifling. They are in it only for the now and not for the later. They don't care if in the end it doesn't work out for them, because they still have a plan B. So they will use you and use you, till you can't give them anymore and then throw you away. In the past couple of months I've been surrounded by many of these kinds of people and though they are great human beings, when it comes to actually making it, they don't understand a single thing about the sacrifices that are involved in following such a career. I invested a lot of my time, my money, and my efforts into making shows and shit happen for them. More often than not, giving them my services for free, which ultimately led to a beautiful little disaster because currently I am struggling to pay the rent. So that's lesson one. Work with like minded individuals. AND I MEAN IT. LIKE MINDED INDIVIDUALS.

Second, I learned a very basic thing about selling a product... and I'm sure everyone knows this but no one told me. Don't make merchandise, if you have no place to sell it at. That means making prints, pins, shirts, etc. Hustling art, is not a way of life. It's very difficult and not a thing I would wish on anyone. Wonderful, we got that out of our chest. Perfect. On to the next point.

I'm selling pokemon pins. Buy them... jajajaja, I'm a silly goose.

The actual next point, understand that everything you do online is as valid as everything you do in real life, meaning. If you make animations online and 1 person watches them... Well guess what, you're an animator! Hell, if no one watches them, you are still an animator. Had I known such a thing I would probably be a billionaire right now. What I mean by this is that, it is never too late to make yourself a brand. So start that facebook page, or that website, and everything you make online, be sure that it links to it. Because every single person that watches, reads, or hears your stuff, is a potential client or fan, or whatever the hell you want to call them. Only distance yourself from your brand if you personally feel that what you do or say will hurt your brand. At which point you should make sure to take care of your career first, because if this is a thing you want to do for the rest of your life, you need to understand that it is in fact a career and you need to make decisions based on how they would hurt your brand.

Now on to the actual fun stuff, and not the sad, very angry stuff.

I made a youtube show with my buddy, Chongo. You can check it out at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGPP_tw5sVaARL847hf0OVw

it's a fun little show where we talk and draw stuff for charity. Check it out.

Next, I decided that I was gonna distance my self from the local music scene, as much as I possibly can. It's all fun and games, until you make show and it goes fucking horrible. Your friends turn and stab you and you get made fun of by other rappers, because you aren't making the music they enjoy. It's truly fucked up. So yeah, I'm just gonna focus on making my music, and releasing my music, and whoever wants to hear it can find it, and whoever doesn't well they don't have to listen to it. So I'm simply gonna put off making shows until I have an actual following, and maybe that following never comes, but whatever happens at least I will be proud of what I've created.

I think that's all for today, it's a bit of a sad post coupled with some goodness in it. All in all the moral of the story is, Do Your Thing!

See you all next time.

An evening with Vampires

Today seems like a great day to Recap. So who am I to argue? Well this week has been filled with a lot of interesting things. I've know decided to journey into the world of gathering an audience, fully. Reason I'm now doing it, is because I've been drawing and making all sorts of art for quite a long time now, but I failed miserably bad at gathering an audience, so with that in mind, if I'm truly commuted into garnering a following, then it's important for me to understand that everyone out there is a potential fan. With that in mind, the hustle begins. Things I'm gonna start doing in order to move my career as an artist forward:

First I need to make some business cards, currently i have the design, just need to finish it digitally and print them out.

Second, I need to make every and all interactions a potential opportunity to gain a new fan. That includes but is not limited to, forums, tweets and face to face interaction.

Third, it is now time to do all the little projects that I want to do. Because actually finishing them and posting them out there will make me tap into audiences much more varied than just art, and music.

This is gonna be very interesting, but I'm planning on doing a lot of things. Among those are; animations, instrumental music, new prints, youtube videos and much more stuff!

Today has not been an easy day.

Like the title says... Today has not been very easy. I'm starting to think this will blow up in my face and it's starting to scare me. I currently have .80 cents in my bank account and zero amount of money on me. I have a ton of merchandice and nowhere to sell it, and it's scary. It's really freaking scary. I think I only have one option and that is to take all I've made and give it to a local shop here, in hopes of maybe having them sell it... But I don't know, it's scary. Because at the moment I think I should start thinking about gathering an audience. So if I do give them all my merchandise I should somehow make it so if people by the shit that I'm selling them, then I can at least turn them into fans. The usual way to do this is to give them a business card but I can't just hang-out and give people my business cards, so the other way is to make packaging for my products with my links and stuff, but suprise, suprise that takes money that I don't have... Fuck it's just scary. 

Last idea is to use my shitty printer and print out small pieces of paper with my link on them and put that inside all the pins I'll be taking to them. That could work... Maybe just give them pins to sell. But I don't know, they're really fucking sketchy, they currently take 40% out of everything they sell that's mine. Which is fucking insane, but I'm running out of choices, so maybe the whole paper inside the pins thing will be my way of making that money back... I don't know, I'm scared...

Maybe I should call up some places and see if they sell artists stuff.