Music Suggestion: Beck - Morning Phase

So an album for people who need something relaxing in the morning for your creative minds.  Beck - Morning Phase.  I would suggest to listen to the album the way it was created and not shuffle the tracks, but that's just my preference.

You're welcome!

Age & Storytelling

So I'm getting older every year.  In case you don't know, this happens to everyone.  Now since I've been a kid, I've been watching movies and TV shows religiously.  In terms of different professions, I surely could have been a movie/tv critic but trying really hard to find flaws into something and then blowing it out of proportion seems like a snobby job in my eyes.  I've only ever seen a few reviews and they bothered me, so of course I make the illogical conclusion of categorizing everyone based on 10 reviews that I read.  My point is that what I look for in stories seems to have changed. 

Lets start with the Avengers storyline, to ensure that I piss off 95% of people that love going to the movies.  Now before you point your finger and call me hippie douche that's going against the mainstream, trying to be different maaaaan, just hear me out.  I enjoy the movies, they're fun to watch once.  Then, I couldn't care less about them.  The stories are generic, there's few things that are really deep during the story and all villains fall on a scale from below average to terrible.  Characters are great and movies are fun.  You put this in contrast with Nolan's Batman trilogy that blows all of them out of the water other than Captain America 2 that's also up there.  CA2 is an exception to those movies and an amazing movie.  Go watch it if you haven't!

an interesting take on creativity by Steve Jobs

I think in the past, I would have enjoyed said movies a lot more.  Now, I seem to constantly look for stories that make you think, that make you talk about the movie or want to see the movie again and again.  Maybe again due to age or seeing so many storylines so many times, I find a lot of the stories recycled with a slightly different color.  Especially now that tv shows have completely overtaken movies as more engaging, taking more risks and the quality overall being much better, movies themselves aren't gravitating me as much as they did when I was such a young kid.  I think the lack of quality is part of the reason why an above average franchise like the Avengers is printing billions of dollars. (in my opinion, I think this should be obvious since it's blog).  Or the case me not being to accept that other people have different opinions and preferences than me.

Maybe due to age, we become more cynical as well, which might be partly a reason of my pessimistic view on the movie media.  Regardless, I think this may related as design, illustration and web.  We see so much, but for me, this gives us a chance to soak it all in like a sponge.  When we do so, we use the little things that we see from so many references to create our vision, that is different enough to stand on its own.  To me, advertising in particular has gotten better and better.  Commercials are far more engaging and better thought out, on top of all the intrusive ways companies find to tell or sell us a product via a cellphone, table and/or computer.  So while so many things are being repeated, I think we outta do something about being fucking creative.  We're in this business for a reason, not to recycle the same shit over and over again.

Missing Champions League on Tuesday/Wednesday due to work

The hard life.  There's people in Africa that don't have enough food to feed themselves every day, but it's me who suffers more.  Me.  In my previous job, I worked from home and handed in my work via email.  It was great!  Horrible segue aside, I am a football fanatic.  By football, I mean the sport that the entire world calls football other America and Canada, who decided to be "different" (or self-centered douchebags, who am I am to choose between the two descriptions). 

The struggle is real.

The greatest club competition in Europe is the Champions League, where the games are played on Tuesdays and Wednesday.  Now in Europe, those games are played roughly around 5 or 6PM, after everyone has finished their basic 8 hour shift.  In North America however, all those games start at 2:45PM.  Now the conundrum is that my new job is the typical 9-5 job, which means I can't watch Bayern Munich play.  Sometimes, in the Bundesliga (German league) they also play on Tuesdays/Wednesdays when they have two league games per week, which adds to the burden of the tough life that I have to live.  What is the point of this post you ask, what's this have to do with design, or is this maybe some small piece of information informing students who read this of the unfortunate events of having a steady 40 hour/week job?  No, no, lets not be silly.  I just feel like venting and since no one actually reads my blog, I allow myself to write any nonsense that pleases me. It's also a good stress reliever. 

Bayern Munich will be champions of this year's Champions League (will edit later if it doesn't turn out to be true & if I don't forget).

Personal Projects & Freelance

So I'm officially back from Europe after two wondrous weeks.  My wallet is rather empty, due to buying a maxed out iMac a few months prior, then going to Europe for 2 weeks visiting 5 countries, and having to spend a decent amount of money on a personal project that I'm working on at this point in time.

Good news is that finally after so long, I am moving towards the end of this phase of the project.  I've been working on it for quite some time and the last few months I've been working so much, I have had 0 time for freelance.  I actually worked on it even during my vacation as sad as that may sound to some people, but I didn't mind much.  Now, the project might either go to another stage where I will be able to talk about it in the future, or stay likely as something that never materialized into anything.

The point here is as I daydream for a bit, it's time for freelance.  I need to make a bit of extra cash and the good news about the creative business, is that freelance work is always an option.  I also realized as I had a conversation with a friend of mine, as we discussed that working on a personal project, you will always give it a bit more than you would working on any other project no matter how much you're paid.  Of course there are people who are just as passionate and are completely ok with working on someone else's vision, I should generalize and pretend I know every creative human being in the world. 

But for the most part, it is the case.  I had to pay someone to work on part of my secret project, and my friend did warn me that no matter what, no one will work as hard on this project as you will, because it's your baby.  Saying that however, the illustrator I have working with me is doing a fantastic job, and I'm not just saying that because he might accidentally stumble upon this link.  If I have to say anything that isn't all about me, I'd say work on that personal project.  At worst, it's a great stress reliever even if nothing happens with it.  On the upside, you could be making money doing the job that you're most passionate about, your own, personal project! 

So get your ass to work on your personal project when you're done doing your 9-5 cubicle job.

Speed Painting 27: Destiny

With the biggest game of the year coming out this month, I thought I'd illustrate Bungie's new franchise series Destiny. It's from the creators of Halo, who have always made games on Microsoft platforms. While I've played the previous games, I've never owned one so this is a big change for the company.