Music Project 7

I'm A Sol Man

Sol Man:

I worked at a place called "Sols" at RIT during most of my college career. It was a little CVS type store in the basement of Sol Huemann hall, one of the dorms. It was essentially a hole in the wall. But it was also a fantastic place to work, because there was never huge amounts of people there, and you only had 5 workers max at one time, so the community was really tight knit. I am a clam in big social situations, but in small situations like that I am an unstoppable force of personality and I just let loose.

So one night I had closing duty, and I was on stock, which meant "fool around till we closed". Since I was a good worker when we needed it, I got away with being a moron a lot, because my bosses liked me. This particular night, I emptied a Snapple box into the cooler, and was about to take it to the trash, when I realized something.

It could totally fit on my head, and the built in handles would serve as eye sockets. Presto, I was walking around with a snapple box on my head. I stated calling myself the Sol Man. And my co-workers and customers loved it. I kept up the alter ego for the rest of the time I worked there, even changing my nametag to Sol Man.

The night I started this however, my friend Ed runs to his ipod, playing over the speaker system. He plays "Soul Man" and I danced around with the mop and a box on my head as we cleaned up after closing. It was a moment of magic. It was the kinda thing that can only happen in those small close knit environments.

Not many pictures remain from that night, but here the Sol Man is seen dancing his way to victory.

Tumblr!

I can't stand twitter. However, I have less reservations about Tumblr. It feels less useless, and since it is essentially a blog combined with twitter I found a use for it. Since I use this site primarily as a portfolio blog, a site with little explanation, just a collection of pictures. I save real updates with words for special occasions.

But I'm constantly updating this blog's many pages (The "birthday" page has added about 4 pics in a weeks time), and since I don't want to update the front page with each little picture I deem worthy, I just throw it on the site. As a consequence, anyone who follows me regularly probably misses stuff, because updating a page receives no fanfare.

So I got a Tumblr. It is essentially just my pictures, updated in real time, in order. Right after I finish a picture, I load it to Tumblr, it can be found on this site too, but Tumblr would be an easier way to see what I've done recently.

So basically, Follow my tumblr!

http://therapprampage.tumblr.com/

Music Project 6

A more abstract idea

Sandman:

Cause I understand You've been running from the man

that goes by the name of The Sandman

he flies the sky like an eagle in the eye

of a hurricane that's abandoned

These lyrics are from a song called "sandman", by the folk rock band America. I'll confess, this picture is really a sort of mixture of two songs, the other being "Horse with no name", which a surreal song about a dude travelling through the desert. However I remember "Sandman" better, mostly due to the above lyric.

I don't get what it's saying. I never did, even as a little kid in the backseat of the car at the beach. America was one of my dad's go-to bands for beach trips, and this song always sort of grabbed me. I didn't know what the song was about, because at that age you take everything literally. So I thought it was a dude running from a man made out of sand. It was a cool image, thats stuck with me to this day.

I avoided this group for a long time. Several of the bands my dad would listen to when I was a wee lad I got away from, then came back to as I got back into music. For years, after hearing America, The Beatles, The Eagles, Jean luc-ponty, I just strayed away. They had been overplayed in my ears. It took me years to rediscover them myself and realize my dad was right.

Except about The Eagles. I didn't like them back then and I still hate them. Hotel California can suck it.

Music Project 5

I went for comedy for once! ( I know, what a surprise)

Once In a Lifetime:

This one can be summed up essentially in one sentence: Evan did not enjoy me playing Talking Heads. 

Evan was my freshman year roommate. All in all a very quality roommate, outside a propensity to go to bed at 11pm every night. Evan listened to music occasionally, I listened to music obsessively. Most of the times I would turn it down lower, or he would use his headphones to block me. Freshman year was dominated by two bands: Talking heads and The Kinks. Evan liked the Kinks. He did not like the Talking Heads.

And he often would tell me so.

I was way too into them to stop playing, especially this album and this song, one of their most well known. For a few months, the poor fellow had to listen to the Heads on a daily basis. Occasionally I would play it just to annoy him. But that's because He was working on a project using The Beatles "Paperback Writer", it was driving me nuts. 

It turns out, that project ruined that song for both of us. But Evan still gives me crap for Talking Heads. 

Post Reboot-Five (Gooooooolden rings!)

THATS RIGHT BOYS! After a long month of waiting, a power outage costing me lots of progress, I finally finished the most visually complex piece of comic junk I've made SO FAR. I KNOW YOU'RE EXCITED TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS!

Well, I think they got the nanobots, but now they have to escape! But how will they escape...while in...

P.S: Sorry for the long delay on this one, I was trying something that required lot of layer juggling and halfway through one day a construction worker cut off power to my room to work next door, and didnt warn anyone. And subsequently I lost a lot of work. And even more subsequently, my art suffered a bit because re-doing stuff is never very inspired. Moral of the story, Save often, punch construction workers.

I have updated the Melon & Post page as well, to have links to all the comics so far, so you don't have to root through my history.

Also, For those of you who read my blog posts only when I post them on Facebook, If you are indeed interesting in following my art, check this site instead of relying on my facebook because I rarely update the FB now but I frequently update this blog. 

Lastly, I colored backgrounds, did voicework for my friend's 2 quarter RIT film, you should go watch it: http://vimeo.com/20542204

Now I can rest on the M&P for a bit.

Group of 6 Thesis Festival!

So we just received the good news that the Group of Six's thesis film was selected to the Citrus Cel Animation Festival in Jacksonville, Florida!

The Group of 6 +/- 1 was a collaboration of 6 people (plus or minus 1) who banded together in our senior year of Film School with the intention of creating the most professional animation we possibly could. On that front, I think we were successful.

More details about the festival here: http://citruscel.com/

A production blog about the film can be seen here: http://lunchbreaksfilm.blogspot.com/2011/03/official-selection.html

and lastly, you can actually watch the film on my "Videos" page. It's labeled "My Thesis Film" for security reasons, but it likely will be properly labeled sometime in the future, maybe after the festival is over.
http://daveartlocker.blogspot.com/p/videos.html

I'd actually recommend following the video link to Vimeo and watching the HD version, the version on my page is a tad small.

Music Project 4

I was working on the new Melon and Post comic: the dialogue is written, the layout complete, the characters just needed to be drawn and colored. It could have been done today, but my power cord wanted to be a free man and unplugged itself on me, and I lost all the character work I did today.

So it'll be a few more days before the saga gets the update, sadly.

When stuff like that happens, it usually puts me in a sour mood and I don't want to go back and immediately redo everything I just lost. I had some nice things going, but I lost a lot, and by this point I would have regained simply what I lost. So I needed to do something else. I figured I'd churn out this week's music project a little early, because i had to work on something.

Start To Begin:

Based on another Kingbastard song, but this time it's really not about a particular song at all. I was listening to a bunch of songs on loop when this moment happened, and I chose the most appropriate title for it, because I can't remember the exact song when I got hit by the sun shower.

While riding my bike at the beach back on the fourth of July weekend, I was on about mile 30, my last lap, and the skies opened up on me, despite the sun being in full bloom. I was tired, hot as hell (it was upper 80's that weekend) and the sudden cool rain suddenly pouring all over me was quite possibly the most refreshing thing I have ever felt, ever. I parked the bike in the driveway, walked around, and laid on the roof of my car until the rain stopped.

While my first project piece was literal in it's depiction, this one is not at all. I didn't want to illustrate the moment, just me in a sun shower, because I didn't think any of my memories of that were all that interesting. I instead chose to go for the feeling of the moment. It was a moment of sheer oneness with the nature, and after a long bike ride, the rain took away all my fatigue and gave me a rebirth of spirit.

The picture itself was initially going to be me on a bike, but a front view silhouette of a guy on a bike looks strange and I'm not yet good enough to pull it off, so the picture isn't quite the image I had in my head, but I'm still happy with it. It came out kinda christ-like, but that's okay. When people make that arms spread pose I think rebirth because while I may not be a god man, I am a man who enjoys his Shawshank Redemption.

Music Project 3

Well it seems like in 3 weeks I've gone from sloppy digital painting to graphic design with no in-between. This weeks' is even more graphic-y then last weeks!

Also it seems like these take me a max of one day, it might be harder if I try a more painterly one (which my next idea I believe will be). it also appears I always do them on Thursdays. So I might start updating these on Thursdays.

So without further adieu: My Head is a Balloon

Myheadisaballoon/Kingbastard/Weeksy is a british indie electronic artist named Chris Weeks I found on newgrounds several years ago thanks to a friend. I've followed him ever since. he goes by a few different monikers, mostly so he has an option to release a few different types of style music. Kingbastard, his most developed, is based around electronic glitch type music. Weeksy is a soft, acoustic coffee shop type music. Myheadisaballoon is sort of a mix, a mix of electronic and traditional music in a friendly upbeat pop sound.

My Head is a Balloon is a song thats just him, an acoustic guitar, and happy. It's short, energetic, and sweet. A good spirit lifter. It's also full of visual ideas. On my many trips to class (about 4 of my music project pictures are going to be different versions of walking to class haha) in the spring, if it was a warm, sunny day and I was in a good mood, this song would play, and I'd sing along as I walked. Thankfully, I was always alone, because I sing like metal scraping against a boat hull.

It's just a genuinely enjoyable little tune, and it offered me a chance to do a more comic-style drawing, which in turn developed into the sort of construction paper cutout background you see. I think it turned out to be the best so far.

Also everyone should listen to Kingbastard