What is Entertainment Art?

There are 2 types of Entertainment Artists:

1. The Traditional/Digital Live Artist who entertains an audience 'live' where there is an immediate gratification leaving both the entertainer and entertained in a win-win situation.

This Entertainment Artist is an artist who is in the truest sense a 'traditional artist' who makes drawings/sketches in the presence of a live audience. He/she who purely uses pencils, paints, pastels etc. on paper, canvas or wood respectively.

Like you see here my very talented Live Entertainment Artist friend "A renowned Italian Humorist Roberto Mangosi making one of his enjoyable art performances to an audience in Rome:

 

The picture below is from one of my small performances yesterday at a Dubai BNI meeting (part of my 60 sec. pitch) with their Regional Director Mr. Bijay Shah who accepted the honor of being my audience-participant to help in the making of my quick live caricature. 

My Live Art is a bit different where I allow any member of the audience who wishes to volunteer to participate in my performance to demonstrate the fact that there is an "Artist Gene" in every human being where anyone who may think he or she does not have it in him/her "the artist material" at the end of the show will indeed be pleased they were able to contribute in the making of a drawing worthy of a display-piece.

 
2. The Entertainment Artist who creates works to Entertain an Audience via media, by way of Animated Films, Commercials, Short Stories where there is a certain amount of rehearsal. This is not a live performance and hence the gratification happens once it is released to a wide audience.

Here the artist is one who relies on digital tools too but has advanced traditional skills to use these tools so that with these skill-sets flourishes into visual development artists, art directors, character designers, environment designers, production designers, or any of the other plethora of designers in the entertainment community (these entertainment art positions as quoted on laafa.org).

Funny I did not realize all through my journey as a Creative.... Right from my first job as an animator in the early 90s I was wanting to carve myself a niche as an "Entertainment artist" forgetting the fact that I was already one, many years ago.

All my life I have anyway been asked to perform making portraits and caricature at parties....getting little time to actually do the typical childhood playtime pranks. That became very a convenient escape from any emotional hassles if I had to deal with any in the growing stressful world we live in. Entertainment Artists have a blessing to get into their own blissful world of illusion which they create with their pencils.

Pleased to see you again on my posts. Be back in a while with some more food for artistic thought.

A Disgruntled Designer whose Passion is Art

Hello again this is my typical art-space when I practice my dearest passions.

However....

For the first time I am stepping out of this rosy-rosy world I would like myself to always stay as an artist to voice out my 2 cents so as to request real Artists .... "Please don't contribute to the world of Starving Artists."?!

Just an hour ago I was taken aback by a sad statement made by an associate who should be a mediator to put designers at a better wicket....entertaining clients to conduct business by unpaid designs in order to help kickstart a proposal. I decide not to quote anything from his words because I am still an active member of the industry.

I am glad my niche keeps me safe from this kind of batter-y!! I guess. But thanks to such shockers, it encourages me to take some action....Diversification has continued to be my main soup for a while now and I don't regret it.

In the past couple of years, though I am humbled by the fact that fans for my art have grown... astronomical have been the requests for free or pro-bono work I have received. If people love art they must want to pay for it, right? If people love an artist's music they must want to pay for that goodwill. Then...How so, is it not?!

In 2012 alone, I have received the following asks-for-free: 

• 26 requests for free work from the general public. (2 I could afford to do.)
• 4 free requests from friends and relatives (1-1/2 of which I could afford to do.)
• 4 free requests from live new clients wanting to test Design skills unpaid manhours.
• 3 free requests of logo-design/redesign stating "this should be a child's-play for you a pro".
• 2 free requests to do concepts for pitches absolutely free with no payment guarantee.
• 2 requests for charity. (1 I did for a deserving cause.)

Don't these good Samaritans in search of free-to-work-artists ever think that authorized artists are doing this job for a living? After the job is perfectly done after tens of changes, then...artists have to worry about a a disappearance-without-paying-act which happens all too often whether large corporates or not unless held by strong legal papers. Where there is no jurisdiction ever covering artists....Where is the answer to that?!

My take!

Now hasn't the whole world got an over-dose of hitech art, animation etc etc. and pleasure of watching it at down-to-earth prices or no rates. Thanks to the fancy words of crowd-sourcing, 99designs, elance etc etc.

As we speak.... there are many animators even in Hollywood out of jobs for a very long time. So those who have jobs let's count our blessings but realize this is not a blessing in disguise...it's time to find better blessings :o) A Hollywood animation studio is getting 70% of their animators filled by students who they will not pay a cent. The Students' incentive is that they get to work in a Hollywood Studio. The business house's incentive is? They have 70% of their animators working for free. 

Dear Design students - after your 2-year free work experience with your ex-Hollywood Studio employee certificate, what salary-scales would you new animators' community ever get? Congrats! you would have officially set your bar so low that you have made the whole global design community a commodity.

My take!!

Art & Design & Animation with computer tools coming of age is now taken for granted that.... nobody has the time to differentiate between quality or mediocre work. Unfortunately for true artists! You may want to take the red carpet march out rather than be ushered in... while you still have the spirit.

Perhaps you could do well building your own gallery and housing your pieces in it.

My take!!!

... to people who are truly passionate about doing art (this maybe a "Note to self" too to constantly keep nudging me back to reality) is to just keep it as your passion "FOREVER". The moment you depend on art alone to make a living....the way things are panning out!? You don't want to hate your passions... do you? That would be killing your own spirit!! FOREVER.

I would be glad to hear your thoughts too. Before I stop may I ask of one thing.... do not be in a hurry to make judgements yet... we may not generalize and make inferences based upon this post for.... 

I am just throwing these pointers your way to ruminate upon. It is still a hypothesis as it still depends upon the Art of the Artist to handle such ugliness to come out of it in handsome colors. But until then the Artist must have strong options to fall back on.

Thank you again for sharing my thoughts.

Poetry Scintillates Visual Imagination

This Illustration... below... is one of my latest children's illustrations which I made for an an Abu Dhabi-based Poetess for her very special Kids Poem "An Angel without Wings."

Copyright Notification: The Illustration and Poem are strictly copyright protected respectively to Remy Francis for the Illustration and  the Poet and may not be copied or found anywhere else. 

I learnt the pleasure of listening to poems way back in primary school when I was called in as the kid in class to visualize poems covered in every term. 

Being a crazy artaholic, I was only too pleased to share my visual imagination with my fellow classmates and have the pictures hang in my classroom all year round. These paintings were replicated out of poems from English Romantic Poets such as William Wordsworth's The Solitary Reaper, John Keats' La Belle Dame Sans Merci et cetera and even pictures that came out of some unforgettable Non-de-tail sessions. 

I have my 5th grade teacher Mrs. John to thank for giving me this very special grounding in art & studies, which may have played an important part in rescuing me from the clutches of a point-less Exam-focussed learning system. A system which made me in later university days to not opt (for what would have been an amazing move) Astronomy (for the worst reason that I would not win high grades with it) over a subject titled "Linear Programming". Although this won me a centum in grading it has played to be of no use in any form in my career or life today. 

Getting back to the actual motivator for my making this post....

....how an organised method of utilitarian visualization makes me still relive some very famous poems taught to me in elementary school as if it happened today, with the same strength of freshness as when it was introduced to me more than 20 years ago.

Thank you once again for coming by!

Sharing my art - Online custom-gift stores

Hello there Readers

Here are some stores I have just opened to be able to order customized gifts and to be shipped from Zazzle right to our doorstep.

We here in Dubai just came back from a months break in business which meant a month of rumination, clarifying spirits and essentially getting back to business with a fresh start. It was a time for positive reflection, catching up with old lost connections and everyone counting on their blessings.

I took this valuable time to build-up my online presence further and am pleased to have opened a few of my online stores where anyone can get articles with prints of original art never seen before.

So here it is. Thank you for stopping by!

Thanks to Google for their doodles!!

I woke up to another pleasant day and found yet another amazing animated doodle from Google...So interactive that everyone at home could get into the Olympic groove: Happy London 2012!!



Thanks to their link, hey readers look at what I found.... for your viewing pleasure!!

How lovely would it be to get involved in the Google doodle campaigns! Lucky is the person who gets paid to do this! Would be such a pleasure too, to doodle based upon the region. Or does the doodles from Google already exist region-specific!!? Let me find out...I'll post my findings real soon. More soon!

Acrylic Speed painting

I made this little sparrow clasping onto cherries, following my previous post when I had the creative breeze pass by. Thanks to the Acrylic Paints I captured the mood.

Acrylic Colours - a magic medium for Artists

Acrylic Colours first arrived in the art scene in 1962 when they were called Standard Formula. These paints are quite thick in a buttery consistency just like oil colours. Hence it was mainly for palette knife work and is good to build up a terrific amount of relief work called Impasto.

The advantage of acrylics over oils is that oils take months to dry but acrylic paints take only a few hours even if it is applied in thick amounts.

In addition to using palette knives , brushes may also be used.

Then came an excellent extension to the Standard Formula stable matte called Flow Formula. This is better to use with the brush. However it takes a bit longer to dry than the Standard Formula.

I use a retarder where I can in order to slow the drying process if I want to make a long drawn painting where I may not be able to cope with the quick-drying typical of acrylic paints. A paste called Texture Paste could be used for building heavy Impasto.

Nylon brushes of very high quality is best for acrylic. The Stay-wet palette was introduced to keep paint wet indefinitely which was such a breakthrough and helped save paint from drying quickly.

There is a magic in using Acrylic Paints for a creatively charged artist.
Acrylic Paint facilitates creating a painting right at the moment when the artist gets that urge. Such a painting has more value as it is made with more meaning with uninterrupted and truthful expression of feelings on the canvas.

Another advantage is that as soon as you have made the whole composition and you need to work over, you could immediately start from the other side of the painting without any fear of the under-painting getting in the way as by now it is safely dry.

Thus a painting can be created by the artist filled with inspiration rather than be controlled by having to wait for the paint to get dry like in the oil painting process, where the initial emotion is not the same as when the artist has come back to it in a day or two.

With acrylic, a piece started by (say) the evening hours could easily be completed by nightfall.

Artist's Acrylic colours are made of the same pigments used in Oil Colours. Instead of the pigment in drying oil or water soluble as in watercolours, these semi-permanent pigments come in a transparent, water emulsion of acrylic polymer resin.

Sorry for the technical terminologies, but this is an interesting fact to understand so we see how valuable acrylic paintings are actually.

The term polymer means joining together small molecules called monomers into lengthy chemical chains which form plastic materials. These convert into milky white, water emulsions which will dry as a crystal clear film once the water has evaporated.

That's about it on the tech art talk. I found this interesting to think about when I was pulling out my acrylic material to make a quick painting.

I hope it was informative to you as it was for me refreshing my memory of yet another amazing medium of art.

Will be back soon with another flavour of art and creatives. Pleased to see you here ! Happy Painting!!

An Artist from the Animal Kingdom - Should we be worried for the right reasons?

As an independent who seeks to thrive in an ever-growing competition of today... a look at this video amuses me!

Should I worry that this guy here has a better niche following than some of us? Or worry about who is making this a niche market which surely should be lucrative not for the artist.

Just a couple of days ago one of my associates were mentioning about these amazing artists with their skills in Thailand. That would be a painting made by an Elephant.

Today as I was making my routine weekend Google of a few pending research topics, I was amazed to come across this Elephant guy make this piece ... which looked like a piece of art (to humans) or a master-piece? Though am not sure what it looks like to the artist here.



I am in awe wondering how on earth is it able to get the forms right. Just watch it closely, how in it's mammoth form puts all its delicate energy into drawing the lines. Just look at how it has one of its legs suspended in sheer concentration. For a moment, it looked all normal to me, until i saw the Mohawk walk into the scene with a Kane....Now I look at it in horror... is he overseeing his slave at work??

Looking at this, I can't help thinking, why would an elephant pick up a paint brush and start painting, just like that. If it did that was just perfect for all of us to be dumb-founded. Would it do that in its natural habitat when it needs to relax? Of course not! This is no relaxation for an animal!? Though it is said that an elephant thinks like a human being in certain ways. All I know from my experience hailing from a part in India where there exists a natural habitat of Elephants, is that they love to eat plantains in loads and grace on grass and would do anything to have that. At the same time they also obey when they see the stick. There has been millions of instances when they have attacked if they cross the border line into insanity where the Mohawk has been hurled by the elephant to his death. Alas! what do they do? They take the elephant away and shoot it down. Failing to look at who is performing these acts of insanity in the first place. Like any domestic animal it can be domesticated and they respond best to kindness but this is no response to kindness!! Is it? What do you think? I suddenly felt a sense of sadness not because of a fear that my profession of art could get wiped out, but the thought of depriving the freedom of another earthling for the sheer entertainment and commercial gain for human beings.

Though I must commend the skill of the trainer, I am pretty sure these Elephant Artists have got through an extreme amount of trauma doing an abnormal thing like this. I can think of many comparisons to human artists getting compelled to take to art and stardom against their will. At the end of the day they are humans trained by humans. But animals are more close to an innocent being. They get obedient against their will if they fear their extinction. This is what I see in this video

But elephants are such beautiful beings and humans could derive such pleasure by doing so many other things by their majestic presence on earth. Provide a safe habitat for example. This is what I did as an artist with my elephant heroes. I did sketches of them on my child-like visits to the zoo quite often like this sketch here:

And this is one of my comic experiences on one of my zoo trips again with a friend.

This is my take as an artist who loves and dotes on animals and pets. What is yours!!?

This week I lost one of my family pets "Gypsy - our golden retriever" who had a helpless demise after 10 days on saline. What I feel for Suda - the elephant (which animal writes in English!) is most profound when I grieve for gypsy.

I will have Gypsy's portrait posted here one of these days. And some of her funny videos. See you soon! and thanks for sharing my thoughts.

Daily Life Color Theory - Color Harmony

This post addresses an important element in Colo(u)r Theory. ...COLO(U)R HARMONY... after I just figured that my first post on Colo(u)r Theory has received at least 6000 hits. Thank you  for letting me know that you are interested to know more about Colo(u)r-theory and perhaps how I apply it in my everyday life as an artist.

In my first post
http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5217181103710191916#editor/target=post;postID=8067908127082557533  I only covered the basic colour wheel, where I featured my new bird pets who still sit chirping and making my garden (oh!) so colo(u)rful and happy, with a new born looking out of its peep hole "green with envy" ;o) watching his other colourful counterparts chirping around. His daddy is green and mommy a nice sunny yellow. Thanks to these lovely birds the place is bubbling with colo(u)rs.

As a second part to my colour-theory post, here today I am featuring one of my real-life art-pieces, showcasing the newest of my pets "Reji" a Siamese Fighter Fish.

May I proudly say that nature has marinated him with these amazing tones...a lovely crimson red, ultramarine blue and deep violet, with a silvery sky blue shimmer along his streamlined scales. An absolute beauty with a proud tantrum!


Here is what I captured of an unforgettable Betta in one of his most temper-filled moments!

I am not to blame for his anger, that is just the way he is by nature a very aggressive territorial aquarium fish.

While I make him a pretty-looking inhabitable space and study his character when finding ways to make him a less stressed-out personality, I am thankful to him for giving me a very colourful painting you see here. It was quite therapeutic while I made it, for the creative-dabble of cool and warm shades in a colorful musical harmony. In his silky display I could almost visualize the harmonizing currents of water around him perfectly obedient to the velvety direction of his delicate majestic fins swaying floret after floret.

This leads me to touch upon a very important topic today.

Colo(u)r Harmony

Colo(u)r is like music. A painting or an art-piece too possesses harmonizing in the aesthetic visual sense like in music compositions. 12 notes in music is just the same as the palette of colo(u)rs.

The art of practicing colo(u)r harmony is in knowing which colo(u)r to use, in what order and proportion. It involves scientific and aesthetic methodologies. Some colo(u)r combinations facilitate us to study all possible variations at once.

Whether you are here to seek inspiration for your next art masterpiece or an design layout for an ad or a cover design or even an inspiration for your wardrobe, it is suggested to start with the overall sense of the effect you are looking for... subtle or stunning, silent or striking, cool or hot.

This week I will be back covering several aspects of colo(u)r speaking of how it effects the mood, based on size and structure and purpose.

See you again very soon.

My Saul Bass Style Illustration

These are a few Saul Bass Style Illustration I had made a few weeks ago.
While you look through these I would like to announce that I'll be back with a post which I am excited to make here, talking about the legendary Graphic Designer Saul Bass and his iconic works. Stay Tuned!

Copyright © 2012 Remy Francis

Copyright © 2012 Remy Francis

  

Copyright © 2012 Remy Francis

Media Bridge at the Dubai Studio City held on 06 June 2012

My appreciation to DSC for extending their invitation to me for their 2nd Edition of "Media Bridge" at the Dubai Studio City. It was a networking event for their business partners to get together and get acquainted with new players.

I was very pleased to meet some great people from the Film & Production industry in such an ideal platform with attendance of like-minded people. The gathering was made very warm by the DSC hosts and the lovely caterers who made sure it was a sumptuous :o) business breakfast gathering to remember.

The speakers were very good, where they spoke elaborately about their offerings. It was interesting to note how well the 2 businesses showcased themselves in the event. Although I went to the event to find two things. Their insight of the industry as players stationed within the cluster and to networking with the partners.

The lasting value I can always reminisce on from yesterdays event would be some promising discussions with the "Attendees" where most of them were interested in collaboratively working on future endeavors (profit or non-profit) to compliment each others presence in the region.

My commendation to the authorities for facilitating such a possibility.

At the next Media Bridge edition I would look forward to the presenters giving their audience an insight into the industry (as being players in the Dubai industry) while they showcase their offerings.

World Drawing Day

Pleased that this event fell on a weekend in my end of the world that I had an opportunity to make an entry today marking the "World Drawing Day"!!


Enjoyed making this portrait online using the Drawing Day Facebook app.
Approximate time taken to create: 40 minutes.

Media Mondays - A Dubai Media Non-profit networking Event 28 May 2012

I understand that Media Mondays - the Media industry's quarterly networking event is going to be held at The Address Hotel, Dubai Marina tonight between 18 and 23 hours, where it is open-doors to Media industry executives from the film, TV, PR, advertising, Internet, mobile, radio, and other Media-related industries.

Details to RSVP are on www.mediamondays.com/

This is my first attendance to this event and I am looking forward to meeting new like-minded people in media and to catch-up with friends/associates. Are you going to be there?

Let's visit to find out what's in store for us as a thriving new community in the UAE!

A dual-creative-satisfaction

This part of one of my illustrations I did today, felt like I got a good brush-up of my 2D animation skills.

Has an absolutely unrelated creation of yours led to an experience of indulging in an absolute different art-form for you too?

Book Trailer - Sci Fi Novel

This is a book trailer I recently put together to help promote a Sci Fi Novel with Original score by a Dubai composer.

Enjoy!

Manga Character Design - Series

As part of My Comic Con presence follow-up, may I release this Manga Portrait among the first of my series responding to Manga character design Icons UAE requests.

Character-design from the outbacks

I really enjoyed a few hours today with some Australia-time, creating this mascot taking us for a ride in the outbacks :o) for a non-profit who invited me to create her and her travel-mate.

An announcement of my published design

I am pleased to announce that I am now an Amazon published Sci Fi Designer dated 24 March 2012

http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Mass-Volume-Gunnar-Garisson/dp/0615623018/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333444438&sr=1-1

I just received a signed copy from the author shipped from Washington. 

Thank you to the author of Critical Mass - Gunnar C. Garisson of Book 1 and Book 2 to have helped facilitate this start of a very promising tenure.

The Avengers - Behind-the-scenes Interviews

Here is a link to the making of Avengers

This was one great action-packed creative experiences in 3D movies I have had after Avatar. Although I wouldn't want to watch a 3D movie too often if I want to have a relaxing movie-day out. The glasses are a real hassle. However I find rather than live-action, 3D has the best impact as far as character animation oriented movies are concerned and would be very useful to especially animation artists and animation students who are looking for some serious inspiration to fine-tune their art.

Todays Event for Artists in Dubai & UAE

I was at... 
PHOTOWORLD DUBAI,
the International Digital & Imaging Exhibition for the Middle East at its opening day and my search for never-before found artists' material ended there.
And....
I came back with a promise and a few future collaborations to help me showcase my art and cater to a Middle Eastern audience effectively.

So drop everything, you artists and art-lovers and head to this annual event that could re-write the way you see art, photographs and Images with displays of latest technology, not to be missed.

The event runs from 25th to the final day 27th today!!