The Occupy Chess Video Game

I've mentioned my Kickstarter project numerous times.  Well, it got approved, and I launched it tonight!

It's the Occupy Chess Video game, and you can check it out here!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jonathanfesmire/the-occupy-chess-video-game?ref=live

Put simply, it's a video chess game with figures based on the two sides of the Occupy movement: the 99%, and the 1%.  You can learn all about it on the project page.

As a note, Wolf-Pac is specifically mentioned in the video because I believe strongly in what they're doing, and they're an organization I hope to help out in the future.  The pledges for the project are earmarked for the creation of the game itself, of course.  Once I'm able to sell copies, I hope to make enough that I can actually support Occupy causes.

People who pledge will help to honor the 99%, all the protesters who participated in the Occupy movement, and the Occupy members who continue to do great things.

Kickstarter Images

My friend who's doing the line art for my Kickstarter project (and I will share his name, of course, once the project is live!) sent me five brilliant images today!  A few more and I'll have enough to make the video.  Exciting!

Kickstarter Progress

Progress is happening on my Kickstarter project!

No, the project isn't live yet.  It's at the stage where I'm getting getting work done on it, so that the public can see it's really moving along, and that it just needs funding to get finished.

A good friend of mine is doing line art of the characters, and has sent me two sketches.  They look GREAT. His art will be featured in the video and in the final product.

I've also written a few drafts of the video script.  I need to revise it more, but that's coming along nicely.

Anyway, keep an eye on this space for more information!

Achieving Focus

My awesome son has started school here in our new hometown and is doing great.  This has allowed me to better organize my days.  While he's at school, I do my day job as a freelance writer.  I actually have a long term writing gig with a great company.  Technically, I'm still a freelancer, but it's a full time job in itself.  I also changed my Elance subscription so that, for awhile, I'll be applying only to art jobs there.  I think this will be a good way to get more experience as a working artist, and to add experience to my CV and résumé.

Anyway, so it's writing day job while my son's at school, some job hunting, both for freelance art jobs and a day job as a 3D modeler while he's home and playing around the house, a walk and/or trip to the park with my son, and dinner, and putting him to bed, then art practice after he goes to sleep, then going to bed myself.

Drawing really is a fundamental skill for many types of art.  Obviously, illustrators have to be able to draw.  Painters also need this skill for the basis of their work.  As a 3D modeler and digital sculptor, the better I can draw, the better I understand the forms of things.  Also, being able to draw clean strokes helps tremendously when sculpting in a program like Zbrush.  On top of all that, I've started seeing modeler jobs that require good illustration skills.

I posted a bunch of eyeballs that I sketched weeks ago.  I'll post drawings now and then as little snippets of my improvement.

Onto another topic, you know how people keep to do lists?  I do that often to keep track of all the things I need to get done.  But I also get ideas for art projects, or blog entries.  It seems silly to write these down in separate places.  I mean, how many notebooks does one guy need to carry?  Plus, I might want to sketch some doodles.  I do have a sketch book for when I want to sit down and really practice drawing, but I don't need to lug that around with me, either.  Writing, you know, can be like an extension of the mind, a way to make sure tasks and ideas aren't forgotten.  Is there a name for a notebook where one writes down all of those things?  I'm thinking, "Brain Dump Book."

What I Need is a Rare, Ukrainian, Vermilion Unicorn

I was up last night later than I should have been, and then I stayed up even later, because I discovered what might possibly be the funniest YouTube channel.  It's called Bad Lip Reading.  You may have to see it to get it, but imagine watching a movie with the sound turned off and trying to read the actors' lips.  You might read something completely different from what they're actually saying.

Since I studied syncing lips to audio in one of my graduate animation classes at Academy of Art University, I'm well aware that the actual movement of our jaws and lips when we speak reveals only a portion of the sounds we're making.  Similar sounds often look alike.  The mouth doesn't move separately for each letter.  I'm simplifying, but it's really the art of studying how the mouth actually moves so that speech looks real.

What Bad Lip Reading does is, it takes those lip movements and adds wrong words that actually fit.

Here's what they did with Twilight:

Even better, they also take music videos and create completely new, different songs that fit with the videos.  "Russian Unicorn" is based on the video for Michael Bublé's "Haven't Met You Yet."  Not only is it hilarious, it's also an excellent pop tune.

If there's a point to this blog post, it's that I love this sort of totally out of the box creativity.  And that "Russian Unicorn" is an awesome tune!

Big Move to Southern California

Big moves are tough!  My son and I just moved from Santa Cruz, California to Orange, California.  I love it here!  Though I'm not generally a warm weather person, it's been pretty comfortable.  Packing the truck, and then driving down were the hardest things.  It took 11 hours to get here last Friday.  Eleven!

Now, we live near Disneyland, which equals awesome.  I can also look for jobs in games and film, and employers will know that I live nearby!  The last few days have involved getting to know the town a bit and settling in, but I'll start putting my résumé and cv out there soon.

Back to work!  I have some articles to write today before evening plans.

And yes, this is about as personal as this blog gets!

Once I've got a daily routine going, I'll have more artwork up, and possibly videos.

I know, "Big moves are tough!" is about the most obvious statement ever.

Keep Up With Drawing!

I've done lots of modeling and texturing since graduating from AAU, but I haven't done enough drawing.  I've been plenty busy, but I do wish I'd taken more time for this.

So, I'm going to try to practice my drawing at least a few times a week, if not every day.

And today, I decided to draw some eyeballs.  I quickly realized though that I wasn't drawing circles as easily as I used to!  I've gotten rusty.  So, I did this circle sketch page (this is a good exercise anyway), and turned some into eyes.

This blog is partly about the realities of being a working artist, and sometimes that means you get rusty in one area or another.