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✍🏾 cartoonist 🎸 music person 🎮 using tilt controls ✨ they/them 💌 [email protected]

[realcoolfriend]

Dear friends,

Please enjoy this short diary comic strip I made about mental health, identity, social media, and Beefsquatch.

Signed, Cool Friend

P.S. I am a lot more active on Instagram, so I would like to invite you to follow me there for more drawing-type stuff! https://www.instagram.com/realcoolfriend/

[realcoolfriend]

Grant Morrison Appreciation Post

Hey friends, I’m not big on the blogosphere these days, but I thought it might be nice to share this lil thing I put up on Facebook:

Grant Morrison is easily my favorite comic book writer. Seeing them share for the first time publicly--at 60 years old--that they are nonbinary made me so fucking happy.

I can credit them with completely redefining the way I think about comics as a storytelling medium. They blurred the lines between the readers, the creators, and the characters in ways I had no idea were possible. One of their first moves upon taking over Doom Patrol in 1989 was to reinvent Larry Trainor/Negative Man as a genderfluid mixed-race nigh-omnipotent cosmic being that integrates the consciousnesses of a white male air-force-test-pilot-turned-radioactive-superhero, the black female doctor administering his end-of-life care, and a literal space ghost--creating my favorite character in comics, hands down. And don't even get me started on Danny the Street.

The times I've been at my absolute lowest, I've been consistently able to depend on Morrison's writing to creep into my headspace and melt away my attachment to the ideas and beliefs about myself that got me there in the first place. Rebis and Flex Mentallo are literally my heroes, and I have Grant Morrison to thank for them.

There's no doubt in my mind that they've been living their truth this entire time, but they mentioned in the interview how significant it is that young people exploring their identities while navigating today's world have unprecedented access to the language, communities, and modes of thinking that speak to their experiences. Grant Morrison's work has long been part of my personal glow-up, and I feel hopeful that their disclosure will enable some to find comfort and solidarity on their journeys, and will encourage others to accept and respect the experiences of their siblings beyond the binary. <3

[realcoolfriend]

Josh Goldberg: Variations in Art (And in Life), part two

In the previous post, I discussed how musician and composer Josh Goldberg uses the technique of variation to inform his creative process. As our original conversation progressed, though, it started to become clear that there’s more to process than just making art—after all, no artist exists in a bubble, and there are always going to be outside factors that influence the way one creates and interacts with their own work. At the same time, you don’t instantly become an artist the moment you decide you want to be one—that is to say, to become an artist, you have to actually make some art, which means investing precious time, money, and energy in developing your skill and realizing your vision. This investment will inevitably have an impact on other areas of your life, and if you want to live a healthy life while producing meaningful work, you have to find the right balance—you have to live like an artist.

As my conversation with Josh turned from the practical to the theoretical, he said something that struck a chord with me: “All of life is a series of themes and variations on what you know.”

Josh studied jazz and classical guitar performance at Manhattanville College, but admits that he “never really liked [playing] it as an instrument,” adding that “it was just what was available to me at the time, and I liked the kinds of sounds it could make.” During his time as a student, Josh happened to come across a YouTube video of Rob Martino performing One Cloud on the Chapman Stick: “When I picked my jaw up off the floor, I knew that I had found the right tool for the job.”

For the uninitiated, the Chapman Stick is a modern electric instrument that looks a lot like a fat, disembodied guitar neck, but with eight to twelve strings. Stick players are able to use a two-handed finger tapping technique to simultaneously play out melody lines over basslines and/or chords—meaning that a single player can perform a solo piece that might sound like a bass, guitar, and keyboard playing all at once.

After saving up and ordering one of his own, Josh spent the following months familiarizing himself with the instrument while working as a stage manager at a music-based summer camp and continuing to play guitar in And The Traveler, a prog-rock band he had formed with fellow students Max Johl and Donald Perdomo. His understanding of music theory, combined with his familiarity with navigating the guitar’s fretboard allowed him to adjust to the expanded tuning of the Stick and start “thinking in fifths.” When the band faced a change in their lineup, Josh brought the Stick to his bandmates and “never looked back.”

In 2013, the group released their debut record, a double-disc concept album titled The Road, The Reason, and Josh started to gain notoriety in the Chapman Stick scene as the youngest player to get a profile feature on Stick.com—the official homepage of the instrument’s inventor and manufacturer.

GEPH by GEPH

Through the Stick’s online community, Josh connected with fellow player and future bandmate Tyler Kent. During tour stops and visits to his native Massachusetts throughout the following year, Josh managed to spend tome time jamming with Tyler and his roommate, drummer Josh Merhar, while working on his debut album as a solo artist, Journey to the Center of the Ear. Playing with Josh and Tyler allowed him to experiment with new sounds and techniques for the Stick, while developing innovative ways to apply it in an ensemble setting.

After parting ways with ATT, Josh made the permanent move back to Mass and decided to join up with Tyler and Josh to form the experimental Stick-led progressive jazz-metal outfit, GEPH. After releasing a video of their first single, Splinter, GEPH toured the northeast while preparing for the release of their eponymous debut album in 2016. Making the most of their momentum, the band managed to raise $10k toward the recording and production of their follow-up, 2018’s Apophenia. Earlier this year, Josh also found the time to write, record, mix, and master his solo follow-up to Journey, a 3-song EP titled am I cool yet. While all of this was going on, Josh also made headway as a teacher with his instructional YouTube series Stick Science and Tap Theory, which break down the Chapman Stick into easily digestible bits of technique and music theory.

Reflecting on his journey, Josh said that “there are always solutions to the problems you encounter that can be informed by other aspects of your life.” This is evident in his discovery and adoption of the Chapman Stick, as well its role in connecting him to his current bandmates and moving back to Mass. His time spent playing the Stick has enabled him to tour the country, perform internationally, teach individual students and workshops, and appear on a record alongside other prolific artists like Carl King, Virgil Donati, and Dweezil Zappa—but Josh says that his creative process has overlapped with the rest of his life in other, more fundamental ways.

Josh told me that an overarching theme in his personal narrative is that of perseverance, and it manifests not only in his journey from the guitar to the Chapman Stick, but in his practice of Brazilian jiu-jitsu: “It’s just like music, except the only difference is that one is making sound, and the other is beating people up—that may seem like in an important distinction to make, but it’s really only surface level.” Josh explained that his experience of enduring the pain and hardship of his training has allowed him to bring that physical fortitude and mental focus back to his musical performance and personal struggles, informing his relationship to his own experiences and aspirations as well as the other people in his life.

“Humans are creatures of habit, even down to the phrases we use,” Josh told me, citing the recent social media trend of creating word clouds from the most frequently used phrases in users’ status updates. He continued, “The way that we communicate with each other is a matter of habit, and what is a habit if not a theme?” Josh shared that he often thinks about his interpersonal relationships in terms of theme and variation, observing that “we’re all thematic creatures—our brains are programmed to pick up on patterns. If you start taking that into account in your life, you can recognize themes in the way you interact with certain people.” Looking at things this way helps Josh to think clearly about how and with whom he should invest his time to continue developing the positive themes in his life. “You can also take notice of patterns of behavior in others,” he added, “when people are treating you poorly, explore the themes in those interactions that bring out the bad experiences, and experiment with new variations on that relationship.” “It's all theme and variation,” Josh says, “and we live it every day.”

If you’re interested in checking out more of Josh’s work, I strongly encourage you to check out his Tap Theory website or follow him on Instagram. If you like what you see, you can also help support him through Patreon. If you want to to keep up with the latest from GEPH, check out their homepage, or follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

[realcoolfriend]

Josh Goldberg: Variations in Art (And in Life), part one

Creative work is hard. I’m not talking about those times that you have a flash of inspiration—that eureka moment when a fully formed idea pops into your head and demands to be made manifest and sent off into the world. No, I mean when you’re staring down a deadline, gazing into the abyss of a blank canvas, and wracking your brain for the words, sounds, movements, or images that will form the basis of your next masterpiece—or your next assignment. For those times when making good art seems to be at odds with meeting the mundane needs of everyday life, it can be helpful to take a step back and look at how your process might be creating a conflict where there doesn’t need to be one.

In the fourth century BC, Aristotle posited that Art imitates Life. About 1,500 years later, Oscar Wilde turned that idea on its head, suggesting that "Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life." As I’ve met and spoken with different artists about their work and their journeys, it’s become clearer and clearer that process—that elusive methodology separating a prolific creator from some rando who comes up with a cool idea once in a while—goes far beyond what many of us might think of as the “actual work” of putting a pen to paper. As I’ve come to understand it, Art and Life are so fundamentally intertwined that it really misses the point to talk about them as two opposing concepts that sometimes resemble each other. There are countless ways to approach any creative project, just as there are to go about your daily living, but that intersection of how you live and how you create—that’s what I mean when I talk about process.

With this dichotomy fresh in my mind, I had a conversation with Josh Goldberg, composter, multi-instrumentalist, music teacher, and martial artist to discuss how he uses the technique of variation not only write songs, but as a philosophy on how to make the most of his everyday life.

Have you ever noticed how Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is the same song as Baa Baa Black Sheep, or the “Alphabet Song?” It turns out they they’re all based on an 18th century French folk song called Ah vous dirai-je, Maman. Back before we used it to teach kids their ABCs, a 25-year-old Mozart took the tune and expanded into a thirteen-section composition by taking its simple melody and developing it in a series of different interpretations of that central theme. In some of the variations, it sounds like a bouncy jingle or a somber ballad, and in others, you can barely pick the line out of a flurry of notes and embellishments.

Josh told me that he’s had some of his greatest successes in songwriting by coming up with his own simple themes and using the same approach: “I have one idea, and then I tinker with it so that it’s still closely related to the original, but I find new contexts to use it in as many was as I can.” To come up with new variations, Josh breaks down the idea into its composite parts: melody, the “singable line that sticks out;” harmony, the “chords that back it up;” rhythm, the placement of the notes in time; and timbre, sound of the voice or instrument that’s playing the melody. By altering any combination of these elements, he can explore the original idea from different angles to come up with a song that has distinct sections that still flow naturally into each other. With all of these pieces to work with, he added that “there are times when the original theme ends up becoming just a small piece of the finished work.”

“I like to test the limits of the dial, going from most complex to least complex—the real core and center of the idea,” he commented, “The more you turn the dial towards ten, the more bells and whistles you add to it—and that can be the climax of the song.” Citing the track “Back From Space Earth”–which closes out his band GEPH’s most recent album, Apophenia—Josh described how he and his bandmates mixed and matched elements from different variations to “lead the listener’s ear” from one distinct-sounding variation to another by introducing each change gradually and layering the permutations that work well on top of each other.

Apophenia by GEPH

Josh’s “theme and variation” approach has practical applications when working in other media, too. As we were discussing the technique, I couldn’t help but recall my conversation with matte painter and concept artist, Justin Gladis. When Justin and I were discussing his process, he emphasized the importance of a studio artist’s ability to produce quality work within strict time constrains. To accomplish this goal, he described using the similar method of rapidly producing a series of thumbnail sketches to experiment with different expressions of a visual concept—that way, you can be confident that you’re committing to the best version of an idea before investing your time in the final piece. Similarly, writers might use variations on character interactions and plot events to develop a larger theme in their stories—much like how filmmakers use visual or audio elements to create a motif that flows throughout a film.

Like I said at the top of this post, creative work is hard. When you’re sharing an intimate piece of your mind with the outside world, it can be overwhelming to balance finishing a project against making sure it turned out exactly the way you intended it to. This internal conflict is enough to make any beginning artist get bogged down with thinking about process, instead of executing it. To this point, Josh commented that “there are no set rules for this—at the end of the day, you have to go with your feelings. This is a just method to help you spark inspiration, or tease things out when you don’t have it.”

Click here to read Part Two!

[realcoolfriend]

Chris LaVigna: Exorcise Your Demons

“I am currently in the process of waging war with the legion of demons that are fighting tooth and nail to possess me, body and soul. If you are interested in bearing witness to this long-form exorcism, please check out my work!” Chris LaVigna, My True Artist’s Statement

This week I met up with writer, filmmaker, and musician Chris LaVigna, whose short films, sketches, and punk shows have made him a staple of the Mamaroneck, NY independent arts scene. In addition to fronting the hardcore band Grandpa; he also writes, directs, and co-stars in the surreal sketch comedy/late-night series on LMCTV, It’s Our Show (We Do What We Want). He invited me over to his workspace, where we spoke at length about the importance of taking responsibility for your own mental health—and how creating art can be an important piece of a larger plan for overall wellbeing.

As a young kid, Chris was diagnosed with depression and General Anxiety Disorder, and later on came to find out that he was also living with Autism Spectrum Disorder—specifically Asperger syndrome. Regarding his experience, he told me “when you’ve grown up with it, the last thing you want is for it to define you… [but] If I’m going to talk frankly about where my creativity comes from, what sparks it, and why I do what I do, it feels insane to leave that out.”

Chris’s symptoms first manifested as severe insomnia, and he would often spend his nights pacing across his room or watching TV to pass the time. As you can see from It’s Our Show, the late-night television he absorbed would come to have a big influence on his comedic and aesthetic sensibilities later in life. He reflected, “I grew up with Adult Swim… Not being able to sleep at night, I’d turn on my little TV and watch Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Sealab 2021, and Space Ghost Coast to Coast—with no idea I was getting exposed to these almost Dadaist shows.”

Chris’s first adventures in writing started when he was around 7 years old, coming up with short stories about super heroes, monsters, and “weird lizard people” for his friends. As he got older, Chris found that writing and storytelling were effective tools to express the thoughts and feelings he otherwise had a hard time articulating: “I felt like I didn’t know how to talk to people or understand the world around me, but I could kind of make sense of things when I was watching and telling stories… I could communicate some of what I couldn’t just talk to people about, if I hid it in a story about a mummy chasing somebody in space.”

Pointing to an early example of this process in action, Chris told me about his short stories, Mayhem and Mathem II: Zeilclocz’s Revenge. The duology centers around two boys who uncover and fight off the threat of an interdimensional monster by enacting a magic spell that transforms them into their favorite super heroes. Reflecting on the sequel, Chris said, “When I reread these stories, I noticed that this one was more violent. There was more blood, and an overall sense of chaos. There are references to buildings being on fire, people running around screaming, and smoke in the air. I spent a lot of time on those details, and I think that was me reacting to 9/11,” he recalled, “We were little kids, and it felt like the world was going to end.” For a 9-year-old growing up just outside of New York City in 2001, the impact of a global catastrophe taking place in your backyard can certainly be a difficult thing to make sense of.

By the time Chris was in High School, he found that his interest in storytelling extended beyond writing prose. Around 15, he started taking guitar lessons, and eventually got together with some friends to form the punk band JCD. Chris wrote lyrics inspired by monster movies, serial killers, and what he describes as “typical teenage punk stuff, [like] being angry with society.” Around the same time, he started taking his first Video Production courses at school, where he learned the basics of filming and editing: “That was where I learned I really had a passion for video and film, and that I really wanted to translate my writing into visual stories.” He used his classes as an opportunity to experiment with making music videos, sketch comedy, and short films.

Chris went on to major in Film at Hunter College, where he was exposed to new films and creative techniques, and became well-versed in the critique and analysis of the medium. He took a greater interest in screenwriting, finding that its clearly-defined structure allowed him to concentrate on the dialog and action without being “overwhelmed by the loose nature of prose,” and also gained a practical education in the “hurry up and wait” aspect of on-set production.

Following college, Chris got involved with LMCTV—Mamaroneck’s local Public Access Station—and started developing content for the Local Live! and Terror TV, the network’s “creature feature” showcase for horror films in the public domain. From there, he was eventually able to take the opportunity to start producing It’s Our Show alongside his friend and past bandmate and collaborator Dan Servian. Drawing inspiration from Wayne’s World and the Eric Andre Show, the series features irreverent “couch segments,” surreal comedy sketches, and also serves as a platform for local bands and comedians.

Ultimately, for Chris, “everything comes back to the writing,” he told me, “I’m usually working on an idea for a script or something, but it takes many forms. It’s screenwriting, but I write a lot of poetry, prose, and lyrics too.” Regardless of the form it takes, Chris’s work often incorporates a tense atmosphere of anxiety and paranoia. Even in comedic situations, his characters can struggle with torturous feelings of helplessness and victimization. This approach allows him to wrestle with his own negative emotions and experiences by “giving the character a reason to feel the way I often do.” In his writing, Chris likes to create extreme, over-the-top situations that evoke strong, visceral reactions from both the viewer and his characters. He told me that this can help to point out the absurdity of these feelings, and serves as a way of diffusing the anxiety-inducing situations that play out in his mind by recognizing their basis as fiction.

“I think these days, it’s important to talk about [mental health issues] for the purpose of destigmatization,” says Chris. Incorporating aspects of your personal struggles can bring an authenticity to your work that is empowering and validating, both to yourself, and to those others who may be experiencing something similar. The topic can be a perilous one to navigate, especially considering the diversity of experiences and ability of people to cope with their personal situations—after all, what can manifest as therapeutic expression for a creator may become a triggering experience for someone in their audience. At the end of the day, though, we both agree that it serves nobody to pretend that these problems don’t exist. We also agreed that access to medical care and professional mental health resources is something that everybody should have—and take advantage of, if they’re able. To this point, Chris commented, “You wouldn’t feel bad about going to the doctor if your arm was broken,” adding, “Get help if you need it. Nobody should have to let their injuries fester, just to try and get a good novel out of it.”

Chris’s most recent script for Dead Air is currently in post-production, and you can find more media and information about the film on Instagram. Episodes of It’s Our Show are currently available LMCTV and on YouTube, and you can follow Chris’s Instant Insanity Productions on Instagram if you’d like to connect.

[realcoolfriend]

Vincent Lovallo: Pass It On

When I was little, I had a pretty good handle on what I wanted to be when I grew up—I didn’t quite know what the job entails, but I was pretty certain that I wanted to make comics. Life’s twists and turns have taken me all over the place, but that urge to write and draw was never too far behind. For this week’s post, I had the pleasure of speaking to Vincent Lovallo, Art Director at Archie Comics Publications—and lead editor on the publisher’s all-ages Cosmo series. We had a fantastic conversation about how his journey led him to the comics publisher, and how it’s important to keep in touch with that passionate and inspired vision of yourself as a little kid. You can check out some more comic projects Vin will be a part of in the upcoming revival of Jughead’s Time Police, coming out this June, and in the Archie Horror crossover, Jughead the Hunger VS Vampironica, available this spring in comic stores and online.

Vin’s interest in cartoons and video games fed his fascination with art and visual storytelling from an early age. He spent a lot of time drawing for fun as a kid—sketching out pictures of his favorite characters and visualizing the jokes he and his friends would make in the elementary school cafeteria. He reminisced about watching his dad draw cars and seeing his art teacher paint a mural in the school, and recalled how he felt inspired by watching the images come together. Video games and animation helped bring Vin to the world of sequential art, where he discovered that comics can convey a similar sense of timing and action by reducing the sequence of events to its essential key moments. Vin prioritized his art classes in High School, where he spent his senior year working on a wordless sequential narrative with a manga-inspired presentation, which he submitted as his AP Studio Art concentration.

After graduation, Vin spent the following years honing his skill and developing his fundamentals at Westchester Community College, where he gained an in-depth understanding of the principles of art and learned about applying creative processes in a collaborative environment. “I was among more people that were really into it, whereas in high school I felt like some people were just going through the motions to get their class credit… In college, everybody was there because they wanted to be there,” he told me, “It was my first instance of working with people that were genuinely encouraging and excited to be learning together… That’s the thing that I loved the most—the spirit of teamwork and having a group that really clicks.” The classroom experience also showed Vin the potential pitfalls of working collaboratively, and the importance of staying humble: “When you work with a team where everybody is accepted and encouraged to share their ideas, the end product is always going to be the best it can be… But when you have somebody who’s standing on their own pedestal, it will negatively impact the whole group’s progress.”

With some formal training under his belt, Vin landed an internship in the production department at Archie Comics, where he was able to get practical experience and college credit—while working on some of the licensed franchises he had loved growing up. Vin found Archie to be a great environment to grow in, citing their focus on producing fun and entertaining material by putting quality storytelling and illustration first. As an intern, he saw firsthand how all of the pieces of a comic come together and each job and department is connected. Vin was also able to form the meaningful friendships and working relationships that would continue to influence his path. As he completed his internship and got an Associate’s Degree in Studio Art, his supervisors at Archie gave him the opportunity to continue working and encouraged him to push on toward a BA.

Vin’s production experience, artistic background, and team spirit eventually paid off with a full-time position as Assistant Editor, which allowed him to contribute his skills and ideas in new ways while taking evening classes at SUNY Purchase College. Vin’s new role also allowed him to apply his collaborative ethic by coordinating with writers, artists, colorists, and letterers remotely. During this time, Vin worked closely with his editor, learning more about his daily tasks and taking on greater project management and artistic responsibilities, including creating credits pages, tables of contents, and header images for paperback collections—as well as editorial pages in single issues. He also learned about how to guide the artists and make suggestions that serve the story, and about how to translate characters from one medium to another while remaining faithful to their original spirit—and pleasing the holders of their intellectual property. When it came time for his editor to part ways, Vin had proven himself to be an ideal candidate to fill that vacancy.

Vin recalled getting the news on his birthday, remarking “It was bittersweet, because I had a really good relationship with him—at the end of the day, he is also my friend… It felt like I was losing something, but also gaining something.” Vin would also inherit his editor’s responsibility of communicating with Archie’s licensing partners—just in time to prepare his new team for a major crossover event between four titles. Reflecting on the time of change, Vin told me that even though he faced the stresses of new responsibilities and encroaching deadlines, he knew that he had a talented and dependable team with a shared passion for the work they were doing. Vin also brought his own love of the titles and characters to the project, and was able to introduce some ideas that he knew would get fans excited to read. Things ultimately worked out for the comic, which sold out and went into a second printing—a noteworthy achievement for any title.

After proving his mettle with the crossover event and spending a few years editing other titles, Vin had continued to demonstrate that his skills extended beyond the realms of production and editorial. His artistic ability and eye for good design made him stand out, and he was eventually offered the opportunity to start serving as Art Director for a handful of titles. In his current role, Vin must use his own knowledge and judgment to guide the artists in best communicating the vision that the publisher has for its comics.

“My personal goal for anything I work on—whether it’s for Archie or for a personal project—is for it to make people smile when they see it, and hopefully feel inspired to do something creative, too.” – Vincent Lovallo

Vin feels that his best work is truly a labor of love—for the source material, for his audience, and for the creative process itself. When it comes to the source of his inspiration, it’s all about recreating the magic he experienced as a kid and passing it on to the next generation. To that end, Vin never forgets where his interest in art and design started—by staying connected to the art, comics, and video games that inspired him as a kid, he sees his work as an effort to keep that source of inspiration alive. “I think about myself as a kid, and wonder what would the younger me find fun and inspiring, because that’s where it all started,” he reflected, “If I’m able to produce things for a new generation that would have inspired me, the hope is that it will live on forever [because] they’ll see that first image that gets the gears turning and makes them want to… pick up a pencil and put it to paper, even if they’ve never done it before.”

[realcoolfriend]

Nick Perlman: Scrapbook Your Life

“The scariest thing about a nightmare is how it exists in an alien space which does its best to convince you it is normal. Only upon waking do you realize how wrong you were about something you felt so sure of. That strange disconnect of what you’ve lived and how you remember it is both a fascinating and terrifying look at the flexibility and temporality of how we perceive experiences, places, and bodies; our own and of others.”

- Nick Perlman

When I started plotting out the focus of this adventure in blogging, I knew that I wanted to conduct interviews with artists who work in diverse mediums and find out what each flavor of creativity has in common. To that end, it was an enlightening experience to speak with Nick Perlman, whose ideas take shape on canvas, in song, and on film. His paintings have been featured in AI-AP and he recently released his latest EP as a singer-songwriter, Maps of an Invisible City. He has several short films that you can view on his website and on youtube, and you can see his work as a television editor on shows like Impractical Jokers, Watch What Happens Live, and Bethany Hall and Daniel Powell’s miniseries Thanksgiving.

Nick’s creative roots stretch back to his childhood home, where his parents’ active interest in drawing, painting, and playing music created an atmosphere of inspiration and encouragement. At 5 years old, he started taking piano lessons at the Mozartina Musical Arts Conservatory, which gave him the opportunity to stage recitals at the local music hall. As he got older, he took a shine to the guitar and bass, and ended up playing with his brother’s punk band at NYC venues like CBGBs and Continental. Despite his interest in music and painting, however, he knew from a young age that he wanted to grow up to be a film director. When we spoke, he recalled being captivated with the confluence of image, story, and music embodied in movies like Jurassic Park and The Nightmare Before Christmas— two films whose “behind the scenes” bonus-feature-documentaries he cited as highly influential.

Nick went to Savannah College of Art and Design, where he majored in Film and minored in Illustration after considering a minor in Painting. He felt that the Painting program’s focus on producing “Fine Art” was restrictive, because it was more concerned with pushing the use of materials in unexpected ways than with developing a narrative concept and telling a story through the image. On the other hand, he also felt some conflict within Illustration, which was mainly geared toward commercial applications. Nick told me that he had a hard time identifying a specific audience and context to which his art could be directed for consumption, adding that he wanted his art to “speak for itself” without relying on an artist’s statement or external packaging to explain its meaning or content.

The Film program at SCAD gave Nick the opportunity to jump into many different aspects of movie-making, and he found screenwriting to be particularly enticing. Over the course of the next few years, he focused mainly on writing scripts, and experimented with writing in a variety of genres. Early on, Nick found that he had powerful and compelling images in his mind, but struggled to plot out a story to connect them. With practice and experience, he developed a sense of the kinds of stories and characters that he was suited to writing, but eventually found that returning to his musical and painterly roots allowed him to construct his narratives in new and interesting ways.

It can be frustrating and demotivating to try to force an abstract concept or an emotion to take shape as a tangible piece of artwork. As someone who faces this issue more often that I care to admit, I asked Nick how he manages to produce such a diversity of work. His advice? “Scrapbook your life.” That is to say, keep a detailed repository of different events, images and impressions that come to you, and take some time to experiment with different modes of expressing them. Nick told me that the concepts and images that inspire him to create a short film, a song, or a surreal landscape are not “disparate entities”—All the different forms of media he engages with inform each other.

For example, Nick finds that screenplays are a great way to explore an idea through conversational dialogue, but they also allow him to rely on subtextual clues that let the viewer “fill in the blank.” He can use the camera as a means to peer through the window into his characters’ lives— giving the viewer a glimpse of the friendship, romance, and conflict that define their relationships— from an outside perspective. With regard to songwriting, Nick likes to craft lyrics in the first-person that reflect on the innermost thoughts and emotions of a character. These songs can come in the form of a stream-of-consciousness narrative about a fight that just happened, or the self-talk that accompanies moments of frustration and confusion. Naturally, painting provides an outlet for the non-verbal qualities of thoughts, feelings, and images that arise.

Regardless of the medium, Nick considers it a priority to create works that “beg the audience to engage,” by asking or answering a question through his art. He likes to give viewers and listeners sensory fragments of a larger story, for them to use as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that reveals its broader message. Nick is currently working on a follow-up to his last Maps Of project, and he plans to apply his synergistic approach to the album’s cover art and supplementary materials.

[realcoolfriend]

Justin Gladis: Take the Road Less Travelled

For as long as I can remember I’ve been fascinated by animation. The thing that I find so interesting is that every single detail you see on screen had to be painstakingly sculpted, drawn, or modeled by an artist in a studio- from the characters that seem to live and breathe, down to each individual tree or cloud in the background. This week, I got to learn some more about how that process works by talking to Justin Gladis, Lead Matte Painter at Blue Sky Studios.

Using a combination of 2D painting and 3D modeling, Justin has created environments that range from breathtaking natural vistas to gritty sci-fi cityscapes. His work can be seen in animated feature films like the Peanuts Movie, Ferdinand, and the upcoming release, Spies in Disguise. When I asked him what advice he’d have to offer to an aspiring artist, he told me that it’s important to “try all of the things,” because there isn’t just one avenue toward success, adding that his background is not that of a pedigreed art student from a conventional art school path.

Justin enjoyed drawing for fun since he was a kid, but growing up in a small town didn’t give him a sense that a career as an artist was attainable. He studied Journalism at Ball State University, and had an opportunity to get into documentary filmmaking as a cameraman shooting film at Michigan City Penitentiary, Indiana’s maximum security prison, before going on to work film and lighting for sporting events, news stories, and live comedy. He attended Syracuse University’s graduate program in Television, Film, and Radio program, where he took to developing his skills in drawing, painting, and 3D modeling while working as a TA.

Fresh out of grad school and not sure where he wanted his career to take him, Justin applied to as many internships as he could, hoping to get a greater sense of the different creative roles available. His entry point to animation was through graphic design and motion graphics- the sequences that might flash a TV show or network’s logo during the opening or that bookend commercial breaks. Eventually, Justin landed an internship at Blue Sky. Initially, he was responsible for completing odd-jobs and keeping track of the staff’s lunch orders, but he used the opportunity to foster relationships with his coworkers and ask questions about the variety of roles and responsibilities they fulfilled. It was through this process that he started to get a sense of his interest in how the studio designs and develops the environments that surround their characters and capture the audience’s attention.

He’d always been interested in landscape artwork, citing a fascination with the works of the Hudson River School he’d come across in art history class. This interest had also translated to the films he grew up watching and later studying. Justin mentioned being amazed to learn that so many of the highly detailed establishing shots in Star Wars had been hand-painted on glass. He also cited Dylan Cole’s work on the Lord of the Rings films as a huge source of inspiration. The process of watching an artist transform globs of paint into whole scenes was captivating and mesmerizing, and only contributed to what he called the “oh, wow” factor- the rush of emotion you sometimes feel when looking into a piece that totally immerses you in its environment.

Justin was eventually able to secure a full-time gig coding and providing render support at Blue Sky. While it was primarily a technical position, he found that the studio’s environment allowed him to contribute to their projects while honing his artistic skills outside of work and making steps toward the creative role he sought after. He eventually made his way onto the compositing team, which focuses on combining painted elements like backgrounds with computer-generated 3d characters to create one seamless image, and solves the related problems that pop up throughout that process. His role as a compositor allowed him to start bringing the skills he was practicing at home into the studio’s projects, and he received a lot of support and feedback from his supervisor.

Justin considered it a big step to get past his inner “perfectionist streak” and find the boldness and confidence necessary to share his art with his boss. He said that a major part of growing as an artist is accepting the imperfections in your work and opening yourself up to feedback and criticism. In addition to establishing a rapport with his supervisor, Justin was demonstrating his willingness to work and grow outside of the office. These developments coincided with a change in the industry, where work that had been previously done by the hand of a single master artist could now be replaced with a combination of Photoshop painting and 3d modelling- skills that could be practiced at home by anyone with the time and dedication. These factors combined to create the opportunity for Justin to advance in his career.

Reflecting on the experiences he’s had, Justin noted that the thing that’s stayed the same throughout has been his mentality of an eternal student. Always driven to put in the extra work at home, he was able to “close the gap” between himself and his peers who had chosen to pursue art earlier on by taking advantage of online classes and tutorials. When he wasn’t sure what career he wanted to pursue, trying his hand at different jobs and internships gave him a sense of the opportunities available, and allowed him to make the friendships and connections he’d later depend on in his career. To this point, Justin said that the only way to really know for sure whether a job or project can be a fit is to really give it your all; Without fully applying yourself, you can’t get a true sense of the experience or take the time to engage with the people around you.

It’s easy to feel like you “missed the boat” or lack the “natural ability” that allows others to go down the roads you’d like to explore. When I asked Justin about this feeling, he said that the sense of urgency to “catch up” can be useful, but it’s ultimately false. His example shows that there isn’t one single path to your goals. As long as you’re willing to try new things, and try your best, it’s likely that you’ll end up getting there via the road less travelled.