What am I saying?
I am intending to use this substack as a more typical mailing list, and less of a cry for help.
I first started writing on medium, then later on my website, where my essays could feel a bit negative or at odds with the same industries I am often soliciting for work in, so I moved them here.
It’s a weird artform being an animation artist - typically we are professionals first and artists second; animation falls somewhere between ancient magik and artisanal trade, gifting us the ability to both convey stories and ideas in an almost primeval method, and yet able to work in a host of professional industries from kids’ tv to big tech. We are lucky really doing this, it’s good to write that down, yet many or probably most of us are artists first, outsiders with a view, a voice, and as so often in this modern world, usually neither.
I don’t know much about the contemporary art world, but going by most other industries and seeing the kinds of voices who seem to do well at it, my gut says you probably have to toe the line, to navigate the path, learn when to roll and when to rock the boat, choose your battles and who to schmooze, and when.
When we see fiscally successful and financially independent artists, those rarified individuals who can move markets or start movements, it’s easy to assume everyone is an iconoclast, when clearly that’s not the case.
For every gobby YBA zillionaire or aging super producer gifting us their learned edicts, there are likely tens if not thousands of art adjacent professionals of a million differing stripes, the regular people who make up the creative classes, often people who aren’t artists per se, striving just to make deadlines and pay the bills.
So anyways what am I saying, I guess as Substack and Bluesky start to feel a bit more mainstream, and I see more of my industry peers popping up here, I probably need to archive some of my older essays, as I am in no position to shoot myself in either foot, be it animation or art.
For the past few years I have been a very vocal and unabashed member of the tezos art community, selling our digital works mostly to each other in the fertile wastelands that remained beyond the boom and bust of big ticket NFTs. I managed to find the good ones, who make cool stuff, and we typically sell or swap pieces of art we’ve made with each other.
It’s the closest I have ever felt to a real artist community, in the sense we are creating work off brief, for no clients, from our guts, yet its still something I tend to keep a bit on the downlow, given the lingering hangover of antipathy from 2021. So lately as I see more of my animation and illustration friends and peers start writing or blueskying, I have wondered about many of my older posts and thought probably best to lock them down.
So thats it. Oldies are archived, and freebies start from today. If you are interested in what I do please do feel free to hit that button, I will be mailing once or twice a month, with updates and behind the scenes, whilst doing my absolute damnedest not to get hooked on a.n.other social media feed …
🖍️🪨✨
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Two books I read recently that seemed to encapsulate the strange disparities of the art market and our crazy capitalist situation.
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I am loving MIMT and accompanying software Ghost House from Ted Wiggin, hat tip to
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Refreshing my blender hat via Patata School, props to
for the tip on this.—
And while I have been worrying about getting cancelled, here’s a typically onpoint new polemic from Brad.
Glad to hear you've been enjoying Ted's amazing work!