Minxing things up

Forgot to drop this one. Recently did some design work for artiste Minx. Known here for a while now and she's doing big things touring and all the shebang and she needed some stickers designed to further promote her brand.

Did a preliminary sketch based on what she was after and moved from there:

© 2017. Artwork by Dulani Wilson / bluntspear.com. All rights reserved to respective owners.

From there, it was a few tweaks:

© 2017. Artwork by Dulani Wilson / bluntspear.com. All rights reserved to respective owners.

And voila! End result:

© 2017. Artwork by Dulani Wilson / bluntspear.com. All rights reserved to respective owners.

Turned out well, me thinks. Be sure to check out the lovely lady and her music. Has a song with the Mr. MFN Exquire. Nice.

Sum up,

More design for TAP this week. Will share. Promise 🖖.

My Drugs are Free... and Watermarked (Story Art)

Hold your horses, freeloaders. Your boards are coming just sit tight and wait for the god to break your ass off with a taste. I swear they are like coke fiends. But here comes the slinger.

The worse form of Story Art is the one used to 'test' your skill. Like the extensive portfolio wasn't enough. Better you ask me to see my late great examples and leave it there. Nevertheless, the ronin sharpens his blade for the upcoming carnage.

Boards for a trailer:

Sum up,

My mind is the pyrex pot.

The Blunts on WordPress

http://bluntspear.wordpress.com/2011/10/16/kingwilson-music-vid-collaboration/

New Blog and entry on WordPress people! If you have WordPress Add me and I'll reciprocate! Let's build a monolith!

I'm still keeping this blog, for the time being. Let's see how it goes.

Sum up,
Networking.
http://bluntspear.wordpress.com

School of Life and other Unimportant Stuff.

Won a competition. Photostory. 1st place. 1000 or 500 pounds- can't remember. Blunts all around. I'll pass. Either way I have to split the money fiddy/fiddy. My photostory was based on a director's film. Jake Polonsky. School of Life. In the streets? Nah. Name of the film. Personally, I learnt fuck all in school. Lecturing pricks. See here a page (4 of 14):

Linguistic ingenuity. Like Imhotep, but dumber.
On another note: Currently entering this here competition:

http://www.youtube.com/DiscoverHyundai

Think Roswell. Will put up some sketches sooninsh. More meetings tomorrow and Saturday and throughout April.

Sum up,

They are like the Mafia "Just when you think you're out, they drag you back in" Crabs I guess.

The Diary of a Freelancer: Networking

Socialites. Sycophants. The art of ass-sucking. Planet of the Apes; "Bow your head!". Frankly its not all that bad. 1 out of 20 people you meet at these film shindigs end up being comrades in this the art race. Clever penny.

So stick out, go to the numerous festivals, screenings and film fundraisers. Mingle with the social fiends who look on you poorly until they hear you are a story artist/ animator:

"What's that?"

"It's art used in film production. It looks like a comic strip, but it breaks down the scenes to be filmed into panels"

"Really, that must be fun"

And to think I didn't exist in there sphere of being 10 seconds ago.

Tools of the trade: business cards. You are a lone ninja. Your business cards are your stars, kunai knives. Impale as many as you can. Don't expect calls back from everyone. Remember dirtbags and pseudo gatekeepers and pseudo-creatives? They are like moths to light when it comes to these networking events. Anywhere where there is booze really.

Remember to smile alot. Be sociable. Smile. And yes, liquor does help. That's a plus. Down side..liquor loosens the tongue. Know your limit people. Had a conversation with a chick at a screening once and she was under the bronze influence and she said she thanked God for colonisation because if it werent for Britain she would be in her home country 'bare foot and pregnant'.... Yah. Good stuff.

But after partaking the cheap liquor, stale finger food, insidious film premises, be blessed if you have found one dude or dudette who is serious about building bridges. Connections as such are great stuff. Those that are viable, you got to work hard to make it work. Better yet, just do work diligently like you always do.

 And thanks to the modern wonders of technology, we can network in different ways. This blog for instance. Facebook (where friends become strangers) and Twitter (where strangers become friends). Just hit a friend up and tell him what's good. Self-promotion. That's what I've been doing these past months. And when you make a connection you never know when its going to benefit you, but it will. If it doesnt, it's not a connection, its a leeching.

Sum up,
There should be as much time, if not more, spent Building Bridges as you spend Burning Bridges.

Tyger, Tyger Burning Blunts

Throwback moment. At the risk of showing you an ugly piece of my soul that would make you shudder and cringe away from me, got a few poems published in Fire No. 32, received it months a while back.

Only now I took it up. And I realised, a lot of English poems are either thinly veiled sex acts or denotative prose broken into stanzas. Well, the anthology itself is a bit underground, but I guess thats the only way to go really. Who the hell in England would publish them anyways? My name is Dulani, I'm a Jamaican speaking about the Afrikan Diaspora. Now if my name was John Worthington talking about Meadows with reference to William Blake Blossoms and Sylvia Plath's failed suicide attempts, I'd be f***ing famous. Like imitation burberry in Maidstone. Come to think of it, most of my poems were writtien on the train while travelling to university in Maidstone. That is why they are 99.5% depressing. Travelling to hell all willy nilly. Hope the images are clear. Too lazy to scan and crop. Read then leave your comments/curses.

Got some images/sketches from Red Man, keyframes and such. Show you guys tomorrow. Got me a frigging Bamboo Graphics Tablet. About time. About to get into another project, some guys that like great things done in a week so they can enter a festival ... we'll see. Plus ended doing title/credit sequences for Sweet. Remi's finishing that up this week. Plus gearing up for a meeting with the Taylor dude, green light on the mv's. My (Grand) Aunt's here from Florida, and she brought a rahtid mango, big as me bloodfire head. You know you're home sick when eat a mango and close your eyes and have a flashback. England and your inhospitable weather/people. Other than that, I'm not busy.

Plus Inception got the gears turning and I am putting together a script looking at the power of the mind, albeit to forget. And thanks to Cameron's ConDem Party, I am doing it without permits. (extends middle finger to all the politicians [oh, and  read the poem "Politician"]).

Sum up,
"Down Under Lies A Newer Intensity"
"Acronyms Can Rely On Numbers Yielding Myriads- Serious[ly deep]."

The Diary of a Freelancer: Professional Courtesy

A lot of interesting (albeit, irritating) things happened this week. Work tempo has escalated a bit but still trying to keep loyal to the blood oath I made when I started blogging.

But I think the one unifying theme, that can collectively describe all the weeks events is Courtesy. Professional Courtesy. PC. Not to be confused with Political Correctness. Political Correctness is something you regurgitate when societal cues warrant it. Professional Courtesy goes deeper than that and involve rewiring the way you think and act towards others in business. The tacit just got clearer.

I'm not sure if I am just a stubborn a$$hole that forgets that capitalism is really a numbers game. For all you working class people and entrepeneurs that voted Cameron, I currently have stockpiled an array of weapons you can use to commit suicide with. But given the circumstances you may not be able to afford it. So I am doing society a huge favour and Ill give 'em to you for free.
But we digress.

Matter at hand, professional courtesy. I'll break it down in bulletproof points, and these tips are far from hollow. Shell we proceed, indeed (bit of a stretch):

1. ETTIQUETTE -please, thank you, simple primary school stuff. But some people have the brainspan of a gold fish swimming in Russian vodka. Example: dude comes to me some months ago asking to design a DVD cover for his pitch. No pay of course. And I had to make a hell of a lot of changes. No "please could you..." Just "I need you to do this ASAP" or "You sent the wrong file, send it through again". Matter of fact I'm still waiting for a copy of their supposed pilot.
2. COMMUNICATION- thanks to innovation in technology, we have ways of communicating to each other...phones, email, social sites, SMS, slap on the head. Endless. So if someone is putting work for you, keep em in the loop. This week I got a call from a dude who I agreed to do boards for. So what's the problem? I agreed to do it late Spring 2009.
   Met him back then, talked, and it was agreed the story art process would start in the following week. He disappeared for a couple months then popped up back out of the blue, demanded more than asked me to meet him so we could do the storyboards, even though he did not respond to my email i sent after our meeting. Stupid me, I entertained him, and he wanted me to sketch every single panel and show him in the meeting, so when a meeting with a director would usually entail going through a hefty feature film script in an hour, we hardly finished going through scene 1 of a short film in the same time. He had no clue of what he wanted. I made sketches, which he said was all wrong. So i would sketch some more trying to put his acid-thoughts on paper. And when i finally sketched something that he agreed with, all you had to do was compare the sketch with the first sketch i rendered- same, identical. "Oh yeah yeah, that's what I want". Plus the dude took more skittles than I was giving him by knocking the bag. Skittles from Miami dude!
   So I left that meeting frustrated and sent him a hefty email, along the lines of "you need to be sure of what you want to see, be precise of camera distances you want [how can you mix up a WS with a LS or a CU with MS] etc." I attached pencil sketches of the frames we discussed, and said if you want the rest done, you have to come and see me. I sent that email September 2009. I had no response. not one. until the beginning of this week- June 2010. Funny thing is he was responding to my email as if we last talked 1 day ago. He wanted me on the project. He said he is available to meet Tuesday, Wednesday. He didnt ask me when and if I was available to meet. No offer, no compensation for time wasted. Nothing. I dont respond fast enough so he calls. And has the nerve to say that the offer to work on the boards would be 'an experience'. Let's face it shrimp, if making story art was like sex, Id get more satisfaction from doing it myself than collaborating on your project- No homo. Told him to kick rocks. I really did keep my composure.
   
3. INSULTS and THREATS- I never respond kindly to them. A tutor in university said in my last year that if i didnt come in for an unimportant assessment, that my grades would suffer-"I promise you that". Another tutor, in my first year said he was 'really suprised' that I got the highest mark in the class, and that I should participate more in class instead of "talking to your bro". You know, the only other black guy in the class. It was the hand and body gestures that got me. Hm another instance, working on the set of Fantastic Mr Fox, the Head of Production, or at least I think she was ( not with those hooker boots) sent me home prematurely and made no fun to flaunt in my face that my hail mary chance of 'making it' in the company was unequivocally snuffed out and I was just 'wrong'. And on the marvellous Facebook I've seen 'bosses' refer to people that have helped to give 'em shine as 'freakin' mouses', and personify himself as 'the trap'. The cheese was payment of services etc. Really clever stuff. Also been called a "black [immigrant] drugdealler by RIZ MC, in jest of course. So, please dear friends, keep your sh*t to yourselves people, I have the tendency to show my bad side to people who speak loosely.
4. KEEPING PROMISES- "a comfort to a fool". If your folly is being a man of your word. Be careful of promises made by bosses, 'Specially if your working for crumbs. A man is only as good as his word. A director is only as good as his team. Anyone who is dishonest in business is dishonest in life. A few words to live by, friend and remember, if this was a different life, your broken promises could never be mended by cacophonic pleas.
   

Sum up,
I have a sudden urge to watch Goodfellas...anybody know why?

Flexing ye olde Aesthetic muscle

Dude,
Its Sunday and currently weighing the stress of the coming week. Few things happening, not sure in what order. Had an interview postponed (yet again but nothing surprises me). So Red Man is well on its way, I have a still for here but forgot to transfer it to my Laptop (tomorrow promise.)

Thought Id share something with the film graduates; Diva Films (Diversity in Visual Arts) has a Graduate Fellowship programme, so if you like such films as Dance 3D and Kidulthood, get a placement with them. Of course I could go into the fact that you are a retard for loving the aforementioned films, but we digress. I'm applying tomorrow, and see what happens The due date is the 18th I think so you dont have much time.

http://www.divafilms.co.uk/

Get it in! Currently making animation title sequence for a music video. Apparently it has a band, a guy in a straight jacket, a broke back mountain cowboy, a lime green Muscle Car and all set agains an industrial wasteland. ah Dirtbag work. Neo western graphics. John Bass is my hero. So you will get two stills tomorrow.

Sum up,
Image reasearch, brainstorming, drinking Whey Protein, secretly plotting your demise and listening to:



Peace,