We all know that a good person can be a bad artist.
But no one will ever be a genuine artist
unless a great human being and thus also a good one.
Marc Chagall

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.
Imagination embraces the entire world,
and everything there will be to know and understand.
Imagination points to all we might yet discover and create.
Albert Einstein

Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter
and those who matter don't mind.
I ♥! Dr. Seuss

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
Eleanor Roosevelt


Eric Machmer: “Don’t hurt the Loris!” Two Mischievous Elephant Shrews (Moonshine & Sunshine)

Update: I know, I know this SUCKS. The elephant shrews are smiling; a friend called them ‘spacemen.’ (?!??!) See that half circle seed pod off the upper right corner? That was a plate thrown at Remi…I wanted to use a similar color scheme, basically the entire background is a still shot from Ratatouille. Smudged. True story. Won’t happen again. Interesting colors. Weird characters. Not fun.
 

The Horton Plains slender loris (Loris tardigradus nycticeboides) was thought to be extinct between 1939 and 2002 — then it was rediscovered and photographed for the first time. Horton Plains slender lorises are now classified on the IUCN Red List as the rarest and most elusive primate in the world. This leads golden rumped elephant shrews to use the only one born in captivity as a rhino shield. 
 
“The discovery improves our knowledge of this species, but we need to focus our efforts on the conservation and restoration of the remaining montane forest where this species still exists,” conservation biologist Dr. Craig Turner of the Zoological Society of London said in a press release. “Currently this accounts for less than 1 percent of the land area of Sri Lanka.”
 
Clearing tropical forests for tea plantations in Sri Lanka has forced conservation efforts to focus on protecting what little forest remains in the hope of reversing its desperate plight.
 

Eric Machmer: A Whole Lot of Endanger’n Goin’ On! (Concept Shot from Personal Project)

Two Golden Rumped Elephant Shrews and a Horton Plains slender loris, save: vaquitas!!
(This concept shot is right before the loris decides to go ride the vaquita.)

If searching for a cute character to draw, or an inspiring story to tell, consider the most endangered marine mammals in the world: vaquitas!

Swimming in a small reserve at the northern end of the Sea of Cortez (Gulf of California, only 50 miles from the US border) vaquitas have never been hunted, their food sources are not over-fished, and locals and the Mexican government support efforts to preserve them.

The problem is they drown in cheap common nylon fishing nets — all the time. There are only a few hundred left, several dozen die annually. Their plight needs public attention desperately.

Fortunately they are the cutest creatures conceivable. 

 The ‘desert porpoise’ is at the very heart of Mexico.

Proposals to prevent vaquita extinction include:

1) Extend the southern border of the Upper Gulf Biosphere Reserve to include their entire range.

2) Terminate all shrimp and gill net fishing in the Reserve.

3) Employ former fishermen from the Reserve in sustainable occupations.

 (This is not as difficult as it seems, the largest town on the banks of the reserve has a population of only 20,000 persons.)

Eric Machmer: Kanon (花音) “flower sound” Nomad Jellyfish Rider from Taiji (太地町)

(click for full image)
“You don’t have to solve all the world’s problems. Pick out one that you feel
especially close to and concentrate on it.” (Seeger)

This is Kanon — which in Japanese means “flower sound”!  Isn’t that wonderful?? : )  She’s a proactive energetic hermit crab from Taiji fed up with misguided humans polluting her cove with blood from murdered dolphins. She’s headed out to drum up support — she’ll get it!

A serious flaw in “The Cove” was the lack of native Japanese anti-whaling and animal rights spokespersons. Disrespectful, angry 40 year old adolescents with soul patches from Malibu were offensive, embarrassing, and lethal.

Cetaceans are saved by including criticism of European killings in the Faroes, Iceland, and Norway — and dolphinariums throughout the world — rather than treating all Japanese complicit in Taiji murders.

This is the first in a series of characters associated with animal rights. Jaquita the Vaquita will be next — she’s a hoot!  Vaquitas (“little cows” in Spanish) are the rarest and most endangered species of marine mammal. There are only about 240 in the world.  They’re little tiny super cute dolphins which exist only in the upper Sea of Cortez in Northern Mexico.

The Mexican government has created a nature reserve covering the upper part of the Gulf of California and the Colorado River delta.  Our hope is this reserve will be extended southwards to cover the full known Vaquita range and that net trawlers will be completely banned from the reserve.

http://www.seashepherd.org/
http://www.vivavaquita.org/

"Bicycle for our Mind"

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

“When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”

Jobs’ celebrated motto for the original Mac team — “the journey is the reward” — could have been lifted from the pages of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. For Suzuki-roshi, the path was the goal: “with no gaining idea” — that is, with no hope that your next session on the cushion would bring about a shattering, life-changing flash of satori. Suzuki-roshi didn’t even claim to be enlightened himself, which was a shocking thing for a renowned Zen teacher to admit at the time (laughingly confirmed by his mischievous wife, Mitsu). You didn’t sit zazen to become a Buddha, Suzuki-roshi used to say: 

“You’re perfect just as you are — and you could use a little improvement.”

“I think one of the things that really separates us from the high primates is that we’re tool builders. I read a study that measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on the planet. The condor used the least energy to move a kilometer. And, humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing, about a third of the way down the list. It was not too proud a showing for the crown of creation. So, that didn’t look so good. But, then somebody at Scientific American had the insight to test the efficiency of locomotion for a man on a bicycle. And, a man on a bicycle, a human on a bicycle, blew the condor away, completely off the top of the charts.


And that’s what a computer is to me. What a computer is to me is it’s the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with, and it’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.” ~ Steve Jobs

Eric Machmer: Illuminated Dancer (contextualized logo)

This quick image may contextualize the ecstatic dancing figure used as our logo. Background story: an old general who had been in charge of organizing events behind a city’s walls dances to distract children gathered around a fire as defenses fail. In such a situation there may have been unaffiliated, retreating, or front-line enemy troops more dangerous to stranded residents than the opposing army. Innocent persons unable to escape — street children, handicapped, elderly — might gather together in a public setting with an elderly official. As debris rains around them they would be protected in no-man’s land by persons such as this dancer.

Check out what is not on the little guy’s right foot, but his head — this was sculpted near Kunming China 1,500 years ago! Imagine him also in a peaceful setting dancing around a hearth, entertaining kids and village folk who have stayed up late to hear his stories.

“Happy Dancer” is the most ‘important’ sculpture ever created by a human being (in my humble opinion)…it is not violent, does not celebrate a state, nationality, or ruler — neither is it conspicuous ornate decoration or even utilitarian…it is human and fun. I LOVE this sculpture. It was created by a Fellow Spirit, a comrade-in-arms, an ancient artist whose name has been lost but whose attitude resonates.

“Happy Dancer” may be seen in a nondescript corner of a display case among shelves of statuettes in the Yunnan Provincial Museum, Kunming China. Some day it’s value will be celebrated. It is the Mona Lisa of sculpture. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunming#Yunnan_Provincial_Museum

(Well, maybe not THE most important, but, one of the most important…allllthough,
if forced to choooooose!! –I LOVE IT!!)

“Dance, when you’re broken open. Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting.
Dance in your blood. Dance when you’re perfectly free.”
Rumi

“Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music.”
Angela Monet

“We dance for laughter, we dance for tears, we dance for madness, we dance for fears, we dance for hopes,
we dance for screams, we are the dancers, we create the dreams.”
Albert Einstein

“Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without.”
Confucius

“There are short-cuts to happiness and dancing is one of them.”
Viki Baum

“If I can’t dance – I don’t want to be part of your revolution”
Emma Goldman

Eric Machmer: Commercial Work: Keebler Picnic & the 1st Female Cheerios Bees!

Concept designer Feng Zhu uses a $150 Wacom tablet rather than a $2,500 Cintiq. I found this — first, hard to believe — then (for students and artists in developing countries) revolutionary.
These frames were created last weekend to test a tablet workflow. Now I prefer working on a bright large iMac with a tablet…my Cintiq is used in an elevated contraption above a treadmill (see post below). Hopefully story artists in less developed countries will learn to draw on inexpensive tablets.  It has been liberating to realize we can work anywhere.

When starting most digital artists think: “Shesh this tablet sucks! God please I need a Cintiq!” Once comfortable with Cintiq workflows we remain conditioned to tolerate Wacom’s massive eighty five pound twenty-five hundred dollar desk anchor. Don’t buy a Cintiq — it won’t help. Practice, pay off your credit cards, and travel — with a laptop and tablet.

Update: yes, these bug-eyed bees creep me out. Fortunately HNC will be around for a while…first attempt, long-term project.

During a recent visit my toddler nieces ate Cheerios straight from the box like velociraptors — with no side-effects from sugar (second ingredient). These fun, commercial, personal side-projects help me relax when I freak about today’s economy — hopefully Keebler will have a vegan line and artificial milk with sugar free cereal will be commonplace — in the meantime….

The hero of this blog Dr. Seuss advertised mosquito repellant. Standard Oil kept him alive during the Depression. When Theodore Geisel finally published children’s books late in life he was still known by fellow illustrators as “the Flick guy.”

For more commercial work by Theodore Geisel see UC San Diego’s thorough online archive: http://libraries.ucsd.edu/speccoll/dsads/#intro
Relevant conversations among artists on Twitter as the economy became part of our public discourse (first conversation initiated by Ward Jenkins @Wardomatic, second by Molly Crabapple @mollycrabapple):

saw that someone left a comment on that Life of a Freelancer link: “you can always say ‘no'” – umm, not if you’re trying to pay the bills.I find artists that claim not to care about money usually have parents who pay for that attitude. And not if you’re trying to keep your two kids from starving & not if you’re trying to keep from getting evicted from your rented home, etc. Exactly. It’s not always possible to pick & choose, especially during a recession. The flip-side is there is an opportunity cost in working with asshole clients…the worst part about shit work is it takes away time from giving 110% to good clients. 1 of 2: There are a lot of people doing great creative work that give advice like turn down a client that offers a rotten deal 2 of 2: most people handing out advice on being a creative pro are NOT 100% freelancers-they have a job that pays the bills
—- Another: At the start of my career, I was often accused of spending more time promoting myself than I did focusing on my art. While it might have been 50/50, or 60/40, or 40/60, this was probably true. I did ALOT of art. But also a LOT of business. And never slept. Now, that I have a crew of amazing people that deals with my schlepping, hauling, calling, invoicing and emailing, I’m 90% art time. Conclusion? Devoting yourself to your art is a fucking luxury, and no one should ever criticize a young artist for being a scrappy hustler. Cause the business stuff- someone has to do it. Before you’re making enough bank to support an assistant or gallery, that person will be you. Me and @KimBoekbinder have talked about how the lie fed to artists is the same at that fed to chicks… that if you’re good and pretty and nice enough, some man or gallery will sweep you off your feet …and if they don’t come, well it’s positively vulgar to get out of your tower yourself, you whore It’s something I think about alot now- how much having cash and a crew frees me to do crazy, ambitious dream projects. The stuff I got criticized for doing when I was starting out still gets done. But it’s considered less vulgar to pay someone else to do it. Considering hustling and business stuff vulgar is just another way of saying people who want to transcend their station are vulgar.