12/23 This weeks topic is "Transformation"

That is the theme. Interpret it as you will.

Winnar!

Trish has it for this week!!

CellFown

I don't want to win, because I don't want to pick a topic.
I do, however, take pictures with my cell phone near constantly attempting to capture what I see, which is difficult with a proper camera and near impossible with a cell camera, but occasionally I get something really neat in the end. Here are some of the ones I like.

Iced Tree

Winter Sky

Kentucky

Stairs at Edison Lab

Exterior Edison Lab

LunaMika

Shawnee on the Delaware

Leaf Light

Lava

Lamps

View from a kitchen

Patriotic Clouds

The Edge

Cell Pics

This is a Pic Taken while we got our family x-mas tree and Mom was looking the other way.












This is a Continuation in the Award Eligible comic character Banana Futz!












And this final entry I call "The Changing of the Infectious Waste Dumpsters"

My phone

Won't email photos it seems so to Facebook then here....

New topic: Cheap Photography.

Ok I noticed things have been slowing down, and with the holidays I'm not really surprised, but I'm going to try and get it going again.

I'm throwing out a topic. Deadline next Sunday and I'm going to try something a little different.

I want you to get the most artistic picture you can with a cell phone camera. I've been playing with it recently and its actually kinda fun.

Give it a try and I hope everyone is having a stress free holiday.

Some of the work I've taken...

from my phone.

I'm hoping to paint some of them some day.

New Work

This is what I've been doing.

Banana Futz!!

Ep. 2

BANANA FUTZ!!!

Banana Futz!!

Looks like theres no posts this week too so I'm just going to keep posting the ongoing experiences of my new serial cartoon star "Banana Futz"

Heres Ep.1 and 2

WINNER!!!!!

Thank you thank you, yes my recreation of the Sistine Chapel as branded by Nascar was brilliant, SURE but that's besides the point and we have to move on.

This Weeks topic is Dreams! I dont dream and since im not in the running anyway this week I want to live vicariously through all of you. Take a Dream you have this week and turn it into something other then an unconscious Gillium Film and make it physical.

This topic will be due not this Sunday but the next, to give a full weeks worth of time. so Due Date is Nov. 28th

I don't want to pick a new topic, so I forfeit my topic-picking and judging rights.

Paige!

New topic!...Or wait 'till Friday and give us TWO weekends oh benevolent mistress.

New Topic

looks like nobody was inspired to do Words, How about you throw out a new topic Paige

New Topic - Words

Words. (Yes, Sean, somewhat NaNo themed.)
But a challenge not exclusive to writing. I've seen some pretty nifty word art that wasn't prose or poetry, and I think selection of words is as important as how they are utilized.
So yeah.
Words.
Use and abuse as you see fit.

Annnnnnnnnd...

PAIGE WINS!

IN YOUR FACE JEFF!

I love the horned Sasquatch looking guy the most. But they're all great, and based on the illustrations alone I want to read your story.

Also while I haven't been active in participating in NaNoWriMo yet, I will, I want on that chart! I recommend everyone join in, even dyslexic Jeff.

So anyways, grats Paige! Next topic please!

Because I can...

So I'm cheating and using things that I drew over the past month or so but assembled together for NaNo for the star chart for this year. So I did the assembly into the chart this week, and you get to see the original sketches as a bonus. Or something like that. (And if you are doing NaNo and want on my chart, well, you should maybe start participating actively. We have a chat room. And a forum. And PMing. Etc.)

Free For All

I like Art that also serves a purpose. May be a political statement, may be to excercize so personal demons and it may be, as in this case, to serve as a reason to come up with an Actual topic every week instead of a "free for All".

My Favorite part of this piece is that it looks like it may be the only entry, meaning that Peet will have to choose it and say something sparkling and nice about it. *Fingers Crossed*

Ack

Sorry!

Totally got rofl stomped by real life.

Topic this week is free-for-all. Or signature.

Also I'm shitty.

A thought

No topic until midweek makes it very hard to submit stuff. Just sayin

Peet Wins

You are right, Peet, you do win.

That orc is mad creepy.

It wasn't NaNo that kept me away today, but other business and my sister's birthday. We just got home from Red Bank. Work tomorrow is gonna be "fun."

I think...

I think I'm gonna win this one 'cuz no one else has sent in anything. I just hope Paige remembers to check this even tho it's NaNoWriMo time.


(also i highly recommend clicking on the orc to see some more detail, and matt lemme know what you think about this coloring style)

New Theme

I'm gonna be lazy and say the theme is Halloween.

WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER

I want Peet's entry on a shirt, but it took me a while to "get" Paige's awesome piece. They I saw the sub. Winner! And a special runner up for Jeff's plate that said "fuck you" with no food on it.

Food

This is a crappy photo of my sketch, but the sketchbook is bigger than my scanner and I'm lazy and preoccupied. So here's my entry for food; hmm, I'm hungry and should have eaten by now.... Conveniently enough the theme works with what I was working on anyway.

Hunger post!

I just installed Sketchbook Pro and I'm just playing around with it. It's a ton of fun, but I'm still getting used to it.

Just an article I thought I'd share.

I figured since this is called the Misery Competition, and all of us either are or are capable of being miserable bastards this would be an interesting read. Enjoy or don't.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/feeling-sad-makes-us-more-creative/
* By Jonah Lehrer Email Author
* October 19, 2010 |
* 9:47 am |
* Categories: Frontal Cortex, Science Blogs

For thousands of years, people have speculated that there’s some correlation between sadness and creativity, so that people who are a little bit miserable (think Van Gogh, or Dylan in 1965, or Virginia Woolf) are also the most innovative. Aristotle was there first, stating in the 4th century B.C.E. “that all men who have attained excellence in philosophy, in poetry, in art and in politics, even Socrates and Plato, had a melancholic habitus; indeed some suffered even from melancholic disease.” This belief was revived during the Renaissance, leading Milton to exclaim, in his poem Il Penseroso: “Hail, divinest melancholy/whose saintly visage is too bright/to hit the sense of human sight.” The romantic poets took the veneration of sadness to its logical extreme, and described suffering as a prerequisite for the literary life. As Keats wrote, “Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?”

Well, it turns out the cliché might be true after all: Angst has creative perks. That, at least, is the conclusion of Modupe Akinola, a professor at Columbia Business School, in her paper “The Dark Side of Creativity: Biological Vulnerability and Negative Emotions Lead to Greater Artistic Creativity.” The experiment was simple: She asked subjects to give a short speech about their dream job. The students were randomly assigned to either a positive or negative feedback condition, in which their speech was greeted with smiles and vertical nods (positive) or frowns and horizontal shakes (negative). After the speech was over, the subjects were given glue, paper and colored felt and told to create a collage using the materials. Professional artists then evaluated each collage for creativity.

In addition, Akinola also measured DHEAS (dehydroepiandrosterone), an endogenous hormone that blunts the effects of stress hormones like cortisol. (As I’ve written about before, depression is closely entangled with chronic stress.) Given this chemical power, it’s not surprising that low levels of DHEAS have been associated with susceptibility to volatile mood swings and downward spirals of sadness. Finally, subjects were also asked to self-report their moods, giving the scientists a subjective and objective measurement of how they were feeling, and how the feedback to the speech had shifted their emotional state.

Not surprisingly, positive feedback cheered us up: Participants who received smiles and nods during their speeches reported feeling better than before. Negative feedback had the opposite effect – it’s no fun having our dreams trampled on.

Here’s where things get interesting: People who received negative feedback created better collages, at least when compared to those who received positive feedback or no feedback at all. Furthermore, those with low baselines of DHEAS proved particularly vulnerable to the external effects of frowns, so that they proved to be the most creative of all.

What’s driving this correlation? Why does a melancholy mood turn us into a better artist? The answer returns us to the intertwined nature of emotion and cognition. It turns out that states of sadness make us more attentive and detail oriented, more focused on the felt collage. Joe Forgas, a social psychologist at the University of New South Wales in Australia, has spent the last decade investigating the surprising benefits of negative moods. According to Forgas, angst and sadness promote “information-processing strategies best suited to dealing with more-demanding situations.” This helps explain why test subjects who are melancholy — Forgas induces the mood with a short film about death and cancer — are better at judging the accuracy of rumors and recalling past events; they’re also much less likely to stereotype strangers and make fewer arithmetic mistakes.

Last year, Forgas ventured beyond the lab and began conducting studies in a small stationery store in suburban Sydney, Australia. Forgas placed a variety of trinkets, like toy soldiers, plastic animals and miniature cars, near the checkout counter. As shoppers exited, Forgas tested their memory, asking them to list as many of the items as possible. To control for the effect of mood, Forgas conducted the survey on gray, rainy days — he accentuated the weather by playing Verdi’s Requiem — and on sunny days, using a soundtrack of Gilbert and Sullivan. The results were clear: shoppers in the “low mood” condition remembered nearly four times as many of the trinkets. The wet weather made them sad, and their sadness made them more aware and attentive.

There are two important lessons of this research. The first is that our fleeting feelings can change the way we think. While sadness makes us more focused and diligent – the spotlight of attention is sharpened – happiness seems to have the opposite effect, so that good moods make us 20 percent more likely to have a moment of insight. The second takeaway is that many of our creative challenges involve tasks that require diligence, persistence and focus. It’s not easy making a collage or writing a poem or solving a hard technical problem, which is why sometimes being a little miserable can improve our creative performance.

In a recent article in The New York Times Magazine on a speculative evolutionary explanation for depression, I touched on some of these ideas:

In a survey led by the neuroscientist Nancy Andreasen, several dozen writers from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop were interviewed about their mental history. Eighty percent of the writers met the formal diagnostic criteria for some form of depression. A similar theme emerged from biographical studies of British writers and artists by Kay Redfield Jamison, a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, who found that successful individuals were eight times as likely as people in the general population to suffer from major depressive illness.

Why is mental illness so closely associated with creativity? Andreasen argues that depression is intertwined with a “cognitive style” that makes people more likely to produce successful works of art. In the creative process, Andreasen says, “one of the most important qualities is persistence.” Based on the Iowa sample, Andreasen found that “successful writers are like prizefighters who keep on getting hit but won’t go down. They’ll stick with it until it’s right.” While Andreasen acknowledges the burden of mental illness — she quotes Robert Lowell on depression not being a “gift of the Muse” and describes his reliance on lithium to escape the pain — she argues that many forms of creativity benefit from the relentless focus it makes possible. “Unfortunately, this type of thinking is often inseparable from the suffering,” she says. “If you’re at the cutting edge, then you’re going to bleed.”

P.S.: A big thank you to Eric Barker at Bakadesuyo for the tip!


Read More http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/feeling-sad-makes-us-more-creative/#ixzz130VIRRlj

Christ, I am terrible.

These things keep getting pushed back and my miserable excuses for topics generally suck pretty bad. So this week, I think, because I am hungry, the topic is food. Good food, bad food, food for thought, get weird with it.

Snap Decision

I realize now I didn't do a great job of separating the theme from the limitation this week. However Sean's entry had the closest adherence to haste, so I'm declaring him the winner. Also, I like Sea Monkeys.

I know the time limit unfairly penalized some forms of arts over others.

1) Suck it.

2) I like the idea of more limited forms of the challenge. Doing something like this every week may be changing the project too much from it's original intent, but I'll encourage others to think of different ways to spice up further challenges from time to time.

Smiling

If you know him, he smiles easily but in all the years I've known him it has been difficult to get it on film.

30 min. Traveling Song

This is what i did between 7:20 and 7:47 on Saterday. THought of a riff and I locked it down. this is the first time I layerd a recording, Guitar, Tambourine and Harmonica....THREE TRACKS!!! Im such a Pro

http://storagestuff.posterous.com/traveling-song

Classy.

Carl Paste was masturbating furiously into a small, glass fishbowl. He scanned the pictures arrayed out before him like a personal buffet of kink, halfheatedly grunting at the images of girls doubled over and filled with strange things that cause their stomachs to bulge in weird ways. It wasn’t really how Carl got down, but it was the first thing he had pulled up on the Google search, and he was in a hurry. He had to do this before good judgement- or worse yet, apathy- had set in. Straining to find even one of the images in any way erotic, he noticed the way one girl’s hair curled around her breast, hanging upward toward her shoulder as a result of lying at an awkward angle, the gleaming fuselage of a model airplane jutting horribly from her clenched genitals. Carl’s belly heaved at the sight and he relaxed, satisfied. For a few seconds, he watched the winding ropes of himself drift lazily in the lukewarm tapwater, but a cramp in his right calf snapped him from his reverie. He had tasked himself with an experiment bourne of boredom and desperation and he was bound by will to see it through. He reached for the tiny packet marked “INSTANT: SEA MONKEY EGGS!” and tore the top off of it with his teeth. Ever so carefully, he poured the dried ova into the clear water, smiling at what would no doubt soon be his only legacy.

Short Week, Speedy Rules

Wow, my first entry and I win. Paige, thanks so much for the vote of confidence.

Due to the truncated week, I'm going to declare this week's topic a

LIGHTNING ROUND!!!!

(Crash! Flash! Pow!)

This week's topic will be haste.
In addition, I'm adding the restriction that you may not spend more than 30 minutes working on your project. I will not restrict the amount of time you may spend developing your idea, but the 30 minutes applies to anything that you would consider being part of production. Storyboarding, pre-sketching, marking out space, anything along these lines will count towards your limit.

Clock's ticking. Go.

Chris

Winner

Sorry for the delay.

The winner is Chris.

Congrats!

Mine

A Case of the Milky Ways

Alright, its slap dash at best but I had a little free time and a bad Idea so here's what you all get. But it is in fact the best interpretation of what the future REALY will be. We suck

New Week, New Rules

Wow, my first entry and I win. Paige, thanks so much for the vote of confidence.

Having won the future theme, I'm going to continue the trend. For the week of 10/10, the theme will be robotic gynecological exams.

Chris

Chris

I wish you hadn't done that.

This Week's Theme: Future

I wasn't prepared to win/tie, so my topic is what popped into my head as I was drifting off into blissful, diphenhydramine-assisted slumber last night: the future. Your future, someone else's future, the world's future, a palm reader future, the future of a past time, the future of another world, the future of your lunch, stock futures, a realistic future, a completely ricockulous future. However you'd like to interpret "future." Hell, do an acrostic using "future."

Yeh, I need more sleep.

Can I do this?

Both pieces gave me chills.( I'd also like to point out that I seem to get the worst turnouts of any topics, so my next one is gonna be straight fan-service of some kind.) Since I can't decide, I'm gonna declare a tie! Jeff and Paige can both pick topics, and partipants can adress one, the other, or try for both! And both Jeff and Paige have to agree who wins!

He says She says

Breaking the rules and posting on Monday morning even though they are due Sunday, since I'm banking on the fact that Sean hasn't looked at the site yet.
I went with a kinda duel opposite stance. Opposite stances that I don't quite agree with either side. Traditional views on marriage that are a little too traditional.

HIM
So now she tells me she wants to get a job.
A job! As if she didn't have enough to do already with keeping the house clean. I don't think it's too much to ask for a clean house and a hot meal after working for 12 hours straight. "But the water bill..." she whines. The water bill can wait until I have the money to pay it off. They won't turn off the water, there's people living here, they aren't allowed. This house is a disaster, if she can't keep it clean with 12 hours to work on it how the hell does she think she's gonna keep it clean with a job?
A job. As if she could get a job. Who's gonna hire her? What's she gonna do? I mean, I didn't argue when she wanted to baby sit for other people's kids, it wasn't like that really got in the way of her doing what she needed to do, and at that point our kids were still young and doing all the same things as the kids she sat for... But a real job? And what if they want her to work on my day off? Or her shift overlaps with mine? I'm supposed to come home to an almost empty house and no dinner and be fine with that?
A job. I work enough. She shouldn't. It's that simple. My job is to work and make money to pay for the things we want, and her job is to take care of our things and our kids and me.

HER
All I want is to get a little part time job. Something where I can make enough money to pay the water bill. Maybe stock away enough to pay off some of his credit cards. He doesn't see how much he spends, how that affects things. He just buys whatever he sees that he wants, and then brings it home, and adds it to the clutter that is already here. It's impossible to keep this place clean, because every time he goes out he brings something new home. And then he complains. Well, stop bringing crap home with you! Spend the money on the things you should be spending it on - paying the bills, necessities.
Just a little job. In a small store or something. It doesn't have to conflict with his schedule. I'd even try to work around the kids' college classes, so I can still drive them to school and work when I need to. That's another thing he could spend the money on, the car. That piece of plastic over the window isn't going to keep out the snow come winter. It'd be nice not to worry that the car isn't going to make it when we drive down to see his mother. Heck, a second car so that the kids could drive themselves places would be great. How are we all supposed to get to work and school and home again with just one car.
I could get a little job, and save up, and get another car.
But he doesn't want me to.
So I won't.

Actualize

Alright I'm not gunna lie and say that I really got into the head space of my opposite stance like a real method actor but I did try. Its a double first for me, its my first attempt at a Ukulele performance and its also my first foray into parody which as we all know is the HIGHEST form of art. So click the link and enjoy.



Actualize

New Topic

I tried to think of something everyone would like, so instead I'm doing something no one is gonna like. I don't have a simple theme- my theme is "opposite stance." Let me explain- if you're pro-choice, make some anti-abortion propaganda. Not sarcastically or sardonically, really, really try to get inside the headspace of someone you disagree with and see things from their point of view. Do some research. If you hate guns, do a pro-NRA piece. You you're vegetarian, do a meat ad. If you're gay, do some bible-thumping "marriage is between a man and a woman" material, etc. I'd make the converse examples but I feel like we don't have a lot of conservatives on here- tell me if I'm wrong though.

Jeebus...

It was super hard deciding which to win, I loved the Plague Masks and zombies in the Italian Renaissance, the photographs of an zombie crime scene was BEAUTIFULLY done, and the story of a child becoming a monster in the aftermath or society attempting to rise from the ash.

I'm gonna pick Sean's story. They were all great, but the idea of a world re-created in the future where the future is dead is exactly what I'm talking about.

I loved it.

Congrats Sean!

Renaissance

The Renaissance (French for "rebirth"; Italian: Rinascimento, from ri- "again" and nascere "be born")





Classy!!!

Breakfast (NSFW)

John Dööe

Breakfast

2015

Victim 37, plastic, plush, apple juice

76.2 x 91.4 cm

Coming of Age in the late 1970's

November 6, 1979

Pleasantville, NJ

My names is Charles Piper, and I’m 15 years old. I live at 215 Oak Street in Pleasnatville NJ (close to Atlantic City). I go to Pleasantville high school, my favorite show is CHiPs, and I have to do this homework assignment in response to the Iranian Hostage Crisis for Mr. Leeds’ Social Studies class. A couple days ago, while watching Welcome Back Kotter, I saw a news report that said a group of Muslim students and militants took over the Embassy of the United States in support of Islam or something. They’ve got like 52 of our people and I think the Russians are helping them. I think we should use Delta Force or something to get them back.

So I have two versions here. I had initialy intended to draw this out and then do a charcoal tracing onto another sheet to give it the look of an old etching, but after I drew it all out I really liked the cleaner version. I figured i would put up both to see what you all think.

I had intended to make a much more graphic depiction of the Renaissance Plague Mask Doctors VS. the Zombies but once I started drawing the background of the Italian Renaissance it seemed to take over. I'm not one for forcing my brain to do what it doesn't want to so I rolled with it. No I think its a little creepy like a weird travel log of the wonderful sights in Beautiful Italy that just happens to be during a Cataclysm.

What happened?

Everyone who participates in this is in some form or fashion a huge fucking nerd. We've plumped the depths of the lower social strata and are comfortable where we've landed. So for my topic, instead of making it vague or style specific or make you Rule 34 your favorite childhood memory I'm going to do what's been kicking around my head for a while.

Zombie Renaissance.

What happens after a Zombie Apocalypse? Is there peaceful cohabitation? Do zombies form their own social status based on the various forms of decomposition? Do they wear jewelry? Does technology still advance?

In my pea-sized and pearl smooth brain, it'd be like coming out of the Dark Ages. There would be an explosion of music, art, literature, and technology.

But I'm a functional retard. Do with this as you will.

*EDIT*
Apparently I'm not the only one: http://wiki.urbandead.com/index.php/Zombie_Renaissance

WINNER (Self Poritait)

I'm glad I was sleepy and passed out when I got home last night cuz there were a lot of late entries. This was pretty tough. I never thought I would end up being an art critic. I would have flipped a coin but those bastards at the mint dont make four sided coins.

Since I have to choose I'm going for Peet's sketch. I like the idea of an artistic portrait of your artistic style. Theres something indelible about a persons style that no matter how much you streatch never goes away, something about your personal style thats more permanent and telling then your looks.

So congrats Peet and my appoligies to the rest of us that have to submit our "Goat-C" interpretations.

Self Portrait

So I was going to finish this a little more, but instead I went hiking on the Appalachian Trail. This actually kinda fits a self portrait of me, because I tend not to complete projects (or not to make time to complete projects). I will probably do a little more on this and then scan it in all proper-like, because I surprised myself with how well it turned out. It is actually a drawing of a self-portrait, because I took the photo I used as reference. So yeah, I'm tired and sweaty and need to shower and sleep, but was determined to post something since I actually did something, even if it isn't finished - neither am I.

Half an ass...

Is better than no ass. I've been playing with trying to take self-portraits with my cameraphone for a while now- jealous of Trish's ability to do the same. Here's one of the efforts I rather like, as it's not a bad show of how I was feeling at the time.

Hand Style Self Portrait.

I'm going a slightly less literal translation of an illustrated self portrait which is extremely fun to do. So yea, I'm also doing this on my phone because I'm not home and the self portraits I've drawn for this weeks assignment are on my kitchen table.

I don't know if I need to explain this, but I will say this: she's a slut. Bung.

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*EDIT* I'm home and exhausted, but I've explained this entry a little more in the comments.