Kmuzu

My introduction to performance art.

Many years ago .. when station wagons roamed the land, my parents took my brother and I on vacation to Lake Tahoe.  This was before DVD players or for that matter before VHS. Nope it was just my brother and me beating the shit out of each other for ten hours and my Jewish mother screaming at us from the front; my father white-knuckling the steering wheel.

The space between Vegas and Tahoe is an empty wasteland, except for the occasional burning car, dead coyote or the creepy purple glow from the nuke test range.

We stopped at Tonopah to get gas and my brother and I jumped out of the car, searching for a snake or lizard to scare my mother with. I lifted a rock and was stung by a scorpion. My middle finger swelled up like a German sausage. My mother wrapped it in ice and for five hundred miles I got to flip off every passing vehicle.

So, in Tahoe my father rented a very rustic cabin and for the first ten minutes it was a kid's paradise. The rest of the 9 days, 23 hours and 50 minutes were complete boredom. Except for the last twenty minutes. Yes .. those were the greatest minutes of my entire life.

My brother and I, zombied by boredom, finally decided that we were going to become the two great white hunters. Our first quarry was deer. However, deer run very fast and were bigger than us. We lowered our expectations to squirrels. I designed an ingenious trap. It consisted of a shoe box held up by a stick and some Cheese Whiz squished on a string attached to the stick. See, the plan was a squirrel would see the cheese, go into the box, pull the string, drop the stick, which would capture the varmint in the box.

Every day we set up the trap and every night the wind blew it over. You could imagine our delight each morning, when we found the box down. I crept up and gently lifted up the box with a long stick. My brother held a large rock, which was going to be used to stun the creature.

Well after the seventh time, with nothing in the box. We set the trap for the last time and forgot all about it.

Now it was the tenth day and time to leave. As my dad pulled out of the dirt driveway he noticed the box. "What is that?" he asked. "Oh, that's our squirrel trap," I replied.

"Well pick that shit up and throw it away." I kicked my brother out of the car, he stumbled over to the box and casually lifted it up. Now there are few moments in one's life that are so beautiful and perfect that you get a feeling that you are one with the universe. This was such a moment for me.

Three days before one of the dumbest squirrels in Lake Tahoe, saw the cheese, pulled the string and was trapped by the box. And for three days this squirrel saw neither light nor water. But when my brother lifted the box, the squirrel - half insane from thirst and hunger and blinded by the sun jumped directly on my brother's chest, dug in his little claws and was never letting go.

I remember my bother jumping back in fright, noticed the squirrel locked onto his chest and did something akin to an Irish jig. His feet were flinging back and forth, his arms waving in the air and he was shouting something in Gaelic. And then he ran full speed into the forest and vanished like smoke in the wind.

My father and mother sat there a moment in complete stunned silence. Then my dad slowly got out of the car, grabbed my mother's toiletry bag and ran into the trees. I got out as quickly as a could and ran after them.

About fifty yards into the forest, there was a small clearing, rays of golden sunlight streamed through the trees and upon the nettled covered ground there was my father beating living hell out of my brother with a battered toiletry bag, trying to remove the squirrel. At this point, my brother had teamed up with squirrel to fend off my father.

I still get a little teary eyed thinking about that scene.

This was my first experience with performance art.

Artie chokes three for a dollar

Anyone know who Pieter Bruegel was? You get a cookie if you can name one painting by this master artist. Bruegel was a Flemish or Danish (can never get that straight) and he had a particular disdain for Italian Renaissance art. Italian artist were all about the drama. If you had a picture of Mary and Christ, then they were dramatically portrayed in the middle with angels and light beams pointing directly at them.

Bruegel wanted to paint something that was particularly Danish, just like Mozart wanted to compose something particularly German. In "The Census" Bruegel paints a winter landscape with Mary on a donkey in the midst of a town full of people. Some are skating innocently on a frozen pond There is a line of peasants waiting to pay the tax collector. Two men are fixing a broken cart and in the middle of the painting is a shattered "Wheel of Fate". Here we see Mary and Joseph in context of every day life. The Son of God is among them and no one realize it.

If I had to pick the best thing ever painted it would be "The Census". What's this got to do with my post? Well, I think if you removed all the porn, anime,  manga and PS manipulations on deviantART, you would be left with maybe ten percent. Why are American artists creating anime? This is just like German artists copying Italian Renaissance. Sure it's popular, but leave anime to the Japanese. Find your own voice and style. You're American for God's sake and even if you grew up in Iowa you have something original to say.

I remember a few years back I was in a gallery in New York and they were highlighting this large painting of a smoking, just blown out candle with a teddy bear behind it. The title of the painting was "Blow Me" and the male artist was prancing around like a magical princess (not that there's anything wrong with that). However, I couldn't help thinking that while our boys are spilling their blood in Iraq, the deepest thought in this guy's mind is fellatio.

I am not the greatest artist (really - is that obvious?) but I am a great art appreciator. There are some artists on deviant that are just excellent, but sadly most of it is crap. More to the point, lately I have been very disappointed with American art. If you look at the stuff emerging out of Russia, China, Australia and Mexico, this is where innovation is happening.

I think we've grown too soft. Also, I don't think potential buyers are interested in original art. They much rather buy a print or some oil painting spurted out by a computer. Many people will buy a painting because it matches the colors of their house. I have to admit that almost all of the stuff I have sold has been for that reason.

The Almighty Kmuzu

The new Beowolf is more of sulking mut than a howling wolf.

Okay I promised myself and I promise you this will not be a movie, plot, story, character critique; I'm going to (try) to focus strictly on the art. Warning – there are spoilers in this.

First, I thought the quality of this movie was very poor, although as a popcorn movie I enjoyed certain aspects. I think if you're going to see this – see it in the digital 3D format.

Technically, I noticed quite a few frame skips, chrominance mismatches, polygon meshing, collision detection problems, floaters, marionette type movements, physics problems  - like bad gravity or resistance problems. This is just sloppy computing and transfer procedures.
What is with the lifeless doll eyes? You would think after five years, they could fix this very disturbing artifact. Also, after twenty years of CG, are there no good models for waves and ocean movement. All the liquid looked molten plastic.

Okay, this goes back to last week's post. Many people today are only have knowledge of recent history. So, maybe they read the poem once and did a Google search.  However, if my memory serves me right, Grendel is not some deformed troll. He is a direct descendent of Cain.  Now Cain was the older brother and inline to inherit the blessing of Adam. When he killed Abel, God marked him, banished him and made him a semi-immortal. Many accounts say that Cain became a wolf or a bear and would stalk man as he stalked Abel.  Cain is eventually mistaken for a bear and shot with an arrow. Many consider Cain the first of the werewolves.

So, when I saw Grendel as this hairless, slimly looking troll. I had to ask myself was this because they couldn't get the organics down for the hair? Notice that almost all the people are wearing some type of helm and all the monsters are bald or have scales. Or were they just lazy and didn't want to bother?

Grendel was not even that scary. More pitiful than anything else. Here is creature descended from the most vile of family lines. He has a bitter hatred for the sons and daughters of Adam and since he is forbidden by God to eat anything but meat, he feasts on the flesh of men.  It is a driving hunger.

Remember, the original Alien when the creature pops out of the chest. Now that was a stupid puppet and yet, everyone in the theater nearly shits themselves. When this tiny creature was born, you knew that there was going to be nothing but horrific trouble. Remember, The Thing, when it's head pops off, grows spider legs with crab-stalk eyes and tries to run away. Or how about, in Lord of the Rings when  the Balrog makes an appearance. Artistically, when you see these creature, is there any doubt in the your mind what it is capable of?

And yet, the monsters in this film were boring, unimaginative and lifeless.

So you wanna be a video game artist.

Recently, the almighty Kmuzu has recieved a number of e-mails and messages concerning getting into the video game biz. First let's get some facts straight:

1. I was in the video game industry in the late 80's through the 90's. I was a producer, writer and designer.
2. If you include all the "blue-hairs" doing watercolor, my technical art skills are slightly above average.

Yes, you have to know your computer stuff. Maya, Z-brush, 3D Max, Illustrator, Photoshop - some Final Cut. However, the best artists I know, were just not great at the software but were really good artists.

So my advice from all the years of working with artists is this. Get out of the house. I know you're poor, but take a trip. I suggest you first go to Italy (I did - I was much more poor than you). Start in Rome - See the Vatican Museum first, then the Sistine Chapel, remember Michaelangelo was not using acrylic .. He was mixing his paint with natural minerals and dyes - Mostly just yellows and reds. St. Peter's Basilica and check out La Pietà and the work of Bernini. In Rome, find the statue of Moses, in the church St. Peter in Chains. There you will find the most gothic and horrific frescos I have ever seen. Demons, angels, undead skeletons and gouls out stretched as if they were going to grab the unfaithful. Just think if you were a ten year-old boy going into this church .. scare the holy shit out of you.

I guess I would tell you to go to Florence and Venice - tell you to stand in the Bridge of Tears and imagine taking your last look before the torture chamber. But what's the point? You know the drill right?

To me, art - even computer art - stands outside of life. It reflects more on what we put into it than the art itself. Just take a look at the original Mario Brothers .. that was 16 x 16 pixel picture, but if you look at it - what is missing your brain is filling in. So, in this case it was more important what was not added that what was.

I noticed a steady and sad decline in the imaginative abilities of the artists we hired - certainly not all - but most were lacking a foundation of symbolism and perseption. They just did not know how to tag or pull on that inner troll inside of us. It's not enough to be able to draw a really cool monster. The art has to propel the story.

I remember playing an old game called X-COM. It was turned based game - the fog was revealed as you progressed. I remember that the game had the creepest little aliens and when you uncovered one - it scared the holy hell out of you. This was not only a great game, but the art really enhanced the mood and horror. I look at Battlefield 2040 and it seems to me to be very sterile. The mechs should be towering, mechanical death machines, instead they look like overgrown chickens.

Anyway .. blah blah blah . right .. but if you have any other questions on video games or art .. I would be happy to answer them.

Painting by numbers

So, after years of managing and directing artists, I've decided to create some art on my own. I have worked with some of the best CG artists around, like Rick Parks, Ren Olsen and Brandon Voeller.

I have not done any illustrations since high school and it felt very strange picking up a brush again. I started with landscapes, worked on perspective and color and currently working on faces and textures. I know from my video game days, that the human face is one of the hardest things to get right. I started with monsters, because the more you mess up the better the creature looks. I have tried a few interations of the human face (most look like they have some horrible skin and/or eye disease). I am close to posting one on DA and asking for advice. Also, I've stepped back from acrylic and just trying to get a face right in pencil and ink.

I choose to start in acrylics, because it is easy to use, easy to clean, easy to mix and dries up in a couple of hours. It can also mimic watercolor, oil and ink. I try to use academy series paint. Not so much for the gesso, black or white mix, but especially for the matte and high gloss stuff. I really love Jo Sonja's, Grumbacher and Windsor & Newton paint. I haven't had much luck with Golden, Craft Smart or Reeves.

Also, I like using canvas board more than traditional canvas.